called you on the telephone I don't know how
many times, but never could find you in."

"I'm sorry," he said. "But this is kind of a busy time with me."

She pointed to a low chair, very deep and comfortable looking, which was
near the sofa.

"Get a pillow for your back," she said, "and sit there." He did as
commanded, and she looked at him with something like wistfulness in her
great eyes. "Oh, it's so nice to have you there, Bat; you can be so
still and wonderful when you want to."

"Still, yes," agreed Scanlon, "but I'm not so sure about the wonderful."

She smiled at him.

"If you were quite sure of that," she said, "you wouldn't be nearly so
nice." Her great mass of bronze hair was loosely arranged about her
head, and against the delicate blue of a pillow it shone like red gold
in the light of the reading lamp. "I'm so glad it is Sunday," she went
on, "and that I am not to play to-night. For I'm tired, Bat, more tired
than you'd believe."

"I'd believe it, no matter how strong you made it," said he. "What
you've gone through has been enough to tire any one."

She reached out and patted his hand gently as it rested upon the arm of
his chair.

"Bat, you are so big and strong that you seem to give out sympathy
naturally. And that is a quality which all women like." She paused a
moment; her white, strong, beautifully-modeled fingers trifled with the
bracelet of raw gold; her eyes were bright as though with tears, and
there was a sad little smile about the corners of her mouth. "And it is
so easy for a woman to be mistaken in men," she proceeded. "In the end
she always selects and holds to one, and she is apt to judge all the
others by him.--If he is weak, she feels that all men are weak; if he is
strong, they are all strong. And if he is cruel and mean and selfish,
she feels a desire to hate them all--and sometimes she does!"

Bat nodded his head slowly and wisely.

"Sure," he said. "That's to be expected. But in the end," hopefully,
"her mind often clears up on that point. She finds, if she gives herself
the chance, that there is really a big difference between them."

"You have some idea what my experience has been in the last five years
or so," she said. "It has not been beautiful, Bat; it has, at times,
been hideously ugly; and the tears I have wept and the things I have
borne and the vows I have made have been very many. There have been
times when I could think only of death, so completely humbled ha