hings she had acquired since
his last visit--an ermine coat, a string of pearls.

"I saw them in your last picture," he told her. "You really visit me by
proxy. I find your name on the boards, and walk in with a lot of other
men and look at you. And not one of them dreams that I've ever seen the
woman on the screen."

"Well, they wouldn't of course." She had never taken his name. Her own
was too valuable.

When he told her good-bye he asked a question: "Are you happy?"

For a moment her face clouded. "I'm not quite sure. Is anybody? But I
like the way I am living, Ollie."

He had a sense of relief. "So do I," he said. "I earn fifteen dollars a
week. The papers say that you earn fifteen hundred--and you're not quite
twenty."

"There isn't a man in this hotel that makes so much," she told him
complacently. "The women try to snub me, but they can't. Money talks."

It seemed to him that in her case it shouted. As he rode back on Mary
Pick he thought seriously of his fifteen dollars a week and her fifteen
hundred; and of how little either weighed in the balance of happiness.

IV

It was not until the following Saturday that he saw Jane. She had made
two hundred sandwiches. She had got Tommy's mother to help her. She had
invented new combinations, always holding to the idea of satisfying the
substantial appetites of men.

There would be no use, she argued, in offering five-o'clock-tea
combinations.

She was very busy and very happy and very hopeful.

"If this keeps up," she told her mother, "I shall rent a little shop and
sell them over the counter."

Her mother had an invalid's pessimism. "They may tire of them."

They were not yet tired. They gave Jane and her basket vociferous
greeting, crowding round her and buying eagerly. Atwood and Henry having
placed orders hung back, content to wait for a later moment when she
might have leisure to talk to them.

Tommy helped Jane to hand out sandwiches and make change. He felt like
the faithful squire of a great lady. He had read much romantic
literature, and he served as well if not as picturesquely as a page in
doublet and hose.

So O-liver saw them. He had been riding all the afternoon on Mary Pick.
He had gone up into the Canon of the Honey Pots. No one knew it by that
name but O-liver, but at all the houses one could buy honey. Up and down
the road were little stands on which were set forth glasses and jars of
amber sweet. The bees flashed like motes