to themselves.

Jill was pale, and she was breathing quickly, but she forced a smile.

"Well, Wally," she said. "My career as a manager didn't last long, did
it?"

"What are you going to do?"

Jill looked down the street.

"I don't know," she said. "I suppose I shall have to start trying to
find something."

"But...."

Jill drew him suddenly into the dark alley-way leading to the
stage-door of the Gotham Theatre's nearest neighbour, and, as she did
so, a long, thin form, swathed in an overcoat and surmounted by an
opera-hat, flashed past.

"I don't think I could have gone through another meeting with Mr.
Pilkington," said Jill. "It wasn't his fault, and he was quite
justified, but what he said about Uncle Chris rather hurt."

Wally, who had ideas of his own similar to those of Mr. Pilkington on
the subject of Uncle Chris and had intended to express them, prudently
kept them unspoken.

"I suppose," he said, "there is no doubt...?"

"There can't be. Poor Uncle Chris! He is like Freddie. He means well!"

There was a pause. They left the alley and walked down the street.

"Where are you going now?" asked Wally.

"I'm going home."

"Where's home?"

"Forty-ninth Street. I live in a boarding-house there."

A sudden recollection of the boarding-house at which she had lived in
Atlantic City smote Wally, and it turned the scale. He had not
intended to speak, but he could not help himself.

"Jill!" he cried. "It's no good. I _must_ say it! I want to get you
out of all this. I want to take care of you. Why should you go on
living this sort of life, when.... Why won't you let me...?"

He stopped. Even as he spoke, he realized the futility of what he was
saying. Jill was not a girl to be won with words.

They walked on in silence for a moment. They crossed Broadway, noisy
with night traffic, and passed into the stillness on the other side.

"Wally," said Jill at last.

She was looking straight in front of her. Her voice was troubled.

"Yes?"

Jill hesitated.

"Wally, you wouldn't want me to marry you if you knew you weren't the
only man in the world that mattered to me, would you?"

They had reached Sixth Avenue before Wally replied.

"No!" he said.

For an instant, Jill could not have said whether the feeling that shot
through her like the abrupt touching of a nerve was relief or
disappointment. Then suddenly she realized that it was disappointment.
It was absurd to her to feel disappointed, but