ing with him her one big chance to reach the light. You
see, she did not know the lodger. Things might have been different if
she had. But he was never a human being to her, even after she knew
the truth; only a symbol, a means to the great end.

Her brothers went away--to the penitentiary and other places. One by
one the flood of life caught her sisters and swept them out, she did
not know to what. She never even wondered. She had not been taught to
care. She had never been taught anything. The knowledge that she must
be famous danced through her dreams like a will-o'-the-wisp; had grown
within her in the shape of a great pain that never ceased; only eased
a little as she strove mightily toward the goal.

So she still sold papers, a homely, gawky, long-legged girl in ragged
clothes much too small for her, and slaved at Maverick's for the
lodger's nightly dole that he might teach her and she be famous.

At first he was keen on the meat and drink--more especially the drink.
Later, gradually, a change came over him. Only Cake did not notice
this change. She was too set on being taught so she could become
famous. At first the lodger was all oaths and blows with shouts of
fierce, derisive laughter intermingled.

"My God!" he would cry. "If Noyes could only see this--if he only
could!"

This Noyes, it appeared, was a man he furiously despised. When he was
in the third stage of drunkenness he would never teach Cake, but would
only abuse his enemies, and this Noyes invariably came in for a
fearful shower of epithets. It was he as Cake heard it, sitting
huddled on the old dry-goods box, the candle casting strange shadows
into her gaunt, unchildlike face, who was the cause of the lodger's
downfall. But for Noyes--with a blasting array of curses before the
name--he would now have what Cake so ardently strove for: Fame. But
for Noyes he would be acting in his own theatre, riding in his own
limousine, wearing his own diamonds, entertaining his own friends upon
his own gold plate.

When he was still too sober to take a really vital interest in the
teaching, he was a misanthrope, bitter and brutal, with an astonishing
command of the most terrible words. At these times he made the gravest
charges against Noyes; charges for which the man should be made
accountable, even to such a one as the lodger. One evening Cake sat
watching him, waiting for this mood to pass so that the teaching might
begin.

"If I was youse," she said at