r
seat, blindly reaching for her bag and her wraps. Her slim, gray-robed
figure, graceful even in her dismay, appealed to every onlooker, but Gregg
was the one to offer a hand.

"Allow me, miss," he said, with the smile of a wolf.

Declining his aid, she took her bag from the driver and walked briskly up
the street as if she were a resident and knew precisely where she wanted
to go. "One o' those Eastern tourists, I reckon?" she heard the old woman
say.

As she went past the hotel-porch her heart beat hard and her breath
shortened. In a flash she divined the truth. She understood why her mother
had discouraged her coming home. It was not merely on account of the
money--it was because she knew that her business was wrong.

What a squalid little den it was! How cheap, bald, and petty the whole
town seemed of a sudden. Lee Virginia halted and turned. There was only
one thing to be done, and that was to make herself known. She retraced her
steps, pulled open the broken screen door, and entered the cafe. It was a
low, dingy dining-room filled with the odor of ham and bad coffee. At the
tables ten or fifteen men, a motley throng, were busily feeding their
voracious jaws, and on her left, behind a showcase filled with cigars,
stood her mother, looking old, unkempt, and worried. The changes in her
were so great that the girl stood in shocked alarm. At last she raised her
veil. "Mother," she said, "don't you know me?"

A look of surprise went over the older woman's flabby face--a glow which
brought back something of her other self, as she cried: "Why, Lee
Virginny, where did you come from?"

The boarders stopped chewing and stared in absorbed interest, while
Virginia kissed her blowsy mother.

"By the Lord, it's little Virginny!" said one old fellow. "It's her
daughter."

Upon this a mutter of astonishment arose, and the waiter-girls, giggling,
marvelling, and envious, paused, their platters in hand, to exchange
comment on the new-comer's hat and gown. A cowboy at the washing-sink in
the corner suspended his face-polishing and gaped over his shoulder in
silent ecstasy.

For a full minute, so it seemed, this singular, interesting, absorbed
immobility lasted; then a seedy little man rose, and approached the girl.
His manner was grotesquely graceful as he said: "We are all glad to greet
you home again, Miss Virginia."

She gave her hand hesitatingly. "It's Mr. Sifton, isn't it?"

"It is," he replied; "the same old ha'