owed, who in a dress suit
several sizes too large for him gave an imitation of a popular Irish
comedian. Then the curtain went up and the professor was seen, standing
in front of the curtain and bowing solemnly to a somewhat unresponsive
audience. A minute later Beatrice came quietly in and sat by his side.
There was nothing new about the show. Tavernake had seen the same thing
before, with the exception that the professor was perhaps a little
behind the majority of his fellow-craftsmen. The performance was
finished in dead silence, and after it was over, Beatrice came to the
front and sang. She was a very unusual figure in such a place, in a
plain black evening gown, with black gloves and no jewelry, but they
encored her heartily, and she sang a song from the musical comedy
in which Tavernake had first seen her. A sudden wave of reminiscence
stirred within him. His thoughts seemed to go back to the night when
he had waited for her outside the theatre and they had had supper at
Imano's, to the day when he had left the boarding-house and entered upon
his new life. It was more like a dream than ever now.

He rose and quitted the place immediately she had finished, waiting in
the street until she appeared. She came out in a few minutes.

"Father is going to a supper," she announced, "at the inn where he has a
room for receiving people. Will you come home with me for an hour? Then
we can go round and fetch him."

"I should like to," Tavernake answered.

Her lodgings were only a few steps away--a strange little house in a
narrow street. She opened the front door and ushered him in.

"You understand, of course," she said, smiling, "that we have abandoned
the haunts of luxury altogether."

He looked around at the tiny room with its struggling fire and horsehair
sofa, linoleum for carpet, oleographs for pictures, and he shivered,
not for his own sake but for hers. On the sideboard were some bread and
cheese and a bottle of ginger beer.

"Please imagine," she begged, taking the pins from her hat, "that you
are in those dear comfortable rooms of ours down at Chelsea. Draw
that easy-chair up to what there is of the fire, and listen. You smoke
still?"

"I have taken to a pipe," he admitted.

"Then light it and listen," she went on, smoothing her hair for a minute
in front of the looking-glass. "You want to know about Elizabeth, of
course."

"Yes," he said, "I want to know."

"Elizabeth, on the whole," Beatrice continu