splendid couch of satin
and closing the box.

"I never saw such a man!" she exclaimed with an irritation that he felt
to be artificial. "After all you've been through, I should think you'd
have learned the value of money. Anyway, it's too beautiful for me.
And anyway, I couldn't take it--not to-night, anyway. And anyway--"
Her voice had acquired a huskiness in this speech that now left her
incoherent, and the light revealed a wetness in her eyes. She dabbed at
them with a handkerchief. "Of course you can take it to-night," he said
in masterful tones, "after all you've done for me."

"Now you listen," she began. "You don't know all I've done for you.
You don't know me at all. Suppose something came out about me that you
didn't think I'd 'a' been guilty of. You can't ever tell about people in
this business. You don't know me at all-not one little bit. I might 'a'
done lots of things that would turn you against me. I tell you you got
to wait and find out about things. I haven't the nerve to tell you, but
you'll find out soon enough--"

The expert in photoplays suffered a sudden illumination. This was a
scene he could identify--a scene in which the woman trembled upon the
verge of revealing to the man certain sinister details of her past,
spurred thereto by a scoundrel who blackmailed her. He studied the girl
in a new light. Undoubtedly, from her words, he saw one panic-stricken
by the threatened exposure of some dreadful complication in her own
past. Certainly she was suffering.

"I don't care if this fever does carry me off," she went on. "I know you
could never feel the same toward me after you found out--"

Again she was dabbing at her eyes, this time with the sleeve of her
jacket. A suffering woman stood before him. She who had always shown
herself so competent to meet trouble with laughing looks was being
overthrown by this nameless horror. Suddenly he knew that to him it
didn't matter so very much what crime she had been guilty of.

"I don't care what you've done," he said, his own voice husky. She
continued to weep.

He felt himself grow hot. "Listen here, Kid"--He now spoke with more
than a touch of the bully in his tone--"stop this nonsense. You--you
come here and give me a good big kiss--see what I mean?"

She looked up at him from wet eyes, and amazingly through her anguish
she grinned. "You win!" she said, and came to him.

He was now the masterful one. He took her protectingly in his arms. He
kissed