n I came to see you last. I hope you
have a different welcome for me this time?"

"To the best of my belief," she laughed, "you insisted upon going. I am
sure you were asked to stay--to lunch, or whatever it was. By the way,
have you lunched now?" She showed concern for her obligations as his
hostess.

"Yes, thank you--at least, it doesn't matter."

He had to relinquish her hand, and when she immediately made towards
the bell-button, he followed and arrested her.

"Let us have our talk first," he pleaded. "I don't want anything to eat
until I know--until I feel that you don't grudge it."

"Oh, I don't grudge it," she took him literally. "Not one square meal,
at any rate. The only thing I am obliged to grudge is house-room--for
any length of time--to single gentlemen. But that is not a question of
hospitality, as you know. Sit down, and tell me all the news."

He sat down; she also--about two yards off. Across the gulf of Persian
rug he looked at her steadily.

"You are angry with me," he observed. "Why, Debbie? Is it still the old
quarrel--after all these years?"

Then her face changed like a filled lamp when you put a match to it.
She said, in a deep, breathless way:

"Do you know how many years it is?"

More in sorrow and surprise than in anger, he guessed her meaning after
a moment's thought.

"Is that my fault? The number of years has been of your choosing," he
pointed out forbearingly. "You sent me away, when I never wanted to go.
You broke it off, altogether against my wish. You never relented--never
made a sign. Even now I come back uninvited."

It was a clear case, and all he asked for was bare justice.

"Why didn't you come before--uninvited? Why didn't you come back to me
when I was poor and lonely? Claud, I have been in every sort of
trouble--my father is dead, I have lost all my sisters in one way and
another, I have been living in cheap lodgings, doing without what I
always thought were the necessaries of life, to keep Francie going and
to get debts paid off--I have been ill, I have been unhappy, I have
sometimes been penniless, and you have carefully passed by on the other
side, like that man in the Bible, and left me to my fate."

He was genuinely shocked. He knew that she had been horribly down in
the world, but not that she had suffered to this extent. Seeing her
sitting there in her beautiful gown, in her beautiful room, without one
trace of those sordid years about her, his heart ache