demanded Janet suddenly. "I want
you to tell me."

"Anything happened--what do you mean? Anything happened?"

"You know very well what I mean."

"Well, suppose something has happened?" Lise's reply was pert, defiant.
"What's it to you? If anything's happened, it's happened to me--hasn't
it?"

Janet approached her.

"What are you trying to do?" said Lise. "Push me into the gutter?"

"I guess you're there already," said Janet.

Lise was roused to a sudden pitch of fury. She turned on Janet and thrust
her back.

"Well, if I am who's going to blame me?" she cried. "If you had to work
all day in that hole, standing on your feet, picked on by yaps for six a
week, I guess you wouldn't talk virtuous, either. It's easy for you to
shoot off your mouth, you've got a soft snap with Ditmar."

Janet was outraged. She could not restrain her anger.

"How dare you say that?" she demanded.

Lise was cowed.

"Well, you drove me to it--you make me mad enough to say anything. Just
because I went to Gruber's with Neva Lorrie and a couple of
gentlemen--they were gentlemen all right, as much gentlemen as
Ditmar--you come at me and tell me I'm all to the bad." She began to sob.
"I'm as straight as you are. How was I to know the highball was stiff?
Maybe I was tired--anyhow, it put me on the queer, and everything in the
joint began to tango 'round me--and Neva came home with me."

Janet felt a surge of relief, in which were mingled anxiety and
resentment: relief because she was convinced that Lise was telling the
truth, anxiety because she feared for Lise's future, resentment because
Ditmar had been mentioned. Still, what she had feared most had not come
to pass. Lise left her abruptly, darting down a street that led to a back
entrance of the Bagatelle, and Janet pursued her way. Where, she
wondered, would it all end? Lise had escaped so far, but drunkenness was
an ominous sign. And "gentlemen"? What kind of gentlemen had taken her
sister to Gruber's? Would Ditmar do that sort of thing if he had a
chance?

The pavement in front of the company boarding-houses by the canal was
plastered with sodden leaves whipped from the maples by the driving rain
in the night. The sky above the mills was sepia. White lights were
burning in the loom rooms. When she reached the vestibule Simmons, the
watchman, informed her that Mr. Ditmar had already been there, and left
for Boston.

Janet did not like to acknowledge to herself her disappointme