ng in that figure to hold her gaze--it
was so vague, so like a shadow of something that had been. She saw the
few broken chairs, the half-filled wash tub, the dish-pan with its
freight of soiled cups and plates. She saw the gas stove, with its
battered coffee-pot, and a mattress or two piled high with dingy
bedding. And, in one corner, she saw--with a new sense of horror--the
reclining figure of Pa.

Pa was sleeping. Sleeping heavily, with his mouth open and his tousled
head slipping to one side. One great hairy hand was clenched about an
empty bottle--one huge foot, stockingless and half out of its shoe, was
dragging limply off the heap of blankets that was his bed. A stubble of
beard made his already dark face even more sinister, his tousled hair
looked as if it had never known the refining influences of a comb or
brush. As Rose-Marie stared at him, half fascinated, he turned--with a
spasmodic, drunken movement--and flung one heavy arm above his head.

The room was not a large one. But, at that moment, it seemed appallingly
spacious to Rose-Marie. She turned, almost with a feeling of affection,
toward Bennie. At least she had seen him before. And, as if he
interpreted her feeling, Bennie spoke.

"We got two other rooms," he told her, "one that Ella an' Lily sleep in,
an' one that Jim pays fer, his own self. Ma an' Pa an' me--we sleep
_here_! Say, don't you be too scared o' Pa--he'll stay asleep fer a long
time, now. He won't wake up unless he's shook. Will he, Ma?"

Mrs. Volsky nodded her head with a worn out, apathetic movement.
Noiselessly, but with the appearance of a certain terrible effort under
the shell of quiet, she moved away across the room toward the stove.

"She's goin' t' warm up th' coffee," Bennie said. "She'll give you some,
in a minute, if yer want it!"

Rose-Marie was about to speak, about to assure Bennie that she didn't
want any of the coffee, when steps sounded on the stairs. They were
hurried steps; steps suggesting to the listener that five flights were
nothing, after all! Rose-Marie found herself turning as a hand fell
heavily upon a door-knob, and the door swung in.

A young man stood jauntily upon the threshold. Rose-Marie's first
impression of him was one of extreme, almost offensive neatness--of sleek
hair, that looked like patent leather, and of highly polished brown
shoes. She saw that his blue and white striped collar was speckless, that
his blue tie was obviously new, that his tr