big, and they're willing to part with the
spondoolaks. That's the life!"

"I--You look it, Kit. I never seen a girl get back her looks and keep 'em
like you. I says to him to-night, I says, 'When I look at myself in the
glass, I wanna die.'"

"You're all there yet, Hanna. Your voice over here the other night was
something immense. Big enough to cut into any restaurant crowd, and that's
what counts in cabaret. I don't tell anybody how to run his life, but if
I had your looks and your contralto, I'd turn 'em into money, I would.
There's forty dollars a week in you this minute."

Mrs. Burkhardt's head went up. Her mouth had fallen open, her eyes
brightening as they widened.

"Kit--when you goin' back?"

"To-morrow a week, honey--if I live through it."

"Could--you help me--your little lawyer--your--"

"Remember, I ain't advising--"

"Could you, Kit, and to--to get a start?"

"They say it of me there ain't a string in the Bijou Cafe that I can't pull
my way."

"Could you, Kit? Would you?"

"I don't tell nobody how to run his life, Hanna. It's mighty hard to advise
the other fellow about his own business. I don't want it said in this town,
that's down on me, anyways, that Kit Scogin put ideas in Hanna Long's
head."

"You didn't, Kit. They been there. Once I answered an ad. to join a county
fair. I even sent money to a vaudeville agent in Cincinnati. I--"

"Nothing doing in vaudeville for our kind of talent. It's cabaret where the
money and easy hours is these days. Just a plain little solo act--contralto
is what you can put over. A couple of 'Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night'
sob-solos is all you need. I'll let you meet Billy Howe of the Bijou.
Billy's a great one for running in a chaser act or two."

"I--How much would it cost, Kittie, to--to--"

"Hundred and fifty done it for me, wardrobe and all."

"Kittie, I--Would you--"

"Sure I would! Only, remember, I ain't responsible. I don't tell anybody
how to run his life. That's something everybody's got to decide for
herself."

"I--have--decided, Kittie."

At something after that stilly one-o'clock hour when all the sleeping
noises of lath and wainscoting creak out, John Burkhardt lifted his head to
the moving light of a lamp held like a torch over him, even the ridge
of his body completely submerged beneath the great feather billow of an
oceanic walnut bedstead.

"Yes, Hanna?"

"Wake up!"

"I been awake--"

She set the lamp down on the brown-