f us in the shops are all our lives long."

"Perhaps _I_ understand, though," he argued with an odd look. "I
know what you mean, at any rate, even if I'm not ready to admit that
shop-girls are the only people who ever know what it is to desire the
unattainable. Other people want things, at times, just as hard as you
do clothes."

"Well, but . . ." She stammered, unable to refute this reasonable
contention, but, womanlike, persistent to try: "It's different--when
you've never had anything. Try to think what it must be to work from
eight till six--sometimes later--six days a week, for just enough to
keep alive on, if you call such an existence being alive! Why, in ten
years I haven't seen the country or the sea--unless you count trips to
Coney on crowded trolley-cars, and mighty few of them. I never could
afford a vacation, though I've been idle often enough--never earned
more than ten dollars a week, and that not for many weeks together.
I've lived on as little as five--on as little as charity, on nothing
but the goodness of my friends at times. That's why, when I saw myself
prettily dressed for once, and thought nothing could stop my getting
away, I couldn't resist the temptation. I didn't know where I was
going, dressed like this, and not a cent; but I was going some place,
and I wasn't ever coming back!"

"Good Lord!" the man said gently. "Who'd blame you?"

"Don't sympathise with me," she protested, humanly quite unconscious
of her inconsistency. "I don't deserve it. I'm caught with the goods
on, literally, figuratively, and I've got to pay the penalty. Oh, I
don't mean what you mean. I'm no such idiot as to think you'll have me
sent to jail; you've been too kind already and--and, after all, I did
do you a considerable service, I did help you out of a pretty
dangerous fix. But the penalty I'll pay is worse than jail: it's
giving up these pretty things and all my silly, sinful dreams, and
going back to that scrubby studio--and no job--"

She pulled up short, mystified by a sudden change in the man's
expression, perceiving that she was no longer holding his attention as
completely as she had. She remarked his look of embarrassment, that
his eyes winced from something descried beyond and unknown to her. But
he was as ready as ever to recover and demonstrate that, if his
attention had wandered, he hadn't missed the substance of her
harangue; for when she paused he replied:

"Oh, perhaps not. Don't let's jump at co