ke.

He rose, overturning his unsteady chair as he did so, and, seeking
command, looked from the window which looked down into a squalid court.
The wretchedness of the court whipped his rage. "Well for God's sake," he
burst forth, "what did you _do_ it for! Of all the unheard
of--outrageous--unpardonable--What did you _mean_"--turning savagely
upon her--"by selling false hair?"

"Why I sold false hair," said Ann, a little sullenly, "so I could live."

"Well, didn't you know," he demanded passionately, "that you could _live_
with _us_?"

She shook her head. "I didn't think I had any right to--after--what
happened."

He came back to her. "Ann," he asked gently, "haven't you a 'right
to'--if we want you to?"

She looked at him again in that strange way. "Are you sure--you know?"

"Very sure," he answered briefly.

"And do you mean to say you would want me--anyhow?" she whispered.

He turned away that she might not see how badly and in what sense he
wanted her. His whole sense of fitness--his training--was against her
seeing it then.

The pause, the way she was looking at him when he turned back to her,
made restraint more and more difficult. But suddenly she changed, her
face darkening as she said, smolderingly: "No--I'm not _that_ weak. If I
can't live--I'll _die_. Other people make a living! Other girls get
along! Katie would. Katie could do it."

She sat up; he could see the blood throbbing in her neck and at her
temples. She was gripping her hands. She looked so frail--so helpless.

"But Katie is strong, Ann," he said soothingly.

"Yes--in every way. And I'm not." She turned away, her face
twitching. "Why I seem to be just the kind of a person that has to be
taken care of!"

He did not deny it, filled with the longing to do it.

"It's--it's humiliating."

He would at one time have supposed that it would be, should be; would
have held to the idea that every man and woman ought be able to make a
living, that there was something wrong with them if they couldn't. But
not after the things he had seen that summer. The something wrong was
somewhere else.

"And yet you don't know," Ann was saying brokenly, "how hard it is. You
don't know--how many things there are."

She turned to him impetuously. "I want to tell you! Then maybe it will
go. I couldn't tell Katie. But I don't know--I don't know why--but I
could tell you anything."

He nodded, not clear-eyed, and took one of her hands and stroked it.