e was dreaming her humble little love-dream again.
She smiled up at Carroll in a charming fashion as they met.

"Good-bye," said she, with her pretty little purse of the mouth. They
had already had an interview concerning her wages that morning.

Carroll said good-bye with a stiff motion of his mouth. He realized
that Charlotte had given Marie her dress. Somehow the sight of Marie
in that dress almost made a child of the man.

Chapter XXXII

Carroll, when he reached his house, went up to the front door,
unlocked it, and entered. At once there smote upon his consciousness
that strange shock of emptiness and loneliness which has the effect,
for a sensitive soul entering a deserted house, of a menacing roar of
sound. He went through the hall to the little smoking-room or den on
the right, opposite the dining-room, and the first thing which he saw
on the divan was Charlotte's little chinchilla muff which she had
forgotten. He regarded it with the concern of a woman, reflecting
that she would miss it; and he must send it to her, and was wondering
vaguely about a suitable box, when he became aware of a noise of
insistent knocking mounting in a gradual crescendo from propitiatory
timidity to confidence. The knocking was on the kitchen door, and
Carroll went hurriedly through the house. When he reached the door it
was open, and a tramp was just entering, with head cautiously thrust
forward. When he saw Carroll, the unshaven, surly face manifestly
became dismayed. He turned to go, with a mutter which savored of
appeal, excuse, and defiance, but Carroll viciously accelerated his
exit with a thrust between the shoulders.

"What the devil are you doing here?" demanded Carroll.

The man, rolling surly yet intimidated eyes over his shoulder, after
a staggering recovery from a fall, muttered something in an
unintelligible _patois_, the grovelling, slurring whine of his kind.

"Well, get out of this!" shouted Carroll.

The man went, shuffling along with a degree of speed, lifting his
clumsily shod feet with a sort of painful alacrity as if they were
unduly heavy. His back, in its greenish-brown coat, was bent. He was
not a very young man, although vigorous. Carroll stood looking at the
inglorious exit of this Ishmael, and he was conscious of a feeling of
exhilaration. He felt an agreeable tingling in his fists, which were
still clinched. The using of them upon a legitimate antagonist in
whose debt he was not, and never h