enough to hurl the whole
body back. The man whirled away under it, and he went toppling down,
with his arms thrown up wildly. As he fell, he pitched still further
back, in his effort to save himself, and his head struck the
wainscoting as he reached the floor. Blood gushed from his cut cheek.
It was a moment or two before he clambered slowly to his feet.

"Shall I hit you just once more?" was Harlson's query.

The man did not answer. The woman stood looking on curiously, but
saying nothing. Harlson waited for a time, then told his assailant to
go away; and the man picked up his hat and stumbled out upon the street.

The woman sat down again. It was some time before she spoke.

"You are strong, and will fight," she said.

"I had nothing else to do."

"Do you want to stay here?"

"It is better than the office floor."

"Will you stay here?"

He hesitated. It was a turning-point in his life, and he knew it.
There was something rather startling to him in it.

Then came the swift reflection: He wanted to know all of life. This
was the under-life, the under-current, of which reformers prate so much
and know so little. Why not be greater than they? Why not have been a
part of it, and in time to come speak knowingly? He was but a part of
this world, as accident had made it. He hoped if the world wagged well
to be a protector for certain weak ones. It was a world wherein
immediate brute force told. Well, he could supply that easily enough.
And what would he not learn? He would learn the city, the ignorance of
which had resulted in his being hungry--he, a young man college-bred,
and with some knowledge of Quintilian's crabbedness, or the equations
of X and Y in this or that or the Witch of Agnesi. And were not these
people part of the world, and was not this life something of which he
ought to know the very heart?

Still, there were relations of things to be considered. There were
people at home, and it would not do.

Then, just as he turned to refuge the woman who sat looking at him, the
curtains parted again and a face appeared. It was the face of a woman,
not of the world about him. It was some accident, some sinister,
unexampled happening, which had brought the face to the surroundings.
It gave to the wavering man a new idea of this world of shame and sin,
and it may have been the deciding ounce.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE REALLY UGLY DUCKLING.

He turned, to the woman across the table: "Al