new note stayed
her. But though new, it was not novel. She had heard it before. It rang
true. Absently she shoved at her plate.

In theory she knew her way about. The migratory systems of domestic
experience said nothing to her, nor, thus far, had the charts of
matrimony either. In the sphere of life to which a walk-up leads, the
charts were dotted with but the postman and the corner druggist. Men and
plenty of them she had met, but they too said nothing and not at all
because they were dumb, but because, as the phrase is, they did not talk
her language. But for every exception there is perhaps a rule. The one
man who did speak her language, had held his tongue.

Now, as she shoved at her plate, she saw him, saw the tea-caddy, saw his
rooms and saw too, as she left them, the girl to whom he was engaged. In
the memory of that she lingered and looked down.

"Why, he could lead an orchestra of his own, your papa could."

Cassy looked up. She had been far away, too far, in a land where dreams
do not come true. Impatiently she twisted. "What?"

"Didn't you hear me, dearie? I was talking about money--bushels of it."

About the bushels the woman rolled her tongue. They tasted better than
the fritters.

A waiter approached. The room was long, dark, narrow, slovenly, spaced
with tables on which were maculate cloths and lamps with faded shades.
Greasily the waiter produced the bill.

"Bushels!" she appetisingly repeated.

Cassy paid. The waiter slouched away.

"You will drive through life in a hundred horsepower car and be fined
for speeding. The papers will say: 'Mrs. Pal----'"

"What did he pay you to tell me that?" Cassy exploded at her.

Unruffled by the shot, which was part and parcel of the job, and
realising that any denial would only confirm what at most could be but a
suspicion, the former diva fingered her pearls and assumed an air of
innocence.

But already Cassy had covered her with her blotting-paper look. "As if I
cared!"

"Dearie, he did pay me. He paid me the compliment of supposing that I
take an interest in you. But he said nothing except what I said he said.
He said if he got down on his knees you would turn your back on him."

"Then he is cleverer than he looks."

"Well, anyway, he is clever enough to have bushels of money and that is
the greatest cleverness there is."

"In New York," retorted Cassy, who had never been anywhere else,
physically at least, though mentally her little feet had