ense she hated her at sight. She hated her bugles and braid
and the shape of her bonnet, as the criminal about to be put to death
might hate the executioner's mask and gaberdine. The more Miss Towell
was sweet-spoken and respectable, the more Letty shrank from these
tokens of hypocrisy in one who was wicked to the core. "She wouldn't
seem so wicked, not at first," Steptoe had predicted, "but time'd
tell." Well, Letty didn't need time to tell, since she could see for
herself already. She could see from the first words addressed to her.

"You needn't tell me anything about yourself, dear, that you don't
want me to know. If you're without a place to go to, I shall be glad
if you'll come home with me."

It was the invitation Letty had expected, and to which she meant to
respond. Knowing, however, what was behind it she replied more
ungraciously than she would otherwise have done. "Oh, I don't mind
talking about myself. I'm a picture-actress, only I've been out of a
job. I haven't worked for over six months. I've been--I've been
visiting."

Miss Towell lowered her eyes, and spoke with modesty. "I suppose you
were visiting people who knew--who knew the person who--who gave you
my address and the thimble?"

This question being more direct than she cared for Letty was careful
to answer no more than, "Yes."

Miss Towell continued to sit with eyes downcast, and as if musing. Two
or three minutes went by before she said, softly: "How is he?"

Letty replied that he was very well, and in the same place where he
had been so long. Another interval of musing was followed by the
simple statement: "We differed about religion."

This remark had no modifying effect on Letty's estimate of Miss
Towell's character, since religion was little more to her than a word.
Neither was she interested in dead romance between Steptoe and Miss
Towell, all romance being summed up in her prince. That flame burned
with a pure and single purpose to wed him to the princess with whom he
was in love, while the little mermaid became first foam, and then a
spirit of the air. It took little from the poetry of this dissolution
that it could be achieved only by trundling over Brooklyn Bridge, and
through a nexus of dreary streets. In Letty's outlook on her mission
the end glorified the means, however shady or degraded.

It was precisely this spirit--mistaken, if you choose to call it
so--which animated Judith of Bethulia, Monna Vanna, and Boule de Suif.
Le