his own half of it, sometimes
stepping in puddles of water to do so and not infrequently being edged
off the curbstone by an accumulation of the unexpected.

Once in a while during his peregrinations some one recognised him and
bowed in a hesitating manner, as if trying to place him, and at such
times he responded with a beaming smile and a half-carried-out impulse
to stop for a bit of a chat, but always with a subsequent acceleration
of speed on discovering that the other fellow seemed to be in a hurry.
They doubtless knew him for Miss Duluth's husband, but for the life of
them they couldn't call him by name. Every one understood that Nellie
possessed a real name, but no one thought to ask what it was.

Moreover, Nellie had a small daughter whose name was Phoebe. She
unquestionably was a collaboration, but every one who knew the child
spoke of her as that "darling little girl of Nellie's." The only man
in New York who appeared to know Nellie's husband by name was the
postman, and he got it second-hand.

At the stage door of the theatre he was known as Miss Duluth's
husband, to the stage hands and the members of the chorus he was
What's-His-Name, to the principals he was "old chap," to Nellie
herself he was Harvey, to Phoebe he was "daddy," to the press agent he
was nameless--he didn't exist.

You could see Nellie in big red letters on all the billboards. She was
inevitable. Her face smiled at you from every nook and corner--and it
was a pretty face, too--and you had to get your tickets of the
scalpers if you wanted to see her in person any night in the week,
Sundays excepted. Hats, parasols, perfumes, and face powders were
named after her. It was Nellie here and Nellie there and Nellie
everywhere. The town was mad about her. It goes without saying that
her husband was not the only man in love with her.

As Harvey--let me see--oh, never mind--What's-His-Name--ambled up
Broadway on the morning of his introduction into this homely narrative
he was smiled at most bewitchingly by his wife--from a hundred
windows--for Nellie's smile was never left out of the lithographs (he
never missed seeing one of them, you may be sure)--but it never
occurred to him to resent the fact that she was smiling in the same
inviting way to every other man who looked.

He ambled on. At Forty-second Street he turned to the right, peering
at the curtained windows of the Knickerbocker with a sort of fearful
longing in his mild blue eyes, and