t," said the bartender. "He's got
'em bad. I had 'em twict myself and took the cure. It's fierce. He's
gotta have some dope--a shot o' hop will fix him."

The bartender hurried away on his kindly mission, while the Dago Duke
clung to Van Lennop like a horrified child to its mother.

Dr. Harpe came quickly, her hair loose about her shoulders, looking
younger and more girlish in a soft negligee than Van Lennop had ever
seen her. She saw the faint shade of prejudice cross his face as she
entered, but satisfaction was in her own. Her chance had come at last in
this unexpected way.

"Snakes," she said laconically.

"Yes," Van Lennop replied with equal brevity.

"I'll have to quiet him. Will you stay with him?" She addressed Van
Lennop.

"Certainly."

"Look here," protested the bartender in an injured voice. "He's my best
friend and havin' had snakes myself----"

"Aw--clear out--all of you. We'll take care of him."

"Folks that has snakes likes their bes' friends around 'em," declared
the bartender stubbornly. "They has influence----"

"Get out," reiterated Dr. Harpe curtly, and he finally went with the
rest.

"I'll give him a hypodermic," she said when the room was cleared, and
hastened back to her office for the needle.

Together they watched the morphine do its work and sat in silence while
the wrecked and jangling nerves relaxed and sleep came to the
unregenerate Dago Duke.

Dr. Harpe's impassive face gave no indication of the activity of her
mind. Now that the opportunity to "square herself," to use her own
words, had arrived, she had no notion of letting it pass.

"He seems in a bad way," Van Lennop said at last in a formal tone.

"It had to come--the clip he was going," she replied, seating herself on
the edge of the bed and wiping the moisture from his forehead with the
corner of the sheet.

The action was womanly, she herself looked softer, more womanly, than
she had appeared to Van Lennop, yet he felt no relenting and wondered at
himself.

She ended another silence by turning to him suddenly and asking with
something of a child's blunt candor----

"You don't like me, do you?"

The awkward and unexpected question surprised him and he did not
immediately reply. His first impulse was to answer with a bluntness
equal to her own, but he checked it and said instead----

"One's first impressions are often lasting and you must admit, Dr.
Harpe, that my first knowledge of you----"

"Was extremely