heads. But it could not be
denied that she had been extravagant.

And Owen had been the least shade extravagant too. He had found a poet
even more unpopular, more impecunious than himself, a youth with no
balance, and no power to right himself when he toppled over; and he had
given him a hundred pounds in one lump sum to set him on his legs again.
And on the top of that he had routed out a tipsy medical student from a
slum, and "advanced him," as the medical student put it, twenty pounds
to go to America with.

He had just come to her in her room where she sat toiling, and had
confessed with a childlike, contrite innocence the things that he had
done.

"It was a sudden impulse," he said. "I yielded to it."

"Oh, Owen dear, don't have another soon. These impulses are ruinous."

He sat down, overburdened with his crime, a heartrending spectacle to
Laura.

"Well," she said, "I suppose it was worth it. It must have given you an
exquisite pleasure."

"It did. That's where the iniquity comes in. It gave me an exquisite
pleasure at your expense."

"_You_ give me an exquisite pleasure," she said, "in everything you do."

Her lips made a sign for him to come to her, and he came and knelt at
her feet and took her hands in his. He bowed his head over them and
kissed them.

"Do you know what you are?" she said. "You're a divine prodigal."

"Yes," he said, kissing her, "I'm a prodigal, a dissolute,
good-for-noting wastrel. I adore you and your little holy hands; but I'm
not the least use to you. You ink your blessed little fingers to the
bone for me, and I take your earnings and fling them away--in--in----"
He grew incoherent with kissing.

"In one night's spiritual debauchery," said she. She was pleased with
her way of putting it; she was pleased, immeasurably pleased with him.

But Owen was not pleased in the very least.

"That," said he, "is precisely what I do."

He rose and stood before her, regarding her with troubled, darkening
eyes. He was indeed a mark for the immortal ironies. He had struggled to
support and protect her, this unspeakably dear and inconceivably small
woman; he looked on her still as a sick child whom he had made well, and
here he was, living on her, living on Laura. The position was
incredible, abominable, but it was his.

She looked at him with deep-blue, adoring eyes, and there was a pain in
her heart as she saw how thin his hands were, and how his clothes hung
away from his sunken wa