When I introduced Mr. Hamilton to Mrs. Kingston, she put on her glasses and examined him curiously, and he said, with a rather formal smile, not at all as he smiled at me:

"I've heard quite a lot about you from Miss Ascough, and am very glad to meet you."

"I've known all about you for some time," she said, chuckling. And then she added, "I don't know what I expected to see, but you don't quite measure up to Nora's extravagant ideal."

"No, I suppose not," he said, his eyes twinkling. "I doubt if any man could do that."

We were all laughing, and I said:

"Oh, well, I know he's not much to look at; but I'm crazy about him, anyhow, and he wants to see the rooms."

He didn't think the little room nearly good enough for me, but he said that big suite of rooms in front was just the thing. That made me laugh. Did he suppose any stenographer could afford a luxurious suite of rooms like that? There was a long room that ran across the front of the house, with big bay-windows and a great fireplace, and opening out from this room was a large bedroom, with a bath-room adjoining it. As one may see, they weren't exactly the rooms a girl getting fifteen dollars a week could afford.

I said:

"Tell him just how much you intend to 'soak' your prospective roomer for these palatial chambers."

She started to say, "Twenty-five dollars a week," which was what she had told me she expected to charge, when I saw him make a sign to her, and she hesitated. Then I knew he intended to get her to name a cheap price just for me, and pay the difference himself. But now I was too quick for him. He had actually deceived me about those clothes. I had not the remotest idea till months afterward that he had paid for them and for many other things I subsequently bought, or thought I bought; but Mrs. Kingston had already told me the price of that room. So I said:

"It's no use. I know the price."

"Yes, but for a friend," he replied, "I'm sure Mrs. Kingston would make—er—a considerable reduction."

She said nothing. I don't know how she felt. Of course she knew that I was in love with him, but, as she told me afterward, she couldn't quite make out just what our relations were.

"That's all very well," I said, "but Mrs. Kingston has to get her rent."

Then he said:

"Well, but—er—I'm sure her practice is going to soar from now on. A great lawyer like Mrs. Kingston need not rent rooms at all."

Still she said nothing; but I saw her watching us both. He went on to urge me to have these rooms, but of course the idea was absurd. It was really provoking for him to keep pressing me to have things I simply could not afford and did not greatly want. I said all this. Besides, I added, it would be foolish for me to make any change at this time. Things were uncertain with me at the yards, now that Fred was leaving, and I should have to speak to Lolly, anyhow.

He argued that if I expected to write, I should have to move. No one could write in such disturbing circumstances. Of course that was true enough, and I said I'd talk it over that night with Lolly.

He took out some money then, and wanted to pay Mrs. Kingston so much down on the rooms, when I exclaimed that even if I did leave Lolly, I didn't mean to take these rooms, but the little one, if Mrs. Kingston was still willing to let me have it. She said she certainly was; that she badly wanted me to come. Both she and Mrs. Owens (the woman with her) needed a young person about the place to make them forget what old fogies they were, and that it would be like a real home to have me there, and we'd all be very happy.

It ended like this: he took that suite of rooms. He said they'd be there for me to have at any time I wanted them. I told him it was just a waste of money, for I simply would not let him pay for my room any more than I would let him pay for my clothes, and that was all there was to it.

He smiled curiously at that, and asked Mrs. Kingston what she thought of my clothes. She said:

"I haven't been able to take my eyes off them. Nora is wonderful! Does it seem possible that clothes can make such a difference?"

She wanted to know where I got them. I told her, and how cheap they were. She was amazed at the price, and Mr. Hamilton went over to the window and looked out. How clearly this all comes back to me now!

All the way back to my rooms he argued with me about the matter. He said if I had a pleasant place like that to live in, I'd soon be writing masterpieces (ah, he knew which way my desires ran!), and soon I'd not have to work in offices at all. To take rooms like those, he said, was really an investment. Business men all did things that way. It was part of the game. He wanted me to try it, for a while, and at last I said in desperation:

"What's the use of talking about it? I tell you, I haven't got the money."

Then he said (I never knew a man who could so persist about a thing on which he had set his heart):

"Now, look here, Nora, I've got more money than is decent for any one person to have, and I want to spend it on you. I want to give you things—comforts and luxuries and all the pretty things a girl like you ought to have. If you could see yourself now, you'd realize what a difference even clothes make. And so with other things. I want to take hold of you and make you over. I never wanted to do anything so much in my life before. Now you're going to be a good girl, aren't you, and not deny me the pleasure—the real joy it gives me to do things for you, dear little girl?"

By this time I was nearly crying, but I set my teeth together, and determined not to be won over to something I knew was not right.

"You told me once," I said, "that all any one had ever wanted of you was your money—your 'dirty money,' you called it; and now, just because I won't take it from you, you get angry with me."

"Well, but, confound it! I didn't mean you then."

"Oh, yes, you did, too; because you said I'd be sending for more money in a week, and you said that I was made to have it, and men would give—"

He put a stop to my too vivid recollections.

"But, child, I had no idea then of the kind of girl you were,"—he lowered his voice, and added tenderly, he was trying so hard to have his way!—"of the exceptional, wonderful little girl you are."

"But I wouldn't be exceptional or wonderful," I protested, "if I took your money. I'd be common. No; I'm not going to let people say you keep me!"

"Where did you hear that word?" he demanded roughly.

"From Lolly—and the girls at the Y. W. C. A. Oh, don't you suppose I know what that means?" I was looking straight at him now, and I saw his face turn red, but whether with anger or embarrassment, I do not know. He said in a sort of suppressed way:

"Don't you know that men who keep women are their lovers?"

I nodded.

He sat up stiffly now, and he gave me a cold, almost sneering, look that made me shiver. Then he said:

"Have I ever given you the slightest reason to suppose I wanted to be your lover?"

I shriveled up not only at his words, but at his look, and I turned my face away, and looked out of the window of the cab without seeing anything. It was true he had never pretended to care for me. I was the one who had done all the caring, and now it almost seemed as if he were throwing this up to me as something of which to be ashamed. But though my face was burning, I felt no shame, only a sort of misery.

"Well?" he prompted me, for I had not answered that last brutal query. Without looking at him, I said, in a shaking little voice, for I was heartbroken to think that he could use such a tone to me or look at me in that way:

"No, you haven't. In fact, if you had, perhaps I might have done what you wanted."

He came closer to me in the carriage when I said that, but I shrank away from him. I was nearer to disliking him then than at any time in my acquaintance with him.

"You mean," he said, "that if I were your lover, you would be willing to—live with me—like that? Is that what you mean, Nora?"

"Oh, I don't know what I mean," I said. "I don't pretend to be respectable and good in the way the women of your class are. I suppose I have no morals. I'm only a girl in love with a man; and if—if—he cared for me as I did for him, I'd be willing to do anything in the world he wished me to. I'd be willing to die for him. But if he didn't—if he didn't care for me, don't you see, I couldn't take anything from him. I should feel degraded."

It was a tangled, passionate sort of reasoning. For a long time after that we rode along in silence, I looking out of the window, and he looking constantly at me. I could feel his eyes on me, and I did not dare to turn around. Then presently he said:

"I'm all kinds of a rotter, Nora, but I'm straight about you. You're my wonderful girl, the oasis in my life. I wouldn't harm a hair of your precious little head. If I were to tell you I loved you, I would precipitate a tragedy upon you that you do not deserve. So I am not going to say any such thing to you." He cleared his throat, and as I said nothing, he went on strongly, it seemed to me:

"Your friend, Lolly, is right about men, and I'm not different from other men as far as women are concerned; but in your case I am. My desire to do things for you is based on no selfish design. I assure you of that. I simply have an overwhelming desire to take care of you, Nora, to help you."

I said with as much composure as I could command:

"Thank you, I don't need help. I'm not so badly off as you think. I make pretty good money, and, anyway, I'm independent, and that's a big thing."

"But you have to work like a slave. I can't bear to think of that, and as for being independent, you won't be any the less so if you let me do things for you. You may go on with your life in your own way. I'll never interfere or try to dictate to you about anything."

Almost hysterically I cried out:

"Oh, please stop talking about this! Every time you come here you scold me about something."

"Why, Nora," he said aggrievedly, "I have never asked you to do anything but this. That's the only thing I ever scolded you about."

"Look how you acted that first night, when you saw me with Lolly and Mr. Chambers, and then the night I was up with Fred. You wanted to beat me! I saw it in your face. You could no more help dictating to and scolding me than you can help coming to see me now."

The last sentence slipped out before I knew it, and he sat up sharply at that, and then laughed, uncomfortably.

"I am a dog in the manger as far as you are concerned," he said; "but I'll turn over a new leaf if you'll let me do these things for you."

I smiled ruefully, for I was beginning to know him so well now, and I sighed. He asked me why I sighed, and then I asked him in turn just why he wanted to do these things for me. He paused a moment, and then said slowly, and not without considerable emotion:

"I've told you why before, Nora. I'm interested in you. You're my find, my discovery. I take a special pride in everything connected with you. You're the one thing in life I take a real interest in, and I want to watch you, and see you develop. I haven't the slightest doubt of your eventual success."

"Hum! You look upon me as a sort of curiosity, don't you?"

"Nonsense! Don't talk so foolishly!"

But I knew that that was just how he did regard me, and it made me sick at heart. My beautiful day had clouded over. I supposed that nothing in the world would ever induce this man to admit any feeling for me but interest. Well, I wanted to love and to be loved, and it was a cold sort of substitute he was offering me—pretty clothes and fine rooms. I could earn all those things myself in time.

"Now, then," he said, "you are going to be my darling, reasonable little girl, aren't you? After all, it isn't so much I am asking of you. All I want you to do is to leave your position and go to live with this Mrs. Kingston. She struck me as being all right, and the rooms are exceedingly attractive, though we'll furnish them over ourselves. And then you are going to let me get you the proper kind of clothes to wear. I'll choose them myself for you, Nora. Then, since you won't go to school,—and, you see, I'm willing to let that go,—why, we can arrange for you to take special lessons in languages and things like that, and there are certain English courses you can take up at Northwestern. And I want you to study music, too, piano and vocal—the violin, too, if you like. I'm specially fond of music, and I think it would be a good thing for you to take it up. Then in the spring you shall go abroad. I have to go myself about that time, and I want to see your face when you see Europe, honey." That was the only Southern endearing term he ever applied to me, and I had never heard it used before. "It will be a revelation to you. And now the whole thing is settled, isn't it?"

I hated, after all this, to have to refuse again, so I didn't answer him, and he said, taking my hand, and leaning, oh, so coaxingly toward me:

"It's all settled, isn't it, dear?"

I turned around, and shouted at him almost hysterically:

"No, it isn't. And I wish you'd shut up about those things. You only make me miserable."

If I had stung him, he could not have drawn back from me more sharply.

"Oh, very well," he said, and threw himself back in his seat, his face looking like a thunder-cloud.

He didn't speak another word to me, and when the carriage stopped at my door, he got out, assisted me from the carriage, and then immediately got in again himself. I stood at the curb, my hand on the door of the carriage, and I said:

"Please don't go like this."

"I'm sorry, but I am taking the 6:09 train."

"Take a later train."

"No, thank you."

"Please!"

"Sorry. Good-by."

"Please don't be angry with me!"

He didn't answer. It was terrible to have him go like that, and I asked him when he was coming back.

"I can't say," was his curt response. Then his angry glance fixed me, and he said slowly:

"You can let me know when you take those rooms I chose for you. I'll come then—at once."

And that is the cruel way he left me. I was heartbroken in a way, but I was angry, too. I went up to my room, and sat on the couch, and as I slowly pulled off my new gloves, I was not thinking kindly of Mr. R. A. Hamilton. No man had a right to impose his will in this way on a girl and to demand of her something that she could not do without losing her self-respect. I asked myself whether, because I loved this man, I was willing to make of myself a pusillanimous little door-mat, or if I had enough pride to stand by my own convictions?

I had humbled myself enough to him; indeed, I had virtually offered myself to him. But he did not want me. He had made that clear enough. If, in the circumstances, I took from him the gifts he offered me, I would roll up a debt I could never wipe out. Now, although poor and working, I was a free woman. What I had, I honestly earned. I was no doll or parasite who needed to be carried by others. No! To retain my belief in my own powers, I must prove that they actually existed. Only women without resources in themselves, without gifts or brains, were "kept" by men, either as mistresses or wives or from charity, as Hamilton wished to "keep" me. I had the youthful conviction that I was one of the exceptional souls of the world, and could carry myself. Was I, then, to be bought by the usual foolish things that attract the ordinary woman? No! Not even my love could alter my character.

Now, there really was a fine streak in me, for I did want pretty things (what young girl does not?), I hated my work, and I loved this man, and wanted above all things on earth to please him.

Lolly said, to jerk one's mind from too much brooding over one man, one should think of another, I discovered another method of distraction. Pretty clothes are a balm even to a broken heart, and although I was clever, I was also eternally feminine. My things had arrived from the shop, and they were so lovely,—so much lovelier than I had thought,—that I was enchanted. Lolly came in while I was lifting the things from the boxes. I hadn't taken off my suit, and she turned me around to look at me.

"Isn't it stunning, Lolly?" I asked. "And, just think, it was only fifteen dollars, suit, hat, muff, and all."

Lolly's unbelieving glance swept me, then she threw her cigarette down, and said spitefully:

"For the love of Mike, Nora, cut it out! You're a poor little liar!"

"Liar! What do you mean, Lolly Hope?"

I was furious at the insult, capping all I had gone through.

"That suit you have on never cost one penny less than $150. The fur alone is easily worth half of that. It's silver fox, an inch of which is worth several dollars, and that muff—" She laughed disgustedly. "What do you take me for, anyhow, to try to spring that fifteen-dollar gag on me?"

"It was marked down, I tell you, at a bargain sale."

"Oh, come off, Nora! Don't try that on me. I know where you got those clothes. That man Hamilton gave them to you. You didn't follow my advice, I see." She shrugged her shoulders. "Of course it's your own affair, and I'm the last to blame you or any other girl for a thing like that, but, for heaven's sake, don't think it necessary to make up fairy-tales to me!"

"Lolly, I swear to you that I paid for these myself."

"Tell it to the marines!" said Lolly.

"Then see for yourself. Here are the price-tags, and here's the bill," I cried excitedly, and I thrust them upon her. Everything came to exactly forty dollars. Lolly looked the bill over carefully; then she put her cigarette in her mouth, and looked at me. All of a sudden she began to laugh. She threw her head back upon the sofa pillows and just laughed and laughed, while I became angrier and angrier with her. I waited till she was through, and then I said, very much injured:

"Now you can apologize to me, Lolly Hope."

"You blessed infant," she cried, "I'm in the dust at your feet. One thing's sure, and I guess friend Hamilton is wise to that: there's no one like you in this dull old world of ours!"