OH, how good it was to enter New York once more! I remembered how ugly the city had looked to me that first time when I had come from Boston. Now even the rows of flat houses and dingy tall buildings seemed to take on a sturdy and friendly beauty.

Paul was walking up and down the station, and he came rushing up to me, as I came through the gates. He was pale, and even seemed to tremble, as he caught me by the arm and cried:

“When you did not come on that train, I was afraid you had changed your mind, and were not coming back to me. I’ve been waiting here all day, watching each train that arrived from Providence. Oh, sweetheart, I’ve been nearly crazy!”

I told him about the fire, and he seized hold of my hands, and examined them.

“Don’t tell me you hurt yourself!” he cried. And when I reassured him, it was all I could do to keep him from hugging me right there in the station. All the way on the car he held my hand, and although he did not say anything at all to me, I knew just what was in his heart. He loved me, and nothing else in all the whole wide world mattered.

He had helped me out at the studio building, and now as I went up the old rickety stairs, I realized that this was my home!

It was a ramshackle, very old, neglected, rickety sort of place, and I do not know why they called it Paresis Row. The name did not sound ugly to me, somehow. I loved everything about the place, even the queer business carried on on the lower floors, and old Mary, the slatternly caretaker, who scolded the boys alternately and then did little kindnesses for them. I remember how once she kept a creditor away from poor Fisher, by waving her broom at him, till he fled in fear.

I laughed as we went by the door of that crazy old artist that the boys used to tease by dropping a piece of iron on the floor after holding it up high. They would wait a few minutes, and then he would come hobbling up the stairs. There would be three regular taps, and then he would put his head in and say:

“Gentlemen, methinks I heard a noise!”

On the first floor back a man taught singing, and he had gotten up a class of policemen. It seemed as if they sang forever the chorus of a song that went like this:

“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, don’t be a-f-rai-d!”

Several artists had committed suicide in the building. I am not sure of the causes, and we never dwelt upon the reasons. There was nothing pretty about the place; it was cold and not even very clean; but—it was my home!

Paul opened the door of his studio. The place was all cleaned up and new paper on the walls. He showed me behind the screen a little gas stove, pots and pans hanging at the back of it, and dishes in a little closet. Then, taking me by the hand, he opened a door, and showed me a little room adjoining his studio. It seemed to me lovely. It was prepared in soft gray, and the curtains of yellow cheesecloth gave an appearance of sunlight to it. There were several pieces of new furniture in the room, and a little mission dresser. Paul opened the drawers, and rather shyly showed me some sheets, pillow slips and towels, which he said he had purchased for me, and added:

“I hope they are all right. I don’t know much about such things.”

I knew then that Paul intended the room to be for me. He had only the one studio room before.

“Well, little mouse,” he said, “are you afraid to live with a poor beggar, or do you love me enough to take the chance?”

Thoughts were rushing through my mind. Memories of conversations and stories among the artists, on the marriage question, by some considered unnecessary and somehow with Paul it seemed right and natural, and the primitive woman in me answered: “Why not? Others have lived with the man they loved without marriage. Why should not I?” He was waiting for me to speak, and I put my hands up on his shoulders, and said:

“Oh, yes, Paul, I will come to you! I will!”

A little later, I said:

“Now I must go over to my old room and have my trunk and some other things I left there brought over, and I must tell Mrs. Whitehouse, the landlady, as she expects me back to-day.”

“Well, don’t be long,” said Paul. “I’m afraid you will slip through my arms just as I have found you.”

Mrs. Whitehouse, the landlady, met me at the door. I told her I was going to move over to Fourteenth Street, to Paresis Row. She threw up her hands and exclaimed:

“Lands sakes! That is no place for a girl to live, and I have no use for them artists. They are a half-crazy lot, and never have a cent to bless themselves with. If I were a young and pretty girl like you, Miss Ascough, I would not waste my time on the likes of them. Now there’s been a fine-looking gent calling for you the last two days, and I told him you’d be back to-day. He’s a real swell, and if you’d take my advice, you’d get right next to him.”

Even as she spoke the front doorbell rang. She opened the door, and there was Reggie! I was standing at the bottom of the stairs, but when I saw him, I fled into the parlor. He came after me, with his arms outstretched. I found myself staring across at him, as if I were looking at a stranger.

“Marion,” he cried, “I’ve come to bring you home.”

I backed away from him.

“No, no, Reggie, I don’t want you to touch me,” I said. “Go away! I tell you go away!”

“You don’t understand,” said Reggie. “I’ve come to take you home. You’ve won out. I’m going to marry you!”

He looked as if he were conferring a kingdom on me.

“Listen to me, Reggie,” I said. “I can never, never be your wife now.”

“Why not? What have you done?” His old anger and suspicion were mounting. He was looking at me lovingly, yet furiously.

“I’ve done nothing—nothing—but I cannot be your wife.”

“If you mean because of Boston—I’ve forgiven everything. I fought it all out in Montreal and I made up my mind that I had to have you. So I’m going to marry you, darling. You don’t seem to understand.”

Further and further away I had backed from him, but now he was right before me. I looked up at Reggie, but a vision arose between us— Paul Bonnat’s face. Paul who was waiting for me, who had offered to share his all with me, and somehow it seemed to me more immoral to marry Reggie than to live with the man I loved.

“Reggie Bertie,” I said, “it’s you who don’t understand. I can never be your wife because—because—” Oh, it was very hard to drive that look of love and longing from Reggie’s face. Once I had loved him, and although he had hurt me so cruelly in the past, in that moment I longed to spare him the pain that was to be his now.

“Well? What is it, Marion? What have you done?”

“Reggie, it’s this: I no longer love you!” I said.

There was silence, and then he said with an uneasy laugh:

“You don’t mean that. You are angry with me. I’ll soon make you love me again as you did once, Marion. You’ll do it when you are my wife.”

“No—no—I never will,” I said steadily, “because—because—there’s another reason, Reggie. There’s some one else, some one who loves me, and whom I adore!”

I hope I may never see a man look like Reggie did then. He had turned gray, even to his lips. He just stared at me, and I think the truth of what I had said slowly sank in upon him. He drew back.

“I hope you’ll be happy!” he said, and I replied:

“Oh, and I hope you will be, too.”

I followed him to the door and he kept on staring at me with that dazed and incredulous look upon his face. Then he went out and I closed the door forever on Reggie Bertie.

* * * * * *

The expressman had just put my trunk in the studio. I opened the door of the little room that Paul had fixed up for me.

“Are you afraid, darling?” he asked. “Are you going to regret giving yourself to a poor devil like me?”

I answered him as steadily as my voice would let me, for I was trembling.

“I am yours as long as you love me, Paul.”

I had started to remove my hat.

“Not yet, darling,” said Paul, and he took me by the arm and guided me toward the door. “First we have to go to the ‘Little Church Around the Corner.’”

THE END.