row. It isn't that, I tell you. But I know well enough"--he shook his
fist vaguely--"that she don't care an old tomato can for me. Why should
she?" he demanded with a curious defiance. "In the name of Heaven, why
should she?"

"I don't know," said Hollanden; "I don't know, I'm sure. But, then,
women have no social logic. This is the great blessing of the world.
There is only one thing which is superior to the multiplicity of social
forms, and that is a woman's mind--a young woman's mind. Oh, of course,
sometimes they are logical, but let a woman be so once, and she will
repent of it to the end of her days. The safety of the world's balance
lies in woman's illogical mind. I think----"

"Go to blazes!" said Hawker. "I don't care what you think. I am sure of
one thing, and that is that she doesn't care a hang for me!"

"I think," Hollanden continued, "that society is doing very well in its
work of bravely lawing away at Nature; but there is one immovable
thing--a woman's illogical mind. That is our safety. Thank Heaven,
it----"

"Go to blazes!" said Hawker again.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

As Hawker again entered the room of the great windows he glanced in
sidelong bitterness at the chandelier. When he was seated he looked at
it in open defiance and hatred.

Men in the street were shovelling at the snow. The noise of their
instruments scraping on the stones came plainly to Hawker's ears in a
harsh chorus, and this sound at this time was perhaps to him a
_miserere_.

"I came to tell you," he began, "I came to tell you that perhaps I am
going away."

"Going away!" she cried. "Where?"

"Well, I don't know--quite. You see, I am rather indefinite as yet. I
thought of going for the winter somewhere in the Southern States. I am
decided merely this much, you know--I am going somewhere. But I don't
know where. 'Way off, anyhow."

"We shall be very sorry to lose you," she remarked. "We----"

"And I thought," he continued, "that I would come and say 'adios' now
for fear that I might leave very suddenly. I do that sometimes. I'm
afraid you will forget me very soon, but I want to tell you that----"

"Why," said the girl in some surprise, "you speak as if you were going
away for all time. You surely do not mean to utterly desert New York?"

"I think you misunderstand me," he said. "I give this important air to
my farewell to you because to me it is a very important event. Perhaps
you recollect that once I told you that