advance--for a six weeks' special edition de luxe Love-Letter Serial.
And I spent your money the day I got it; and worse than that I owed
it--long before I even got it! And worst of all, I've got a chance now
to go home to-morrow for all the rest of the winter. No, I don't mean
that exactly. I mean I've found a chance to go up to Vermont and have
all my expenses paid--just for reading aloud every day to a lady who
isn't so awfully deaf. But you see I still owe you a week's
subscription--and I can't refund you the money because I haven't got it.
And it happens that I can't run a fancy love-letter business from the
special house that I'm going to. There aren't enough resources
there--and all that. So I thought that perhaps--perhaps--considering how
much you've been teasing and teasing to know who I was--I thought that
perhaps if I came here this evening and let you really see me--that
maybe, you know--maybe, not positively, but just _maybe_--you'd be
willing to call that equivalent to one week's subscription. _Would
you?_"

In the sharp eagerness of her question she turned her shrouded face
full-view to Stanton's curious gaze, and he saw the little nervous,
mischievous twitch of her lips at the edge of her masking pink veil
resolve itself suddenly into a whimper of real pain. Yet so vivid were
the lips, so blissfully, youthfully, lusciously carmine, that every
single, individual statement she made seemed only like a festive
little announcement printed in red ink.

"I guess I'm not a very--good business manager," faltered the
red-lipped voice with incongruous pathos. "Indeed I know I'm not
because--well because--the Serial-Letter Co. has 'gone broke!
Bankrupt', is it, that you really say?"

With a little mockingly playful imitation of a stride she walked the
first two fingers of her right hand across the surface of the table to
Stanton's discarded supper dishes.

"Oh, please may I have that piece of cold toast?" she asked
plaintively. No professional actress on the stage could have spoken
the words more deliciously. Even to the actual crunching of the toast
in her little shining white teeth, she sought to illustrate as
fantastically as possible the ultimate misery of a bankrupt person
starving for cold toast.

Stanton's spontaneous laughter attested his full appreciation of her
mimicry.

"But I tell you the Serial-Letter Co. _has_ 'gone broke'!" she
persisted a trifle wistfully. "I guess--I guess it takes a man to