I was paying little attention to Jimmy. At the open window I could see a young girl across the street with a baby in her arms. She had brought it from a small frame house with high steps leading to a sagging porch, in the door of which a large and kindly-faced woman was standing, arms folded and eyes watching the movements of the girl. As the latter lifted her head, on which was no hat, I leaned forward, my heart in my throat. The odd, eager young face, the boyish arrangement of the hair above it, the quick, bird-like movements of the slender body, had burned for days and nights in my brain, and I recognized her at once.

"Jimmy," I said, "come here." I drew him to the window with nervous haste, my fingers twitching, my breath unsteady. "Who is that girl with the baby? There she is, turning the corner. Look quick! Do you know her?"

Jimmy shook his head. "Never saw her. Can't see her now." He leaned far out the window, but the girl had disappeared, and the woman in the doorway had gone in and closed the door.

I must have said something, made some sort of sound, for Jimmy, turning from the window, looked at me uneasily, in his eyes distress and understanding.

"What's the matter, Miss Heath? You'd better sit down. Did the heat make you sick? You're—you're whiter than that wall."



CHAPTER XI

A sickness which Jimmy could not understand was indeed upon me, and unsteadily I leaned against the window-frame, looking at, but not seeing, him, and not until he spoke again did I remember I was not alone.

"Is it very bad? You look as if it hurts so. Wait a minute—I'll get you some water."

I caught him as he started to run down the hall, and drew him back. "I don't want any water. I am not sick." My head went up. "The smell of paste would make me ill if I stayed, however, and I'm not going to stay to-day. I'll come some other time. Run on and join the other boys. Tell your mother"—I seemed groping for words—"tell your mother I will see her before you start to school. Run on, Jimmy, and thank Mr. Pritchard for lending you to me. And laugh as much as you want to, Jimmy. Laugh all you can before—you can't!"

Over the banister the child was leaning anxiously, watching me as I stumbled down the steps. At their foot I turned and waved my hand and laughed, an odd, faint, far-away laugh that seemed to come from some one else; and then I went into the street and found myself crossing it, impelled by surging impulse to know—

To know what? At the foot of the rickety stairs leading to the high porch from which I had seen the girl come I stopped. All I had been repressing, fighting, resisting for days past, had in a moment yielded to horror, and hurt that seemed past healing, and I was surrendering to what I should know was impossible. I must be mad!

With a shudder that was half a sob I turned away and walked down the street and into the one which would lead to Scarborough Square. As I walked my shoulders straightened. What was the matter with me? Was I becoming that which I loathed—a suspicious, spying person? I was insulting Selwyn. He knew I hated mystery, however, knew the right of explanation was mine, knew that I expected of any man who was my friend that his life should be as open as my life. If I had hurt him, angered him by my question when I last saw him, he had hurt, had angered me far more. For now I was angry. Did he imagine I was the sort of woman who accepted reticence with resignation? I was not.

At the corner Mr. Fogg was standing in the door of his little shop, holding a blue bottle up to the light and examining it with critical care. He had on his usual clothes of many colors, shabby from much wearing, but in his round, clean-shaven face, pink with health and inward cheer, was smiling serenity, and in his eyes a twinkle that yielded not to time or circumstance. His second-hand bookshelf, his canary-birds and white rabbits, his fox-terriers and goldfish are friends that never fail, and in them he has found content. His eagerness to chat occasionally with some one who cares, as he cares, for his beloved books, is not at times to be resisted, but I was in no mood to talk to-day. I wondered if I could hurry by.

"Good morning!" The blue bottle, half filled with water, in which a tiny bulb was floating, was waved toward me, and a shaggy white head nodded at me. "It's a fine day, ain't it?—a fine day for snow. Good and gray. I think we'll have some flakes before night. Kinder feel like a boy again when it's snowing. I don't know yet which season I like best. Every one has got its glory. What you been up to to-day? Seeing some more things?"

I nodded. "I wish I could come in, but I can't." I shivered, though I was not cold. "I am going up-town." A minute before I had no intention of going up-town, but to go indoors was suddenly impossible. Whatever was possessing me must be fought off alone. "I will bring you my copy of Men and Nations to-morrow. Keep it as long as you wish."

"Thank you, ma'am. Thank you hearty. I'll take good care of it. I suppose you haven't heard of the widow Robb? Her name's Patty, you know, and she's got a beau. He's named Cake. Luck plays tricks with love, don't it? Don't get caught in a snow-storm. You ain't"—his voice was anxious—"you ain't thinking of leaving us, are you? The girls down here are needing of you, needing sore. All of us are needing of you."

I shook my head. "Of course I'm not thinking of leaving you." I waved my hand in response to his wave of the bottle, and, not seeing where I went, I turned the corner and, head bent to keep out of my face the tiny particles of sleet and snow beginning to fall, walked for some distance before noticing where I was.

Much of my city, unknown to me a short while ago, was now familiar, but to much I was still a stranger, and presently I was wondering concerning the occupants of the houses I was passing. The shabby gentility and dull respectability of the latter was depressing, and to escape the radiation of their dreariness I turned into first one street and then another, and as I walked the girl with the boyish face walked with me, the face with its hunted fear. She had held the baby as if frightened, and when she turned the corner she was running. She was so young. Could the baby be hers? It must be hers. Nothing but a mother-face could have in it what hers had. Why was she afraid, and of what?

The streets were becoming rough and unpaved before I noticed I was nearing the city limits, and, cutting across afield, I got into the Avenue, toward the end of which was Selwyn's house. As I neared it my steps slowed. For years the Thorne property had been on the outskirts of the city, but progress had taken it in, and already houses, flagrantly modern and architecturally shameless, offered strong contrast to its perfect lines, its conscious dignity, its calm aloofness, and its stone walls which shielded it from gaping gaze and gave it privacy. The iron gates were closed, the shutters drawn, and from the place stillness that was oppressive radiated, a stillness that was ominous.

Pride was undoubtedly Selwyn's dominating characteristic. Pride in his name, in its unstained honor, in the heritage of his fathers; and in the presence of his house it seemed an ugly dream—the picture ever in my mind, the picture of Selwyn walking slowly with a young girl in the dark of a winter afternoon in a section of the city as removed from his as sunlight is removed from shadow. In his nature was nothing that could make such association imaginable. If no higher deterrent prevented, pride would protect him from doubtful situations. He was sensitive to higher deterrents, however, as sensitive as I.

Passing the gates, on the stone columns of which the quaint, old-fashioned lamps of former days were still nightly lighted, I glanced through them at the snow-covered lawn and the square-built, lonely house, occupied now only by Selwyn and his younger brother Harrie, then again hurried on. The Avenue with its great width and unbroken length, its crystal-coated trees and handsome houses, was now deserted save for hurrying limousines and an occasional pedestrian; and safe in the fierceness of the snow, from encounter with old friends, I decided to walk home through the section of the city which was the only part I once knew well, and just as I decided I knocked into some one turning a corner as I approached it.

"Oh, Miss Heath!" The woman drew back. "The snow was so thick I didn't see you. Did I hurt you?"

"Not a bit." I wiped my face, damp with melted flakes which had brushed it. "What are you doing up here? You look as frozen as I feel. Have you got on overshoes?"

The woman shook her head. "I haven't got any. I wouldn't have come out, but I had to bring some work back to Mrs. Le Moyne. If she'd paid me I'd have bought a pair of rubbers. But she didn't pay me. She said she'd let me have the money next week."

"Next week! You need it this minute. How much does she owe you?"

"Four seventy-five for these last things, and four twenty-five for those I made last week. I don't know what I'm going to do." The woman's hands, cold and stiff, twisted nervously. "I don't reckon she's ever had to think about rent, or food, or fuel, or overshoes. People like that don't have to. I wish they did, sometimes."

"So do I. Come on; it's too cold to stop. We'll go down to Benson's and get something hot to warm us up. I forgot about lunch. Turn your coat-collar up—the snow is getting down your neck—and take my muff. I've got pockets and you haven't."

As we started off a large limousine with violets in the glass vases of its interior, upholstered in fawn-colored cloth, stopped just ahead of us, and a woman I did not know got out of it, followed by one I knew well. Fur coats entirely covered their dresses, and quickly the chauffeur opened an umbrella to protect their hats. As we passed I started to speak to Alice Herbert, but, turning her head, she gave me not even a blink of recognition. At first I did not understand; then I laughed.

"Who is that?" Mrs. Beck's voice was awed. "Ain't they grand? Do you know them?"

"No." I put my hands in the pockets of my long coat. "I used to know one of them, the feeble-minded one. We'd better go over to High Street and take a car to Benson's. The storm's getting worse. We'll have to hurry."

The street lamps were being lighted as we reached Scarborough Square, and at sight of the house, in the doorway of which Mrs. Mundy was standing, I hurried, impelled by impulse beyond defining. Mrs. Beck had left me at the corner, and as Mrs. Mundy closed the door behind me she followed me up the steps.

"I've been that worried about you I couldn't set still long at a time, and Bettina's been up three times to see that your fire was burning all right. I knew you didn't have your umbrella or overshoes. It's a wonder you ain't froze stiff. I'll bring your tea right up."

"I've had tea, thank you." I held out first one foot and then the other to the blazing coals, and from the soles of my shoes came curling steam. "It's a wonderful storm. I'd like to walk ten miles in it. I don't know why you were worried. I'm all right."

"I know you are, but"—she poked the fire—"but I wish you wouldn't go so hard. For near two weeks you haven't stopped a minute. You can't stand going like that. I wish I'd known where to find you. Mr. Thorne was here this afternoon. He was very anxious to see you."

"Mr. who?" I turned sharply, then put my hands behind me to hide their sudden twisting. I was cold and tired, and the only human being in all the world I wanted to see was Selwyn. It was intolerable, this tormenting something that was separating us. "When was he here?" I asked, and leaned against the mantel.

"He came about three, but he waited half an hour. He didn't say much, but he was powerful put out about your not being home. He couldn't wait any longer, as he had to catch a train—the four-thirty, I think."

"Where was he going?" I sat down in the big wing-chair and the fingers of my hands interlaced. "Did he say where he was going?"

"He didn't mention the place, just said he had to go away and might be gone some time. He'll write, I reckon. He was awful disappointed at not seeing you. He asked me—" Mrs. Mundy, on her knees, unbuttoned my shoes and drew them off. "Your feet are near 'bout frozen, and no wonder. Your stockings are wet clean through, and I'm letting you sit here in them when I promised him I'd see you didn't kill yourself doing these very things. You just put your feet on the fender while I get some dry clothes. He says to me, says he: 'Mrs. Mundy, the one human being she gives no thought to is herself, and will you please take care of her? She don't understand'"—

"Oh, I do understand!" My voice was wearily protesting. "The one thing men don't want women to do is to understand. They want us to be sweet and pretty—and not understand. Selwyn talks as if I were a child. I am perfectly able to take care of myself."

"Maybe you are, but you don't do it—least-ways, not always. I promised him I wouldn't let you wear yourself out, and I promised him—"

"What?"

"That I wouldn't let you go too far. He says you've lost your patience with people, specially women, who think it's not their business to bother with things that—that aren't nice, and you're apt to go to the other extreme and forget how people talk."

"About some things they don't talk enough. Did—did he leave any message for me?"

Again Mrs. Mundy shook her head. "I think he wanted to talk to you about something he couldn't send messages about."



CHAPTER XII

Selwyn has been gone two weeks. I have heard nothing from him. I do not even know where he is.

Yesterday, over the telephone, Kitty reproached me indignantly for not coming oftener to see her. Each week I try to take lunch or dinner with her, but there have been weeks when I could not see her, when I could not get away. Scarborough Square and the Avenue are not mixable, and just now Scarborough Square is taking all my time.

Daily new demands are being made upon me, new opportunities opening, new friendships being formed, and though my new friends are very interesting to me, I hardly think they would be to Kitty. I rarely speak of them to her.

Miss Hardy, the woman labor inspector for the state, a girl who had worked in various factories since she was twelve and who had gotten her education at a night school, where often she fell asleep at her desk, I find both entertaining and instructing, but Kitty would not care for her. She wears spectacles, and Kitty has an unyielding antipathy for women who wear spectacles. Neither would she care for Miss Bayne, another state employee, a clever, capable woman who is an expert in her line. It is her business to discover feeble-mindedness, to test school children, and inmates of institutions to which they have been sent, or of places to which they have gone because of incapacity or delinquency or sin of any sort; and nothing I have read in books has been so revealing concerning conditions that exist as her frank statements simply told.

In my sitting-room at Scarborough Square she comes in frequently for tea with me, and meets there Fannie Harris, the teacher of an open-air school for the tuberculosis children of our neighborhood; and Martha White, the district nurse for our particular section; meets Miss Hay, a probation officer of the Juvenile Court, and Loulie Hill, a girl from the country who had once gone wrong, and who is now trying to keep straight on five dollars a week made in the sewing-room of one of the city's hospitals. Bettie Flynn, who lives at the City Home because of epileptic fits, also comes in occasionally. Bettie is a friend of Mrs. Mundy. Owing to kinlessness and inability to care for herself, owing, also, to there being nowhere else to which she could go, she has been forced to enter the Home. Her caustic comments on its management are of a clear-cut variety. Bettie was born for a satirist and became an epileptic. The result at times is speech that is not guarded, a calling of things by names that are their own.

These and various others who are facing at short range realities of which I have long been personally ignorant, are taking me into new worlds, pumping streams of new understandings, new outreaches, into my brain and heart, and life has become big and many-sided, and a thing not to be wasted. Myself of the old life I am seeing as I never saw before, seeing in a perspective that does not fill with pride.

Last night I went to my first dinner-party since Aunt Matilda's death. In Kitty's car I watched with interest, on the way to her house, the long stretches of dingy streets, then cleaner ones, with their old and comfortable houses; the park, with its bare trees and shrubs, and finally the Avenue, with its smooth paving and pretentious homes, its hurrying cars of luxurious make, its air of conscious smartness. As contrast to my present home it interested greatly.

Kitty's house is very beautiful. She is that rare person who knows she does not know, and the house, bought for her by her father as a wedding-gift, she had put in the hands of proper authorities for its furnishings. It is not the sort of home I would care to have, but it is undeniably handsome, and undoubtedly Kitty understands the art of entertaining.

Her dinner-party was rather a large one, its honor guest an English writer whose books are unendurably dull; but any sort of lion is helpful in reducing social obligations, and for that purpose Kitty had captured him. She insisted on my coming, but begged me not to mention horrid things, like poor people and politics and babies who died from lack of intelligent care, but to talk books.

"So few of the others talk books, except novels, and he thinks most modern novels rotten," she had told me over the telephone. "So please come and splash out something about these foreign writers whose names I can't remember. Bergyson is one, I believe, and Brerr another, and France-Ana—Ana something France. He's a man. And there's another one. Mater. . . Yes, that's it. Maeterlinck. And listen: Wear that white crepe you wore at my wedding; it's frightfully plain, but all your other things are black. I don't see why you still wear black. Aunt Matilda hated it."

As I went up-stairs to take off my wraps I smiled at Kitty's instructions. In her room she hastily kissed me.

"Do hurry and come down. I'm so afraid he'll come before the others, and I might have to talk to him. Literary people are the limit, and this one, they say, is the worst kind. Billy refuses to leave his room until you go down; says he'd rather be sent to jail than left alone with him ten minutes. He met him at the club."

Holding me off, she surveyed me critically. "You look very well. That's a good-looking dress. It suits you. I believe you wear pearls and these untrimmed things just to bring out your hair and eyes. Nobody but you could do it."

Stopping her short, quick sentences, she leaned forward. "There he is, coming up the steps with Mr. Alexander. Come on; they're inside. We can go down now. By the way"—she pinned the orchids at her waist with unnecessary attention—"Selwyn got back yesterday. He will be here to-night. Dick Moran is sick, and Selwyn is taking his place. At first he declined to come. For weeks he's been going nowhere, but he finally promised. Are you ready?"

Without looking around she went out of the room, and without answering her I followed. I was conscious chiefly of a desire to get away, to do anything but meet Selwyn where each would have to play a part; but as I entered Kitty's drawing-room and later met her guests I crowded back all else but what was due her, spoke in turn to each, and then to Selwyn, as if between us there was no terrifying, unbridged gulf.

Kitty's dinners are perfect. I am ever amazed at the care and consideration she gives to their ordering. In art and letters she is not learned, but she is an expert in the management of household affairs, and her dinner invitations are rarely declined.

At the table, with its lilacs and valley-lilies, its soft lights and perfect appointments, were old friends of mine and new acquaintances of hers, and with the guest of honor I shared their curiosity. Very skilfully Kitty led the chatter into channels where the draught was light, and obediently I did my best to follow. There was much talk, but no conversation.

"Oh, Miss Heath!" A young girl opposite me leaned forward. "I've been so crazy to meet you. Some one told me that you'd gone in for slums. It must be so entrancing!"

I looked up. For a second Selwyn's eyes held mine and we both smiled, but before I could speak Kitty's lion turned toward me.

"Yes—I heard that, too." Fixing his black-rimmed glasses more firmly on his big and bulging nose, Mr. Garrott looked at me closely. "In my country slumming has become a fad with a—a certain type of restless women who have to make their living, I suppose. But I wouldn't fancy you were—"

"She isn't."

Jack Peebles, now happily married, blinked in my direction, signaled me to say nothing, then turned to the Englishman. "Miss Heath can do as she chooses, being Miss Heath, but the Turks are right. Women ought to be kept behind latticed windows, given a lute, and supplied with veils, and if they ask for anything else, they should be taken from the window."

"I don't agree with you." Mr. Garrott filled his fork with mushrooms and raised it to his mouth. "The Turks carry their restraint too far. Women should have more liberty than is given them in Turkey. They add color to life, add to its—"

"Uncertainties." Selwyn made effort to control the smile the others found uncontrollable. "In your country, now, the woman-question is interesting, exciting. There they do things, smash things, make a noise, keep you guessing. Over here their behavior is much less entertaining. Their attitude is one of investigation as well as demand. They have developed an unreasonable desire to know things; know why they are as they are; why they should continue to be what they have been. They are preparing themselves by first-hand knowledge and information to tell what most of us do not want to hear."

Selwyn's eyes again for a moment held mine, and in my face I felt hot color creeping. Never before had he defended, even with satire, what he had told me a hundred times was folly on my part. He turned to Mr. Garrott.

"Why on earth perfectly comfortable, supposedly Christian human beings should want personally to know anything about uncomfortable, unfit, under-paid ones—"

"Oh, but I think they ought to!" Again the pretty little creature in green chiffon nodded toward me. "But you won't let Miss Heath have a chance to say anything! Some one told me such queer people came to see her. Factory-girls and working-women and—oh—all sorts of people like that. Is it really so, Miss Heath?"

"Very interesting people come to see me. They are undoubtedly of different sorts, but one of the illuminating discoveries of life is that human beings are amazingly alike. Veneering is a great help, of course. If you knew my friends you would find—"

"I'd love to know them. I always have liked queer people. I've been crazy to come and see you, but mother won't let— I mean—"

"Mrs. Henderson says she met a young man when she went to see you who was the cleverest person she ever talked, to." Gentle Annie Gaines was venturing to come to my help. "He seemed to know something of everything. She couldn't remember his name."

"It's difficult to remember. He's a Russian Jew. Schrioski, is his name." At the head of the table I felt Kitty squirm, knew she was twisting her feet in fear and indignation. I turned to her English guest.

"I have another friend who will be so glad to know I have met you, Mr. Garrott. He is one of your most intelligent and intense admirers. He has read, I think, everything you've written."

Absorbed in his salad, evidently new and to his liking, Mr. Garrott was not impressed by, or appreciative of, my attempt to follow Kitty's instructions. With any reservations of my bad taste in talking shop I would have agreed, still, something was due Kitty. "He tells me"—I refused to be ignored—"that he keeps an advance order for everything you write; buys your books as soon as they are published."

"Buys them!" With the only quick movement he had made, Mr. Garrott turned to me. "I'd like to meet him. I'm glad to know there's somebody in America who buys and reads my books. Usually those who buy don't read, and those who read don't buy. But tell me—" Again the corners of his mouth drooped, and again his spectacles were adjusted. "Why did you go in for—for living in a run-down place and meeting such odds and ends as they say you meet? You're not old enough for things of that kind. An ugly woman, uninteresting, unprovided for—she might take them up." He stared at me as if for physical explanation of unreasonable peculiarities. "You believe, I fancy—"

"That a woman is capable of deciding for herself what she wants to do."

Again Jack Peebles's near-sighted eyes blinked at me, but in his voice there was no longer chaffing. "She believes even more remarkable things than that. Believes if people, all sorts, knew one another better, understood one another better, there would be less injustice, less indifference, and greater friendship and regard. Rather an uncomfortable creed for those who don't want to know, who prefer—"

"But you don't expect all grades of people to be friends? Surely you don't expect—"

I smiled. "No, I don't expect. So far I'm only hoping all people may, some day—be friendly."

Kitty was signaling frantically with her eyes, and in obedience I again performed as requested, for the third time turned to Mr. Garrott.

"I heard a most interesting discussion the other day concerning certain present-day French writers. I wonder if you agree with Bernard Shaw that Brieux is the greatest dramatist since Moliere, or if—"

"I never agree with Bernard Shaw."

Mr. Garrott frowned, and, taking up his wine-glass, drained it. Putting it down, he again stared at me. "I don't understand you. You don't look at all as I imagined you would."

At the foot of the table Billy was insisting upon the superiority of the links of the Hawthorne to those of the Essex club, and Kitty, at her end, was giving a lively account of a wedding-party she had come across at the station the evening before when seeing a friend off for her annual trip South, and at first one and then the other Mr. Garrott looked, as if not comprehending why, when he wished to speak, there should be chatter. Later, when again we were in the drawing-room, he continued to eye me speculatively, but he was permitted no opportunity to add to his inquiries; and when at last he was gone Kitty sat down, limp and worn at the strain she had been forced to endure.

"What business is it of his how you live and what you do?" she said, indignantly. "He's an old teapot, but you see now what I mean. I'm always having to explain you, to tell—"

"Don't do it. I'll forgive much, but not explaining. Your lion doesn't roar well, still, a lion is worth seeing—once." I turned to Selwyn. "I beg your pardon. Did you speak to me?"

"I asked if I could take you to Scarborough Square. I have a taxi here."

"Thank you, but I am spending the night with Kitty. I am not going back."

In astonishment Kitty looked at me, then turned away. I had told her I could not stay. I had not intended to stay, but I could not talk to Selwyn to-night. There would not be time and there was too much I wanted to say.

Selwyn's shoulders made shrug that was barely perceptible, and without offering his hand he said good night. In the hall I heard him speak to Kitty, then the closing of the door and the starting of the taxi, then silence.

Dawn was breaking when at last I slept.



CHAPTER XIII

I have not seen Selwyn since the night of Kitty's dinner-party. He has been back three days. If he wished to see me before he went away, why does he not come to see me now? Daily I determine I will let no thought of him come into my mind. The purposes for which I came to Scarborough Square will be defeated if I continue to think of this unimaginable happening that is with me day and night, this peculiar behavior of which he makes no explanation. I determine not to think, and thought is ever with me.

I was silly, foolish, quixotic to hope that here, in this little world of workaday people, he might be brought to see that personal acquisition and advance is not enough to give life meaning, to justify what it exacts. I was foolish. We are more apart than when I came.

Mrs. Mundy, in her blue cotton dress, a band of embroidery in the neck of its close-fitting basque, and around her waist a long, white apron which reached beyond her ample hips to the middle of her back, lingered this morning, dust-cloth in hand, at the door of my sitting-room. There was something else she wanted to say.

"I'm mighty 'fraid little Gertie Archer is going to have what we used to call a galloping case." She went over to the window, where she felt the earth in its flower-box to see if it were moist. "She's a pretty child, and she was terrible anxious to go to one of them open-air schools on the roof, but there wasn't any room. It's too late now."

The upper ends of the dust-cloth were fitted together carefully, and, leaving the window, Mrs. Mundy went over to the door. "Do you reckon the women know, the women where you come from? And the other women, the rich, and the comfortable, and the plain ones who could help, too, if they were shown how—do you reckon they know?"

I looked up from the table where I had been straightening some magazines. "Know what?"

"About there not being schools enough for the children, and about boys and girls going wrong because of not being shown how to go right, and about—"

Mrs. Mundy sat down in a chair near the door. "Another thing I want to ask you is this: How did it come about that some men and women have found out they've got to know, and they've got to care, and they've got to help with things they didn't use to help with; and some 'ain't heard a sound, 'ain't seen a thing of what's going on around them?

"Some people like being deaf and blind. But most people are willing to do their part if they only understand it. The trouble is in knowing how to go about things in the right way—the wise way. Women have had to stumble so long—

"They're natural stumblers—women are. That is, some of 'em. They're afraid to look where they're going. I don't like to lose heart in anything human, but I get low down in spirit when I see how don't-care so many women are. They're blind as bats when they don't want to see, and they've got a mighty satisfying way of soothing of themselves by saying some things ain't their business. That's devil's dope. Generally women who talk that way are the ones who call the most attention to the faults and failings of men. Considering men are men, I think they do wonderful. Mr. Guard says if women keep silent much longer the very stones will cry out."

"Mr. Guard? Is he the one you call the people's preacher?"

Mrs. Mundy nodded. "He preaches to them what won't go in a church. I reckon you've seen something about him in the papers. He used to have a church in a big city, but he gave it up. I don't think he thinks like the churches think, exactly, but he don't have any call to mention creeds and doctrines down here, and he just asks people plain out what kind of life they're living, not what they believe. I've been wanting for a long time for you-all to know each other."

"I'd like very much to know him. Ask him to come to see me."

"He don't go to see people unless they need him. I've been wanting him for weeks to come to supper with Bettina and me, but he's that busy he hasn't had a night free to do it. When he does have one, would you mind coming down and taking supper with us instead of my sending yours up as usual? I'd be awful proud to have you."

"Of course I'll come. I'd love to. Can't you get him for Friday evening? I have no engagement for Friday—"

"It's this minute I'll try." Mrs. Mundy got up with activity. "You two were meant to know each other. Both of you have your own way of doing things, and you'll have a lot to talk about. You'll like him and he'll like you. I'll let you know if he can come as soon as I find out." Closing the door behind her, she left me alone.

Taking the morning paper to the window, I drew my chair close to it, pushing back the curtains that I might have all possible light as I read. It was again snowing, and the grayness of the sky and atmosphere was reflected in the room, notwithstanding the leaping flames of the open fire, and after a while I put the paper aside and looked out of the window.

Each twig and branch of the trees and shrubs of the snow-covered Square was bent and twisted in fantastic shape by its coating of sleet, and the usual shabbiness of the little park was glorified with shining wonder; and under its spell, for the moment, I forgot all else. Here and there a squirrel hopped cautiously from tree to tree, now standing on its branches and nibbling a nut dug from its hiding-place, now scurrying off to hide it again, and as I watched the cautious cocking of their heads I laughed aloud, and the sound recalled me to the waste I was making of time.

"This isn't writing my letters, and they must go off on the afternoon mail." Getting up, I was about to turn from the window when a man and a young woman coming across the Square caught my attention and, hardly knowing why, I looked at them intently. Something about the man was familiar. He was barely medium height, and singularly slender, and though his head was bent that he might better hear the girl who was talking, I was sure I had seen him before. The girl I had never seen. She was dragging slowly, as if each step was forced, and, putting her handkerchief close to her mouth, she began to cough.

For a moment they stood still and I saw the girl had on low shoes and a shabby coat which had once been showy. On one side of her hat was a red bird, battered and bruised, and at this comic effort at dressiness, which poor people cling to with such pathetic persistence, I smiled, and then in alarm leaned closer to the window.

They had begun their walk again, and were now at the end of the path opening on to the pavement. I could see them clearly, and instinctively my hands went out as if to catch her, for the girl had fallen forward, and on the snow a tiny stream of red was dripping from her mouth. Quickly the man caught her and put his handkerchief to her lips, and with equal swiftness he looked around. He could not lay her on the snow, but she could no longer stand. The fear in his face, the whiteness of hers, were plainly visible. I raised the window.

"Bring her over here," I called. "I'll come down and help you."

In a flash I was out of the room and down the steps. Mrs. Mundy, who had heard my hurried running, followed me to the door. "What is it?" she asked. "What's the matter, Miss Dandridge?"

Opening the front door, I started down the steps, but already the man, with the girl in his arms, was coming up them. "Go back," he said, quietly, though his breath was quick and uneven. "Go back. You'll get your feet wet."

With a swift movement Mrs. Mundy pushed me aside. "Mr. Guard?" Her voice was questioning, uncertain; then she held out her arms. "The poor child! Give her to me. Who is it? Why, it's—it's Lillie Pierce!"

"Yes." The man's voice was low, and with a movement of his head his hat fell on the floor. "It's Lillie Pierce. She has fainted. Where shall I take her?"

"In here." Opening a door at the end of the hall, Mrs. Mundy motioned Mr. Guard to enter. From the girl's mouth the blood was still dripping, and on the collar of her coat was a big round splotch of red.

"No," I said. "Bring her up-stairs. There's a room all fixed, and you have so much to do." I put my hand on Mrs. Mundy's arm. "I can take care of her. Can't we take her up-stairs?"

A swift look passed between Mrs. Mundy and Mr. Guard. "No." The latter shook his head. "It is better for her to be down here." Going inside of the little room, he laid the girl on a cot at the foot of the bed, then turned to me. "Get a doctor. Call Chester 4273 and tell Carson, if he's there, to come at once. If you can find her, get Miss White also."

I turned to leave the room, but not before I saw Mrs. Mundy and Mr. Guard at work on the girl, and already her hat and coat were off, and warm covering was being tucked around her. Mrs. Mundy knew what to do, and with feet that hardly touched the steps I was at the telephone and calling the number that had been given me. I was frightened and impatient at the slowness of Central. "For Heaven's sake, hurry!" I said. "Some one is ill. Ring loud!"

Dr. Carson was in. He would come at once. Miss White was out.

"Where is she?" I asked. "Where can I get her?"

I was told where she might be found, and, changing my slippers for shoes, and putting on my coat and hat, I came down ready to go out. At the door of the room where they had taken the girl I stopped. She was now quite conscious, and with no pillow under her head she was staring up at the ceiling. Blood was no longer on her lips, but a curious smile was on them. It must have been this gasping, faintly scornful smile that startled me. It seemed mocking what had been done too late.

"I am going for Miss White." I looked at Mr. Guard. "She is at the Bostrows'. The doctor—"

As I spoke he came in, a big man, careless in dress and caustic in speech, but a man to be trusted. I slipped out and in a few minutes had found Martha White, and quickly we walked back to Scarborough Square.

"It's well you came when you did." She bent her head to keep the swirling snowflakes from her face. Martha is fat and short and rapid walking is difficult. "I was just about to leave for the other end of town to see a typhoid case of Miss Wyatt's. She's young and gets frightened easily, and I promised I'd come some time to-day, though it's out of my district. Who is this girl I'm going to see?"

"I don't know. I heard Mr. Guard and Mrs. Mundy call her Lillie Pierce. They seemed to know her. I never saw her before."

"Never heard of her." Miss White, who had been district nursing for fourteen years, made effort to recall the name. "She had a hemorrhage, you say?"

She did not wait for an answer, but went up the steps ahead of me, and envy filled me as I followed her into the room where she was to find her patient. Professionally Miss White was one person, socially another. Off duty she was slow and shy and consciously awkward. In the sick-room she was transformed. Quiet, cool, steady, alert, she knew what to do and how to do it. With a word to the others, her coat and hat were off and she was standing by the bed, and again I was humiliated that I knew how to do so little, was of so little worth.

Between the doctor and herself was some talk. Directions were given and statements made, and then the doctor came to the door where I was standing. For a half-moment he looked me over, his near-sighted eyes almost closing in their squint.

"I knew your father. A very unusual man." He held out his hand. "You're like him, got his expression, and, I'm told, the same disregard of what people think. That"—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder—"is a side of life you've never seen before. It's a side men make and women permit. Good morning." Before I could answer he was gone.

Close to the cot Mrs. Mundy and Miss White were still standing. The latter slipped her hand under the covering and drew out the hot-water bag. "This has cooled," she said. "Where can I get hot water?"

Mrs. Mundy pointed to the bath-room, then turned, and together they left the room. The girl on the cot was seemingly asleep.

As they went out the man, who was standing by the mantel, came toward me. "I am David Guard," he said. "I have not thanked you for letting me bring her in. Had there been anywhere else to take her, I would not have brought her here. I met her at the other end of the Square. We had been standing for some while, talking. There was no place to which we could go to talk, and, fearing she would get too cold, we had moved on. Last month she tried to take her life. This morning she was telling me she could hold out no longer. There was no way out of it but death."

"Who is she?"

Before he could answer I understood. Shivering, I turned away, then I came back.

"Will you come to my sitting-room, Mr. Guard? Can we not talk as human beings who are trying to find the right way to—to help wrong things?"



CHAPTER XIV

A moment later we were up-stairs. "I don't know why I am so cold." My hands, not yet steady, were held out to the leaping flames. "Usually I love a snow-storm, but to-day—"

"They tell me you rarely have such weather as we have had of late. Personally I like it, but to many it means anything but pleasure. Is this the chair you prefer?"

At my nod he pushed a low rocker closer to the fire and placed a foot-stool properly. Drawing up the wing-chair he sat down and looked around the room. As the light fell on him I noticed the olive, almost swarthy, coloring of his skin, his deep-sunk eyes with their changing expressions of gravity and humor, of tolerance and intolerance, and I knew he was the sort of man one could talk to on any subject and not be misunderstood. His hair was slightly gray, and frequently his well-shaped hand would brush back a long lock that fell across his temple. His clothes were not of a clerical cut, and evidently had seen good service; and that he gave little attention to personal details was evidenced by his cravat, which was midway of his collar, and his collar of a loose, ill-fitting kind.

About him was something intensely earnest, intensely eager and alert, and, watching him, I realized he belonged to that little group which through the ages has dared to differ with accepted order; and for his daring he had suffered, as all must suffer who feel as well as think.

"You don't mind," the smile on his face was whimsical, "if I take a good draught of this, do you? It's been long since I've seen just this sort of thing." His eyes were on a picture between two windows. "Out of Denmark one rarely sees anything of Skovgaard's. That Filipinno Lippi is excellent, also. At the Hermitage in St. Petersburg I tried to get a copy like that"—he nodded at Rembrandt's picture of himself—"but there was none to be had. Did you get yours there?"

"Four years ago. I also got that photograph of Houdon's Voltaire there."

He looked in the direction to which I pointed, and, getting up, went over to first one picture and then another, and studied them closely. A bit of bronze, a statuette or two, an altar-piece, a chalice, a flagon, a paten, a censer, and an ikon held his attention, one after the other, and again he turned to me.

"These are very interesting. Is it as one of the faithful you collect?" A smile which strangely lighted his face swept over it.

"Oh no!" I shook my head. "The faithful would find me a most disturbing person. I ask too many questions." My hand made movement in the direction of the bookshelves around the four sides of the room, on the tops of which were oddly assorted little remembrances of days of travel. "A study of such things is a study of religious expression at different periods and among different peoples. They've always interested me."

"They interest me, also." Mr. Guard stood before the ikon, looked long upon it before coming back to the fire and again sitting down. For a moment he gazed into it as if forgetting where he was, then he leaned back in his chair and turned to me.

"A collection of examples of ecclesiastical art, of religious ideas embodied in objects used for purposes of worship, is interesting—yes—but a collection of re-actions against what they fail to represent would be more so, could they be collected."

"They have been—haven't they? In the lives of those who dare to differ, to break from heritage and tradition, much has been collected and transmitted. The effect of re-actions is what counts, I suppose."

"Their inevitability is what people do not seem to understand." Leaning forward, he again looked into the fire, his hands between his knees. "The teachings of Christ having been twisted into a system of theology, and the Church into an organization based on dogma and doctrine, re-action is unescapable. However, we won't get on that." Again he straightened. "Was it re-action that brought you to Scarborough Square? I beg your pardon! I have no right to ask. There was something you wished to ask me, I believe."

For a moment there was silence, broken only by the flames of the fire, which spluttered and flared and made soft, whispering sounds, while on the window-panes the snow, now turning into sleet, tapped as if with tiny fingers, and my heart began to beat queerly.

I did not know how to ask him what I wanted to ask. There was much he could tell me, much I wished to hear from a man's standpoint, but how to make him understand was difficult. He had faced life frankly, knew what was subterfuge, what sincere, and the restrictions of custom and convention no longer handicapped him. Between sympathy and sentimentality he had found the right distinction, and his judgment and emotions had learned to work together. My judgment and emotions were yet untrained.

"The girl down-stairs," I began. "You and Mrs. Mundy seem to know her. If she belongs, as I imagine, to the world down there," my hand made motion behind me, "Mrs. Mundy will think I can do nothing. But cannot somebody do something? Must things always go on the same way?"

"No. They will not always go on the same way. They will continue so to go, however, until women—good women—understand they must chiefly bring about the change. For centuries women have been cowards, been ignorant of what they should know, been silent when they should speak. They prefer to be—"

"White roses! But white roses do not necessarily live in hot-houses." I pushed my chair farther from the fire. "That is one of the reasons I am here. I want to know where women fail."

He looked up. "One does not often find a woman willing to know. Behind the confusion of such terms as ignorance and innocence most women continue their irresponsibility in certain directions. They have accepted man's decree that certain evils, having always existed, must always exist, and they have made little effort to test the truth of the assertion. Lillie Pierce and the women of her world are largely the product of the attitude of good women toward them. To the sin of men good women shut their eyes, pretend they do not know. They do not want to know."

"They not only do not want to know, themselves—that is, many of them—but they would keep others from knowing. Perhaps it is natural. So many things have happened to life in the past few years that even clever, able women are still bewildered, still uncertain what is right to do. Life can never be again what it once was, and still, most of us are trying to live a new thing in an old way. We have so long been purposely kept ignorant, so long not permitted to have opinions that count, so long been told our work is elsewhere, that cowardice and indifference, the fear of inability to deal with new conditions, new obligations, new responsibilities, still holds us back. I get impatient, indignant, and then I realize—"

David Guard laughed. "That many are still in the child class?" His head tossed back the long lock of hair that fell over his forehead. "It is true, but certainly you do not think because I see the backwardness, the blindness of some women, I do not see the forwardness, the vision of others? Men have hardly guessed as yet that it is chiefly due to women that the world is now asking questions it has never asked before, beginning to look life in the face where once it blinked at it. Because of what women have suggested, urged, insisted on, and worked for, the social conscience all over the earth has been aroused, social legislation enacted, and social dreams stand chance of coming true. Certain fields they have barely entered yet, however. It is easy to understand why. When they realize what is required of them, they will not hold back. But as yet, among the women you know, how many give a thought to Lillie Pierce's world, to the causes and conditions which make her and her kind?"

I shook my head. "I do not know. I've never heard her world discussed."

"I suppose not. In this entire city there are few women who think of girls like Lillie Pierce, or care to learn the truth concerning them; care enough to see that though they went unto dogs, unto dogs they need not return if they wish to get away. Most people, both men and women, imagine such girls like their hideous life; that they entered it from deliberate choice. Out of a hundred there may be a dozen who so chose, but each of the others has her story, in many instances a story that would shame all men because of man." He glanced at the clock and got up quickly.

"I'm sorry, but I've got to go. I'd entirely forgotten an engagement I'm compelled to fill. May I come again?" He held out his hand. "I've heard about you, of course. I've wanted to know you. There's much I'd like to talk to you about. When you leave Scarborough Square and go back into your world, you can tell it many things it should know. Some day it will understand." Abruptly he turned and left the room.



CHAPTER XV

The girl down-stairs, the girl named Lillie Pierce, was taken on the back porch this morning, and for the first time Mrs. Mundy left me alone with her.

"When the snow's gone and the sun shines, the cot can be rolled out, I told the doctor," Mrs. Mundy tucked the covering closely around the shrinking figure, "but chill and dampness ain't friends to feeble folks, and there's plenty of fresh air without going outdoors. It's hard to make even smart folks like doctors get more 'n one idea at a time in their heads, and in remembering benefits, they forget dangers. Are you ready, child, for a whiff of sunshine? It's come at last, the sun has."

The girl nodded indifferently, but as the cot was pushed into the porch I saw her lips quiver, saw her teeth bitten into them to hide their quivering, and I nodded to Mrs. Mundy to go inside, and I, too, left her for a moment and went down the steps to the little garden being made ready for the coming of spring. Around the high fence vines had been planted, a trellis or two put against the porch for roses and clematis, and close to the gate an apple-tree, twisted and gnarled, gave promise of blossoms, if not of fruit. Already I loved the garden which was to be.

"Violets are to be here and tulips there," I said, under my breath, and wondered if Lillie were herself again, if I could not go back. "A row of snowdrops and bleeding-hearts would look lovely there—" Something green and growing in a sheltered corner near the house caught my eye, and stooping, I pulled the little blossom, and went up the steps to Lillie's cot and gave it to her.

Eagerly she held out her hands and the silence of days was broken. The bitterness that had filled her eyes, the scorn that had drawn her thin lips into forbidding curves, the mask of control which had exhausted her strength, yielded at the sight of a little brown-and-yellow flower, and with a cry she kissed it, pressed it to her face.

"It used to grow, a long bed of it, close to the kitchen wall where it was warm, and where it bloomed before anything else." The words came stumblingly. "Mother loved it best of all her flowers; she had all sorts in her garden."

With a quick turn of her head she looked at me, in her face horror, in her eyes tumultuous pain, then threw the flower from her with a wild movement, as if her touch had blighted it. "Why don't you let me die!" she cried. "Oh, why don't you let me die!"

I drew a chair close to the cot and sat down by it. For a while I said nothing. Things long locked within her, long held back, were struggling for utterance. In the days she had been with us her silence had been unbroken, but gradually something bitter and rebellious had died out of her face, and into it had come a haunted, hunted look, and yet she would not talk. Until she was ready to speak we knew it was best to say nothing to her of days that were past, or of those that were to come.

Mrs. Mundy had known her before she came to Scarborough Square. In a ward of one of the city's hospitals, where her baby was born, she had found her alone, deserted, and waiting her time. Two days after its birth the baby died.

When she left the hospital there was nowhere for her to go. She had lived in a city but a short time and knew little of its life, and yet she must work. Mrs. Mundy got a room for her, then a place in a store, and she did well, kept to herself, but somebody who knew her story saw her, told the proprietor, and he turned her off. He couldn't keep girls like that, he said. It would injure his business. Later, she got in an office. She had learned at night to do typewriting, and there one of the men was kind to her, began to give her a little pleasure every now and then. She was young. It was dreary where she lived, and she craved a bit of brightness. One night he took her to what she found was—oh, worse than where she has since lived, for it pretended to be respectable.

"She was terribly afraid of men. It wasn't put on; it was real. I know pretense when I see it." Mrs. Mundy, who was telling me of the girl, changed her position and fixed the screen so that the flames from the fire should not burn her face. "Ever since the father of the child had deserted her, she had believed all men were wicked, but this man had been so friendly, so kindly, she thought he was different from the others. When she found where she was, she was crazy with fear and anger, and made a scene before she left. The next morning when she went to work she was told her services were no longer needed, and told in a way that made her understand she was not fit to work in the room with other girls. The man who had charge of the room was the man she had thought a friend. He's got his job still."

The ticking of the clock on the mantel alone broke the stillness of the room as Mrs. Mundy stopped. I tried to say something, but words would not come.

"For years I've heard the stories of these poor creatures." Mrs. Mundy's even tones steadied somewhat the protesting tumult in my heart. "For years I've known the awful side of the lives they lead. I didn't have money or learning or influence, or the chance to make good people understand, even if they'd been willing to hear, what I could tell, but I could help one of them every now and then. There 're few of them who start out deliberate to live wrong. When they take it up regular it's 'most always because they're like dogs at bay. There's nothing else to do."

"What became of Lillie when she lost her place?" I got up from the sofa and came closer to the fire. My teeth were chattering.

"She lost her soul. She went in a factory, but the air made her sick, and after three faints they turned her off. It interrupted the work and made the girls lose time running to her, and so she had to go. After a while—I was away at the time—the woman she lived with turned her out. She owed room rent, a good deal of it, and she needed food and clothes, and there was no money with which to buy them. It got her crazy, the thought that because she had done wrong she was but a rag to be kicked from place to place with only the gutter to land in at last, and—well, she landed. But she isn't all bad. I used to feel about girls like her just as most good people still feel, but I've come to see there's many of them who are more sinned against than sinning. The men who make and keep them what they are go free and are let alone."

"Couldn't she have gone home? You said she was from the country. Wouldn't they let her come back home?"

Mrs. Mundy shook her head. "Her own mother was dead and her stepmother wouldn't let her come. She had young children of her own. Last month she tried to end it all. She won't be here much longer. The doctor says she'll hardly live six months. If we can get her in the City Home—"

"The City Home!" The memory of what I had seen there came over me protestingly. The girl had lived in hell. She need not die in it. "Perhaps she can be sent somewhere in the country," I said, after a while. "Mr. Guard might know of some one who will take her. Certainly she can stay here until—until he knows what is best to do."

Mrs. Mundy got up. For a moment she looked at me, started to say something, then went out of the room. She was crying. I wonder if I said anything I shouldn't.

"Tell me of your mother's garden." I picked up the tiny flower and put it on Lillie's cot, where its fragrance waked faint stirrings of other days. "I've always wanted a garden like my grandmother Heath used to have. I remember it very well, though I was only nine when she died. There were cherry-trees and fig-trees in it, and a big arbor covered with scuppernong grape-vines, and wonderful strawberries in one corner. All of her flowers were the old-fashioned kind. There was a beautiful yellow rose that grew all over the fence which separated the flowers from the vegetables, and close to the wood-house was a big moss-rose bush. There were Micrafella roses, too. I loved them best, and Jacqueminots, and tea-roses, and—"

"Did she have princess-feather in hers, and candytuft, and sweet-williams?" Lillie turned over on her side, her hand under her cheek, and in her eyes a quick, eager glow. "In mother's garden were all sorts of old-fashioned flowers also. We lived two miles from town and father sold vegetables and chickens to the market-men, who sold them to their customers. But he never had as good luck with his vegetables as mother had with her flowers. She loved them so. There was a big mock-orange bush right by the well. Did you ever shut your eyes and see things again just as they were a long time ago? If I were blind-folded and my hands tied behind me I could find just where every flower used to grow in mother's garden, if I could go in it again."

Like a flood overleaping the barrier that held it back, the words came eagerly. To keep her from talking would do more harm than to let her talk. The fever in her soul was greater, more consuming, than that in her body. I did not try to stop her.

"I don't remember where each thing was in grandmother's garden." I moved my chair a little closer to her cot. "But I remember the gooseberry-bushes were just behind a long bed of lilies-of-the-valley. It seemed so queer they should be together."

"Lilies of the valley grow anywhere. Mother's bed got bigger every year. There was a large circle of them around a mound in the middle of our garden, and they were fringed with violets. One February our minister's wife died. They didn't have any flowers, and it seemed so dreadful not to have any that I went into the garden to see if I couldn't find something. The ground was covered with snow, but the week before had been warm, and, going to one of the beds, I brushed the snow away and found a lot of white violets. They were blooming under the snow. I pulled them and took them to the minister, and he put them in her hands. They used to put flowers in people's hands when they were dead. I don't know whether they do it now or not."

"Sometimes it is done." I took up the sewing an my lap and made a few stitches. "Tell me some more of your mother's garden. Did she have winter pinks and bachelor's buttons and snap-dragons and hollyhocks in it? I used to hate grandmother's hollyhocks. They were so haughty."

"We did not have any, but we had bridal-wreath and spirea and a big pomegranate-bush. There were two large oleanders in tubs at the foot of the front steps. One was mine, the other was my sister's. My sister is married now and lives out West. She has two children."

A bird on the bough of the apple-tree began to twitter. For a moment Lillie listened, then again she looked at me, in her eyes that which I had noticed several times before, a look of torturing fear and pain and shame.

"Do"—her voice was low—"do you know about me?"

"Yes, I know about you."

"You know—and—and still you talk to me? I don't understand. Why did you come down here? You don't belong in Scarborough Square."

"Why not? I have no one who needs me." I held my bit of sewing off, looked at it carefully. "Other women have their homes, their husbands and children, or their families, or duties or obligations of some sort, which they cannot leave, even if they wanted to know, to understand better how they might—" I leaned forward. "I think you can help me, Lillie, help me very much."

"Help you—" Half lifting herself up, Lillie stared at me as if not understanding, then the flush in her face deepened. "I help anybody! Oh, my God! if I only could! If I only could!"

"I'm sure you can." I picked up the flower, which again had fallen. "The doctor says you can go in the country soon, but before you go—"

"I hope I won't live long enough to go anywhere, but before I go away for good if I could tell you what you could tell to others, and make them understand how different it is from what they think, make them know the awfulness—awfulness—"

She turned her head away, buried it in her arms, her body shaking in convulsive sobs. The bird on the apple-tree had stopped its singing, and the sun was no longer shining. In the hall I heard Mrs. Mundy go to the door, heard it open; then heavier footsteps came toward us, I looked around. Selwyn was standing in the doorway.



CHAPTER XVI

Selwyn closed the door, put his hat and overcoat on a chair beside it, and came over to the fire. Standing in front of it, hands in his pockets, he looked at me. I, also, was standing.

"Why don't you sit down? Are you in a hurry? Am I interrupting you?"

I shook my head. "I am not in a hurry, and you are not interrupting. I thought perhaps—"

"Thought what?"

"That you were in a hurry." I sat down on a footstool near the mantel, and leaned against the latter, my hands on my knees. "I so seldom have a visit from a man in the morning that I don't know how to behave." My head nodded toward the chair he usually preferred.

"I would not take your time now—but I must." He took a seat opposite me, and looking at me, his face changed. "What is the matter? Are you sick? Your eyes look like holes in a blanket. Something has been keeping you awake. What is it?"

"I am not at all sick, and I slept very well last night." I drew a little further from the flame of the fire. "I'm sorry if my eyes—"

"Belie your bluff? They always do. Resist as you will, they give you away. You've been working yourself to death doing absurd things for unthankful people. Who is that sick person downstairs? Where'd you pick her up?"

"I didn't pick her up. She had a hemorrhage and fainted in front of the house. I happened to see her and—and—"

"Had her brought in. I understand. In a neighborhood of this sort you don't know who you're bringing in, but I suppose that doesn't matter."

"No, it doesn't—when the bringing in is a matter of life and death, perhaps! As long as I am here and Mrs. Mundy is here, any one can come in who for the moment has nowhere else to go. Scarborough Square has no walls around its houses. Whoever needs us is a neighbor. The girl was ill."

My voice was indignant. There are times when Selwyn makes me absolutely furious. He apparently takes pleasure in pretending to have no heart. Then, too, he was talking and acting in such contrast to the way I had expected him to talk and act at our first meeting alone after the past weeks, that in amazement I stared at him. Of self-consciousness or embarrassment there was no sign. It had obviously not occurred to him that his acquaintanceship with a girl he had given no evidence of knowing when I was present, and three days later had been seen walking with on the street, absorbed in deep and earnest conversation, was a matter I would like to have explained. The density of men for a moment kept me dumb.

Selwyn has been reared in a school honest in its belief that a woman is too fine and fair a thing to face life frankly; that personal knowledge and understanding on her part of certain verities, certain actualities, did the world no good and woman harm. But the woman of whom he thought was the sheltered, cultured, cared-for woman of his world. Protection of her was a man's privilege and obligation. Of the woman who has to do her own protecting, fight her way through, meet the demands of those dependent on her, he personally knew little. It was what he needed much to know.

But because his handsome, haughty mother had lived in high-bred, self-congratulatory ignorance of what she believed did not concern her, and because he has for a sister, who's a step-sister, a silly, snobby person, he is not justified in withholding from me what he naturally withheld from them. One can be a human being as well as a lady. It's this that is difficult to make him understand.

For a half-moment longer I looked at him, then away. Apparently he had not heard what I said.

"I should not trouble you. I have no right, but I don't know what to do. I've so long come to you—" He turned to me uncertainly.

"What is it?" I got up from the footstool and took my seat in the corner of the sofa. "Why shouldn't you come to me?"

"You have enough on you now." He bit his lip. "It's about Harrie—the boy must be crazy. For the past few weeks he has kept me close to hell. I never imagined the time would come when I would thank God my father was dead. It's come now."

"What is it, Selwyn? There is nothing you cannot tell me." I leaned forward, my hands twisting in my lap. I knew more of Harrie than Selwyn knew I knew, but because he was the one person I did know with whom I had no measure of patience, I rarely mentioned his name. Harrie is Selwyn's weakness, and to his faults and failings the latter is, outwardly, at least, most inexplicably blind. He is as handsome as he is unprincipled and irresponsible, and his power to fascinate is seemingly limited only by his desire to exercise it. "What is it?" I repeated. "What has he been doing?"

"Everything he shouldn't." Selwyn leaned forward and looked in the fire. "I was wrong, I suppose, but something had to be done. For some time he's been drinking and gambling, and I told him it had to stop. I stood it as long as I could, but when I found he would frequently come home too drunk to get in bed, and would have to be put there by Wingfield, who would be listening for him, I had a talk with him which it isn't pleasant to remember. I'd had a good many before. God knows I've tried—"

Selwyn got up, went over to the window and stood for a moment at it with his back to me. Presently he left it and began to walk up and down the room, hands in his pockets.

"I've doubtless made a mess of looking after him, but I did the best I knew how. Because of the eleven years' difference in our ages I've shut my eyes to much I should have seen, and refused to hear what I should have listened to, perhaps, but I was afraid of being too severe, too lacking in sympathy with his youth, with the differences in our natures, and, chiefly, because I knew he was largely the product of his rearing. He was only fourteen when father died, and to the day of her death mother allowed no one to correct him. She indulged him beyond sense or reason; let him grow up with the idea that whatever he wanted he could have. Restraint and discipline were never taught him. As for direction, guidance, training—" Selwyn's shoulders shrugged. "If I said anything to mother, cautioned her of the mistake she was making, she thought me hard and cruel, and ended by weeping. After her death it was too late."

"Doesn't he work? Does he do nothing at all?"

"Work!" Selwyn stopped. "He's never done a day's work in his life that earned what he got for it. When he refused to go back to college mother bought him a place in Hoge and Howell's office. They kept him until he'd used up the capital put in the business, then got rid of him. I offered to put more in, but they wouldn't agree. Later, I got John Moore to take him in, but John now refuses to renew their contract. He's absolutely no good. That's a pretty hard thing to say about one's brother, but it's true. He's the only thing on earth belonging to me that I've got to love, and now—"

Selwyn's voice was husky, and again he went to the window, looked long upon the Square, and for a moment I said nothing. I could think of nothing to say. From various friends of other days who came occasionally to see me in my new home, I had heard of Harrie's wild behavior of late, of Selwyn's patient shielding of him, of the latter's love and loyalty and care of the boy to whom he had been far more than a brother, and I wanted much to help him, to say something that would hearten him, and there was nothing I could say. Harrie was selfish to the core; he was unprincipled and unscrupulous, and for long I had feared that some day he would give Selwyn sore and serious trouble. That day had seemingly come.

"He is so young. At twenty-three life isn't taken very seriously by boys of Harrie's nature. He'll come to himself after a while." I was fumbling for words. "When his money is entirely gone he'll tire of his—his way of living and behave himself."

"The lack of money doesn't disturb him. I bought his interest in the house for fear he'd sell it to some one else. He's pretty nearly gotten through with that, as with other things he inherited. How in the name of Heaven my father's son—" Selwyn came over to the sofa and sat down. "I didn't mean to speak of this, however; of his past behavior. It's concerning his latest adventure that I want your help, want you to tell me what to do."

"Why don't you smoke? Haven't you a cigar?" I reached for a box of matches behind me. "Begin at the beginning and tell me everything."

Selwyn lighted his cigar and for a while smoked in silence. In his face were deep lines that aged it strangely and for the first time I noticed graying hair about his temples. Suddenly something clutched my heart queerly, something that cleared unnaming darkness, and understanding was upon me. Unsteadily my hand went out toward him.

"There is nothing you cannot ask me to do, Selwyn. There is nothing I would not do to help you."

He lifted my hand to his lips. "There is no one but you I would talk to of this. You will not misunderstand. If I could not come to you—"

I drew my hand away. "That's what a woman is for, to—to stand by when a man needs her." My words came stammeringly. "I heard Harrie was away. Where is he and why did he go?"

"He's in Texas. He went, I think, because of a mix-up with a girl here he had no business knowing. There was a row, I believe." Selwyn frowned, flicked the ashes from his cigar with impatient movement. "There's no use going into that. I'm not excusing him; there's no excuse, but so far as that's concerned there's nothing to be done, so far as I can see. He got involved with this girl, a little cashier at some restaurant downtown who thought he was going to marry her. I knew nothing about this until a few weeks ago. When I heard it, I went to see the girl."

The tension of past weeks, not yet entirely unrelaxed, snapped with such swiftness that I seemed suffocating, and, lest he hear the sob in my throat, I got up and went over to the window and opened it a little. "Was she—" I made effort to speak steadily. "Was she the girl who was brought in here? The girl you were with some three weeks ago?"

Selwyn, who had gotten up as I came back to the sofa, again sat down. "Yes. She was the girl." His voice was indifferently even. He had obviously no suspicion of my unworthy wondering, had forgotten, indeed, his indignation at the question I had asked him after seeing him with her. Other things more compelling had evidently crowded it from memory.

"I had never seen her until the night I saw her here. She, I learned later, knew me, however, as Harrie's brother. I had been told that Harrie was infatuated with her, and, knowing there could only be disaster unless the thing was stopped, I went to see the girl. The evening you saw me was the second time I had seen her. I was trying to make her promise to go away. This isn't her home. She came here to get work."

Selwyn leaned back against the sofa, and his eyes looked into mine with helpless questioning. "I've been brought in contact professionally with many types of human beings, but that girl is the most baffling thing I've come across yet. I can't make her out. The night after I saw her here I went to see her at what, I supposed, was her home, just opposite the Hadley box-factory. Later she told me she didn't live there, and would not say where she lived. All the time I talked to her her eyes were on her hands in her lap and, though occasionally her lips would twist, she would say nothing. It isn't a pleasant thing for a man to tell a girl his brother isn't a safe person for her to go with, isn't one to be trusted, but I did tell her. She's an odd little thing, all fire and flame, and to talk frankly was to be brutal, but some day she should thank me. She won't do it. She will hate me always for warning her. She knew as well as I that marriage was out of the question, and yet she would not promise to give Harrie up. When you saw me I was on my way for a second talk with her. Meeting her on the street, I did not go to the house, which she said she had just left, and as she would not tell me where she was going, I had to do my talking as we walked."

"Did she promise to go away?" I looked into the fire, and the odd, elfish, frightened face of the girl with the baby in her arms looked at me out of the bed of coals. "Did she promise to go?" I repeated.

Selwyn shook his head. "She would promise nothing. I could get nothing out of her, could not make her talk. Harrie has been a durned fool—perhaps worse, I don't know. I tried to help her, and I failed."

My fingers interlocked in nervous movements. Why hadn't the girl told Selwyn? Why was she shielding Harrie? Would she tell me or Mrs. Mundy what she would not tell Selwyn? I could send Mrs. Mundy to her now—could break the silence which was mystifying to her.

Selwyn's hands moved as though to rid them of all further responsibility. "You can't do anything with people like that. She'd rather stay on here and take the chance of seeing Harrie than go away from temptation. I'm sorry for her, but I'm through."

"No, you're not through. Perhaps we've just begun. Maybe there—there were reasons of which she couldn't tell you that kept her here." I looked at him, then away. "The night we heard her fall, heard her cry out; the night we brought her in here, you met some one across the street when you went away. Was it—Harrie?"

In Selwyn's face came flush that crimsoned it. "Yes, it was Harrie. I don't know what happened. He had been drinking, but I can't believe he struck her. If he did—my God!"

With shuddering movement Selwyn's elbows were on his knees, his face in his hands, and only the dropping of a coal upon the hearth broke the stillness of the room. Presently he got up and again went over to the window. When he next spoke his voice was quiet, but in it a bitterness and weariness he made no effort to conceal. "It was Harrie, but he would tell me nothing about the girl. From some one else I learned where I could find her. A few days after I saw her, Harrie went away."

"Did you make him go?"

"No. I had a talk with him during which he told me to mind my own damned business and he would mind his." Selwyn turned from the window and came back to the sofa, on his lips a faint smile. "When he went off he didn't tell me he was going, left no address, and for some time I didn't know where he was. Less than three weeks ago I had a telegram from him saying he was ill and to send money. I wired the money and left for El Paso on the first train I could make. I tried to see you before I went, but you were out."

"Why didn't you write?"

"I couldn't. Once or twice I tried, but gave it up. I found that Harrie had undoubtedly been ill, but when I reached him he was up and about. Two hours before I took the train to return home he informed me of his engagement to—"

"His what?" For a moment I sat rigidly upright, in my eyes indignant unbelief. Then I sat back limp and relaxed, my hands, palms upward, in my lap.

Selwyn's shoulders shrugged. "Your amazement is feeble to what mine was. On the train going down he had renewed his acquaintance with a girl and her mother he had met somewhere; here, I believe, and a week after reaching her home the girl was engaged to him. Her name is Swink."

"Is she crazy?"

"No. Her mother is crazy. I don't blame the girl. She's young, pretty, silly, and doubtless in love. Harrie has fatal facility in making love. This mamma person has a good deal of money; no sense, and large social ambitions. She's determined to get there. If only fools died as soon as they were born there would be hope for humanity. A fat fool is beyond the reach of endeavor." With eyes narrowed and his forehead ridged in tiny folds, Selwyn stared at me. "Have women no sense, Danny? Have they no understanding, no—"

"Some have. But sense and understanding interfere with comfortable ignorances that aren't pleasant to be interfered with. Does this female parent know anything about Harrie? Did she let her daughter become engaged before making inquiries about him?"

"She knows very well who he is. She's visited here several times. If told of Harrie's past dissipations, she'd soothe herself with the usual dope of boys being boys, and men being men, and bygones being bygones." Selwyn's hands made gesture of disgust. "It's a plain case of damned fool. She deserves what she'll get if she lets her daughter marry Harrie. But the daughter doesn't. Somebody ought to tell the child she mustn't marry him. If there was a father or brother the responsibility would be on them. There's neither."

"But didn't you tell Harrie—that—that—"

"I did. And the language I used was not learned in a kindergarten. Among other things I told him was that if he— Oh, it's no use going into that. It's easy to say what you'll do, but it isn't easy to show your brother up as—as everything one's brother shouldn't be."

For a moment or two Selwyn continued his restless walking up and down the room, in his face no masking of the pain and weariness of spirit that were possessing him. To no one else would he speak so frankly of a family affair, and I wanted much to help him, but how? What was it he wanted me to do? I could not see where I came in to do anything.

"Is Harrie very much in love?" Such questioning was consciously silly, but something had to be said. "Do you think he really loves the girl?"

"No, I don't. He says he does, of course, but he doesn't love anything but himself. Making love is a habit with him. Our girls know how to take the sort of stuff he talks; rather expect it, but this little creature is obviously a literalist. I imagine Harrie hardly remembers how it happened. He probably was surprised to find himself engaged. However, he's determined to go through with it. A million-dollar mother-in-law has a good deal in her favor. But something is the matter with the boy. He's not himself."

"Didn't he go away about a year ago, and stay some time? If he could begin all over—"

"There's nowhere under heaven I wouldn't send him if he'd go with the purpose of beginning all over, but he won't stay away. About six months ago he went to South America and stayed four months. Since he got home he's been worse than ever—reckless, defiant, and drinking heavily. His health has gone and most of his money; practically all of it. I don't know what to do. I want to do what is right. Tell me what it is, Danny."

My breath was drawn in shiveringly and the frightened face of the girl with the baby in her arms again seemed close to me. Why was I so halting, so afraid to speak? Usually I reached decisions quickly, but I couldn't get rid of the girl's eyes. They seemed appealing for protection. Until I knew more about her I must say nothing. Mrs. Mundy must go to see her and then—

"I know I shouldn't bother you with all this." Selwyn's voice recalled me and the face in the fire vanished. "But there is no one else I can talk to. I should as soon go to a patient in a nerve sanitarium as to Mildred. As a sister Mildred is not a success. She'd first have hysterics and tell me I was brutal to poor Harrie, and then declare that to marry a million dollars was the chance of a lifetime for him. One of the ten thousand things I can't understand about women is their defense of men, their acceptance of his—shortcomings, and their disregard of the woman who must pay the price of the latter. Mildred would probably not give Miss Swink a thought."

"Harrie's sister and his mamma-in-law-to-be will doubtless find each other congenial. They believe in sweet ignorance and blind acceptance for their sex. But what do you want me to do, Selwyn? What is it I can do?"

"I don't know." Hand on the back of the sofa, he looked down at me. "When things go wrong I always come to you. When they go right you are not nice to me. To-day I had a letter from Harrie. He's coming back next week. His fiancee and her mother are coming with him. The engagement is not to be announced just yet, however, and he asks me to keep it on the quiet."

"And you've told me."

"Told you!" Selwyn's voice was querulous. "Don't I tell you everything? Mrs. Swink has friends here, strivers like herself—the only kind of people you won't have anything to do with. But I'm going to ask you to call. Perhaps you'll be able—"

"She won't want to know me. I'll be no use to her. I can't help her in any way, and people like that are too keen to waste time on people like me. I don't give parties."

"But Kitty does. I don't know how you'll go about it, but you'll find a way to—to make the girl understand she mustn't marry Harrie, or certainly not for some time. I feel sorry for the child, but—"

"And the other girl—the little cashier-girl? What about her?"

For a moment Selwyn did not seem to understand. "Oh, that girl! I don't think there'll be any trouble from her. She doesn't seem that sort. Forget her. You can't do anything. I've tried and failed."

"I may fail, but I haven't tried. You dispose of her as if she didn't count."

"What can I do? I shouldn't have mentioned her." Selwyn's forehead ridged frowningly, and, taking out his watch, he looked at it, took up his hat and coat, and held out his hand.

"Thank you for letting me talk to you. And don't worry about the other girl. You can't do anything."

"Perhaps I can't, but you said just now one of the many things you couldn't understand in women was their disregard of other women. That Mildred would probably give the girl no thought. The rich girl, you meant."

"Well—" Selwyn waited. "I did say it, but I don't see what you're getting at."

"That sometimes women do remember the woman who has to pay—the price; do give a thought to the girl who is left to pay it alone. Come to-morrow—no, not to-morrow. Come next week. It will take Mrs. Mundy until then to—"