Fred was to leave for New York on the first of November, and that was only a week off. The firm had decided to retain me, after all, in the Chicago offices, but I was determined I would not remain there, and planned to go to New York as soon as possible, when Fred would immediately engage me. He said he'd "fire" any girl he had then for me.

I had been saving from week to week for my fare and a set of furs. My suit, though only two months old, had already begun to show wear, and it was thin, as Mr. Hamilton had said. The girls at the yards were already wearing furs, but furs were beyond my purse for months to come. Lolly had beautiful furs, black, silky lynx, that some one had given her the previous Christmas.

It was now five weeks since I had seen Mr. Hamilton, and two since Dick had gone. I had had a few letters from Dick. They were not exactly love-letters. Dick's letters were more, as it were—well, written for publication. I don't know why they seemed like that to me. I suppose he could not help writing for effect, for although he said tender things, and very brilliantly, too, somehow they did not ring true to me.

I did not think very seriously of our engagement, though I liked my ring, and showed it to all the girls at the yards.

My stories came back with unflattering regularity from the magazines to which I sent them. Lolly, however, gave two of my stories to her paper, and I was to be paid space rates (four dollars a column, I think it was) on publication. I was a long time waiting for publication.

Dissatisfied, unhappy, and restless, as I now really was, I did not even feel like writing at night. I now no longer ran up-stairs to my room, with an eager, wishful heart, hoping that he might be there. Alas! I felt sure he had abandoned me forever. He had even ceased, I told myself, to be interested in me.

Then one night he came. I had had a hard day at the yards. Not hard in the sense of work; but Fred was to leave the following day, and a Mr. Hopkins was to take his place. We had spent the day going over all the matters of our department, and it's impossible for me to say how utterly wretched I felt at the thought of working under another "boss" than Fred.

So I came home doleful enough, went out and ate my solitary dinner in a nearby restaurant, and then returned to the house.

He called, "Hello, little girl!" while I was opening the door.

I stood speechlessly staring at him for a moment, so glad was I to see him. It seemed an incredible and a joyous thing to me that he was really there, and that he appeared exactly the same—tall, with his odd, tired face and musing eyes.

"Well, aren't you glad to see me?" he asked, smiling, and holding out his hand.

I seized it and clung to it with both of mine, and I wouldn't let it go. That made him laugh again, and then he said:

"Well, what has my wonderful girl been doing?"

That was nearly always his first question to me.

"I wrote to you four times," I said, "and you never answered me once."

"I'm not much of a hand at letter-writing," he said.

"I thought that you'd forgotten me," I told him, "and that you were never going to come and see me again."

He put his hand under my chin, raised my face, and looked at it searchingly.

"Would it have mattered so much, then?" he asked gently.

"You know very well I'm in love with you," I told him desperately, and he said, as always:

"Nonsense!" though I know he liked to hear me say that.

Then he wanted to inspect me, and he held me off at arm's-length, and turned me around, too. I think it was my suit he was looking at, though he had seen it before. Then he made me sit down, and said we were going to have a "long talk." Of course I had to tell him everything that had happened to me since I had seen him. I omitted all mention of Dick!

I told him about Fred's wanting me to join him in New York, and he remarked:

"Fred can jump up. You're not going."

I did not argue that with him. I no longer wanted to go. I was quite happy and contented now that he was here. I didn't care whether he returned my love or not. I was satisfied as long as he was with me. That was much.

He always made me tell him every little detail of my life, and when I said I found it difficult to write, because of so many men coming to see Lolly,—I didn't mention that they were coming to see me, too!—he said:

"You're going to move out of this place right away. We'll look about for rooms to-morrow."

So then I knew he was not going back that night, and I was so glad that I knelt down beside him and cuddled up against his knee. I wished that he would put his arm about me, but all he did was to push back the loose hair that slipped over my cheek, and after that he kept his hand on my head.

He was much pleased with my description of the rooms at Mrs. Kingston's. He said we'd go there the next day and have a look at them. He said I was to stay home from work the next day, but I protested that I couldn't do that—Fred's last day! Unless I did just what he told me, it exasperated him always, and he now said:

"Then go away from me. I don't want anything to do with a girl who won't do even a trifling thing to please me."

I said that it wasn't trifling, and that I might lose my position; for the new man was to take charge to-morrow, and I ought to be there.

"Damn the new man!" he said.

He was a singularly unreasonable man, and he could sulk and scowl for all the world like a great boy. I told him so, and he unwillingly laughed, and said I was beyond him. To win him back to good humor, I got out some of my new stories, and, sitting on the floor at his feet, read them to him. I read two stories. When I was through, he got up and walked up and down, pulling at his lower lip in that way he had.

"Well," I challenged, "can I write?"

He said:

"I'm afraid you can." Then he took my manuscripts from me, and put them in his pocket.

It was late now, for it had taken me some time to read my stories, but he did not show any signs of going. He was sitting in our one big chair, smoking, with his legs stretched out in front of him, and although his eyes were half closed, he was watching me constantly. I began to yawn, because I was becoming sleepy. He said he supposed I wanted him to get out. I said no, I didn't; but my landlady probably did. She didn't mind our having men callers as long as they went before midnight. It was nearly that now. He said:

"Damn the landlady!" just as he had said, "Damn the new man!" Then he added, "You're not going to be run by every one, you know."

I said mischievously:

"Just by you?"

"Just by me," he replied.

"But when you stay away so long—"

It irritated him for me to refer to that. He said that there were certain matters I wouldn't understand that had kept him in Richmond, and that he had come as soon as he could. He added that he was involved in some lawsuit, and that he was being watched, and had to be "careful." I couldn't see why he should be watched because of a lawsuit, and I asked:

"Would you be arrested?"

He threw back his head and laughed, and said I was a "queer little thing," and then, after a while, he said very seriously:

"It's just as well, anyway. We mustn't get the habit of needing each other too much."

I asked:

"Do you think it possible you could ever need me?" To which he replied very soberly:

"I need you more than you would believe."

Mr. Hamilton never made a remark like that, which revealed any sentiment for me, without seeming to regret it a moment later. Now he got up abruptly and asked me which room I slept in. I said generally in the inner one, because Lolly came in late from her night work and engagements.

"I want to see your room," he said, "and I want to see what clothes you need."

He knew much about women's clothes. I felt ashamed to have him poking about among my poor things like that, and I grew very red; but he took no notice of me, and jotted down some things in his notebook. He said I would need this, that, and other things.

I said weakly:

"You needn't think I'm going to let you get me clothes. Honestly, I won't wear them if you do."

He tilted up my chin, and spoke down into my face:

"Now, Nora, listen to me. Either you are going to live and dress as I want you to, or I am positively not coming to see you again. Do you understand?"

"Well, I can get my own clothes," I said stubbornly.

"Not the kind I want you to have, not the kind I am going to get you."

He still had his hand under my chin, and I looked straight into his eyes.

"If you tell me just once," I said, "that you care for me, I'll—I'll—take the clothes then."

"I'll say anything you want me to," he said, "if you'll do what I tell you."

I took him up at that.

"All right, then. Say, 'I love you,' and you can buy pearls for me, if you want to."

He gave me a deep look that made me thrill, and I drew back from his hand. He said in a low voice:

"You can have the pearls, anyway."

"But I'd rather have the words," I stammered, now ashamed of myself, and confused under his look.

"Consider them said, then," he said, and he laughed. I couldn't bear him to laugh at me, and I said:

"You don't mean it. I made you say it, and therefore it has no meaning. I wish it were true."

"Perhaps it is," he said.

"Is it?" I demanded eagerly.

"Who knows?" said he.

Lolly came in then. She did not seem at all pleased to see Mr. Hamilton there, and he left soon after. When he was gone, she told me I was a very silly girl to have taken him into my room. I told her I hadn't; that he had just walked in. Lolly asked me, virtuously, whether I had ever seen her let a man go in there, and I confessed I had not. She wanted to know whether I had told Mr. Hamilton about Dick. Indeed, I had not! The thought of telling him frightened me, and I besought Lolly not to betray me. Also I took off Dick's ring. I intended to send it back to him. It was impossible for me to be engaged to him now.

Lolly said if she were I, she wouldn't let Mr. Hamilton buy clothes for her. She said once he started to do that, he would expect to pay for everything for me, and then, said Lolly, the first thing I knew, people would be saying that he was "keeping" me. She said that I could take dinners, flowers, even jewels from a man,—though in "high society" girls couldn't even do that; but working-girls were more free,—and I could go to the theater and to other places with him; but it was a fatal step when a man began to pay for a girl's room and clothes. Lolly added that once she had let a man do that for her, and—She blew out a long whiff of smoke from her lips, saying, "Never more!" with her hand held solemnly up.

So then I decided I couldn't let him do it, and I felt very sorry that I had even weakened a little bit in my original resolve not to let him spend money on me. I went to sleep troubled about the matter.

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