man's teeth, set in almost ungovernable anger. "Take back this letter,
as you call it, and leave my room."

"Nevaire! You will not read? But you shall, you shall. Behold another!
One, two, three, four!" Madly they flew from her hand. Madly she
continued her vituperative attack. "Beast! beast! That she should pour
out her innocent heart to you, you! I do not want your money, Monsieur
of the common street, of the common house. It would be dirt. Pierre, it
would be dirt. Ah, bah! je m'oublie tout a fait. Pierre, il est bete. Il
refuse de les toucher. Mais il faut qu'il les touche, si je les laisse
sur le plancher. Va-t'en! Je me moque de lui. Canaille! L'homme du
peuple, tout a fait du peuple!"

A loud slam--the skurrying of feet through the hall, accompanied by the
slower and heavier tread of the so-called brother, then silence,
and such silence that Sweetwater fancied he could catch the sound of
Brotherson's heavy breathing. His own was silenced to a gasp. What a
treasure of a girl! How natural her indignation! What an instinct she
showed and what comprehension! This high and mighty handling of a most
difficult situation and a most difficult man, had imposed on Brotherson,
had almost imposed upon himself. Those letters so beautiful, so
spirituelle! Yet, the odds were that she had never read them, much less
abstracted them. The minx! the ready, resourceful, wily, daring minx!

But had she imposed on Brotherson? As the silence continued, Sweetwater
began to doubt. He understood quite well the importance of his
neighbour's first movement. Were he to tear those letters into shreds!
He might be thus tempted. All depended on the strength of his present
mood and the real nature of the secret which lay buried in his heart.

Was that heart as flinty as it seemed? Was there no place for doubt or
even for curiosity, in its impenetrable depths? Seemingly, he had
not moved foot or hand since his unwelcome visitors had left. He was
doubtless still staring at the scattered sheets lying before him;
possibly battling with unaccustomed impulses; possibly weighing deeds
and consequences in those slow moving scales of his in which no man
could cast a weight with any certainty how far its even balance would be
disturbed.

There was a sound as of settling coal. Only at night would one expect to
hear so slight a sound as that in a tenement full of noisy children.
But the moment chanced to be propitious, and it not only attracted the
att