of brass bands. Len Haswell had been walking
with the aimlessness of insomnia, and asking himself over and over one
question: "What changed it all?" In answer he accused himself and argued
the case for the woman without whom he was too lonely to go home and
face an empty house.

It was after one o'clock and the saloon doors were barred, but as he
passed a small place not far from the square, he saw a side door flap,
and he entered it. It was an unprepossessing door, outwardly labeled,
"ladies' entrance."

Haswell called for whiskey, and was served by a waiter in a spotted
apron, whose dank hair fell over a sallow and oily face. Save for
himself, there were only four other customers. In a corner partition a
slovenly woman in bedraggled finery berated the man who sat with bloated
eyes across from her. The waiter looked on sardonically. At another
table were two derelicts from one of the Garden side shows. A truculent
and beady-eyed dwarf whose face hardly showed above the boards was
brow-beating a cringing giant of unbelievable immensity. "You crabbed my
act, you big stiff," shrilled the midget truculently--and his huge
vis-a-vis fell into a volume of excuse and apology.

Haswell set down his glass half-empty. "No good," he muttered as he rose
and went out again into the streets. "One can't be alone." Yet he felt
very much alone.

* * * * *

In these days Paul Burton found his thoughts turning often to Marcia
Terroll and himself becoming more dependent on her companionship. In her
sunny courage and sparkle of repartee he found a tonic exhilaration for
his own jaded spirits and an antidote for growing morbidness. He knew
that her daily rounds of the managers' offices were fruitless, and that
she walked long distances to save nickels, and in his man's ignorance he
marveled because her white gloves were always spotless and her
appearance unmarked by poverty. With more money than he could use, his
impulse clamored to volunteer assistance--and his judgment forbade the
liberty. These days of growing intimacy were troubled days for him, too.

Loraine Haswell was away and her letters kept him reminded that the
purpose of her exile was ridding herself of those encumbrances which
stood between them. Yet in her absence, there was also the absence of
her personal fascination, the daily renewal of her hold on his senses,
and, strangely enough, he began to feel that instead of having barriers
swep