g by with Michael, who was assuring her that the big blonde was
"certain a grand bouncer," when she was smitten with a sickening
dream-panic at her own ingratitude. "He has given me everything he had
in the world, poor old man," she said to herself, and approached him
remorsefully; but when she looked at him again she saw that he had the
face and figure of a young stranger, and that the garments that had
seemed to her to be streaming and unsightly rags, were merely the
picturesque habiliments of a young artist, apparently newly translated
from the Boulevard Montparnasse. At the sight of the stranger a
heart-sinking terror seemed to take possession of her, and so, quaking
and quavering in mortal intimidation,--she woke up.

She laughed at herself as she brushed the sleep out of her eyes, and
drew the gradual long breaths that soothed the physical agitation that
still beset her.

"I'm scared," she said, "I'm as excited and nervous as a youngster on
circus day.--Oh! I'm glad the sun shines."

Nancy lived in a little apartment of her own in that hinterland of
what is now down-town New York, between the Rialto and its more
conventional prototype, Society,--that is, she lived east of Broadway
on a cross-street in the forties. The maid who took care of her had
been in her aunt's employ for years, and had seen Nancy grow from her
rather spoiled babyhood to a hoydenish childhood, and so on to
soft-eyed, vibrant maturity. She was the only person who tyrannized
over Nancy. She brought her a cup of steaming hot water with a pinch
of soda in it, now.

"You were moaning and groaning in your sleep," she said, in the
strident accents of her New England birthplace, "so you'll have to
drink this before I give you a living thing for your breakfast."

"I will, Hitty," Nancy said, "and thank you kindly. Now I know you've
been making pop-overs, and are afraid they will disagree with me. I'm
glad--for I need the moral effect of them."

"I dunno whether pop-overs is so moral, or so immoral if it comes to
that. I notice it's always the folks that ain't had much to do with
morals one way or the other that's so almighty glib about them."

"There's a good deal in what you say, Hitty. If I had time I would go
into the matter with you, but this is my busy day." Nancy sat up in
bed, and began sipping her hot water obediently. She looked very
childlike in her straight cut, embroidered night-gown, with a long
chestnut pig-tail over either shoul