ess and gladness as he began his journey. It seemed to him that he
was a different person from the James Gollop who had happily invaded
MacDougall's artistic precincts that morning from the James Gollop who
was now disconsolately making his way thither. That Gollop of the
morning had been happy and bright because he had a job; but this Gollop
of the evening, jobless, and with a black mark against him that was too
notorious to escape the amused attention of all possible employers in
his line, was but a sad dog. It required conscious mental effort on his
part to assume a cheerful demeanor when he climbed the studio stairs. He
wished that he dared tell the "Candy Girl" all about it, but decided
that it would be ungenerous to bother anyone else with his woes, and any
indecision in this regard was ended before the evening was over because
she was so frankly and unaffectedly happy that he hadn't the heart to
say anything that might possibly mar it. Yet, even whilst they sat in a
theater listening to a most cheerful musical comedy the sober and
responsible side of his mind was weighing necessities. The first of
these, he knew, must be economies; for he anticipated that it might be a
considerable time before he could again be earning an income, and there
was always the little home down in Baltimore and its occupant to be
considered first, and his own pleasures must be relegated to a secondary
place. He was therefore rather heart-broken, but firm in his final
explanation that night as he parted from her in front of the Martha
Putnam Hotel.

"That business session I had this afternoon," he said, trying to keep
his voice from betraying his trouble, "has unfortunately upset all my
plans. I can't have that little four days vacation I had been planning."

"What? How horrid!" exclaimed the girl. "I--I thought we were to----"

Her disappointment and distress were so manifest that Mr. James Gollop
had a first-class fight with himself to keep from blurting out the truth
there in the hotel rotunda and telling her that on the next morning he
was starting on what promised to be a long hunt for employment. But he
escaped such confession by saying that he had great hopes of returning
to New York within a few days. In fact he actually predicted that it
would be so. And after all, the only lie he told was embodied in that
word "Return."

CHAPTER XI

Mr. James Gollop discovered in the course of the following three days
that although