ing her
momentary weakness and his triumph as a joke.

"Got you in, didn't I?" he observed pleasantly. "Now, remember you told
me the way to drink American cocktails--one look, one swallow, and down
they go."

She obeyed him instinctively. Then she took out a miserable little piece
of a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

"What's gone wrong?" he asked briskly. "Tell me all about it."

"Father went off on tour," she explained. "He left the rent owing for a
month, and he's been writing for money all the time. The agent who comes
round doesn't listen to excuses. You pay, or out you go into the street.
I've paid somehow and nearly starved over it. Then I got this job after
worrying about it Lord knows how long, and this evening I'm discharged."

"How much a week was it?" he enquired, with sympathy.

"Ten dollars," she replied. "Little enough, but I can't live without it."

He changed his attitude, suddenly realising the volcanic sensitiveness of
her attitude towards him and life in general. Instinctively he felt that
at a single ill-considered word she would even then, in her moment of
weakness, have left him, have pushed him on one side, and walked out to
whatever she might have to face.

"What a fool you are!" he exclaimed, a little brusquely.

"Am I!" she replied belligerently.

"Of course you are! You call yourself a daughter of New York, a city
whose motto seems to be pretty well every one for himself. You know you
did my typing all right, you know my play was a success, you know that I
shall have to write another. What made you take it for granted that I
shouldn't want to employ you, and go and hide yourself? Lock the door
when I came to see you, because it was past eight o'clock, and not answer
my letters?"

"Can't have men callers now dad's away," she told him, a little
brusquely. "It's not allowed."

"Oh, rubbish!" he answered irritably. "That isn't the point. You've kept
away from me. You've deliberately avoided me. You knew that I was just
as lonely as you were."

Then she blazed out. The sallowness of her cheeks, the little dip under
her cheekbones--she had grown thinner during the last week or so--made
her eyes seem larger and more brilliant than ever.

"You lonely! Rubbish! Why, they're all running after you everywhere.
Quite a social success, according to the papers! I say, ain't you
afraid?"

"Horribly," he admitted, "and about the one person I could have talked to
about it chucks me."

"I