zie woman?"

"Maybe worse."

She sat silent until, a few moments later, Valentine drew up again at
the curb before the Big Show, which had been out long enough to disperse
most of its crowd, and was now receiving supper guests for the Garden
Grove above.

"I'm going to stay--with you--and 'The Purple Slipper,'" she announced,
as he reached into the car for her and swung her to the pavement.

"Goes!" he answered, with mingled emotions, which he could not have
analyzed.

Miss Adair was as good as her word. She accepted the reveling crowd of
the garden, looked upon the abandon of drinking women and men, with
only a slightly hunted expression in her eyes, and with her slim white
hands applauded Simone when that artist made most audacious slings of
her supple body in its scant clothing. She beamed upon the dancer when,
as Mrs. Trevor, she came, at Mr. Farraday's invitation, to have a glass
of champagne with them, and she quailed only once, when a band of
extremely young girls, clothed in filmy garments, took tiny
search-lights and went merrily hunting among the tables of laughing men
and women after the lights had been put out for the sport. Her horror at
observing Mr. Vandeford, who sat between her and the narrow aisle take
various moneys from his pocket to defend himself from successive
hunters, made her pale, and the moment the lights were flashed on again
she rose to go.

"Wonder what they'll do next," muttered Mr. Farraday, as he helped her
into her wrap. Mr. Vandeford was not looking at his author or speaking.
Once when he had put his hand in his pocket to get out a coin for one
of the teasing girls with her search-light he had felt the Y. W. C. A.
latch-key there, and it had short-circuited him entirely.

"I know you are tired. It takes some time to get the New York pace, but
you'll strike it. I think I'll stay to see the next Folly with Mr.
Farraday," he heard the Violet saying to Miss Adair, and still
short-circuited, he went with his calm young author down to the car. The
hour was one-thirty, and a moon had climbed the heights of the Broadway
canon. Valentine, with some sort of psychic direction, went across
Central Park and down wide, clean, silent, and dimly lighted Fifth
Avenue. Both Mr. Vandeford and Miss Adair were silent, and he was not
aware that she was crying until just before they turned into her side
street.

"They were so young, those girls, and they--they didn't want to--to do
that," she sai