ing.
Did he advise you to go?"

"No--"

"Then what?"

She could see the colour mounting and falling in Sally's cheeks and
her suspicions sped to a conclusion.

"He made love to me," said Sally. Her hand went to her eyes. She
covered them.

"Oh, I see. You want to get away from him? You don't like him? Think
he's going to be a nuisance?"

"No, it's not that." She still hid her face. "I don't think he'd ever
come and see me again, now."

"Then what?"

"It was what he said."

"What did he say?"

"He wanted-- Oh!"

Janet leant forward on the table. "To take Traill's place--eh?"

"Yes."

Janet leant back in her chair and looked scrutinizingly at Sally's
head, bent into her hands, and from what she knew by this time of
Sally's nature, there came the understanding of what such a proposal
must have meant.

"And what else did you expect?" she asked gently. "Most men are the
same. News that there is a woman to be found situated such as you
are spreads through the ranks of them like--like--like a prairie fire.
It goes whispering from one lip to another. You can never tell where
it starts. You can never tell where it ends. As soon as a man knows
that money can buy a woman he wants, he'll scrape the bottom of the
Bank of England to get it. I told you before, it's a business! Why
in the name of Heaven can't you give up all your romanticism? If you
don't want to go on with it, to be absolutely brutal, if you don't
want to make it pay, why can't you take all the money that Traill's
given you and go away from here altogether? Well--you are
going--thank the Lord for that much sense! But go, and take all you
can get with you. Save it up if you won't spend it; and that's better
still. But, for God's sake, take it, it's yours! Surely you've earned
it. I should think you had."

Sally dropped her hands and looked up. "I don't know why you and I
have ever got on together, Janet," she said brokenly. "I could never
conceive two people more absolutely opposite. I sometimes hate the
things you say, but I nearly always love you for saying them. I loathe
the things you've said now. If I thought like that, I can't see what
there would be to stop me from sinking as low--as low as a woman can.
Do you really mean to say that you'd do like that if you cared for
a man, as I do for Jack? Would you grasp every penny he'd left you?"

"I don't know. I should either do that, or not take a farthing of
it. Make my own living, earn my own