bby gown, her fireless room,
the queer couch that was her bed, the hunger and the nakedness of
her surroundings?

"You sat," she said, "on my trunk, the wooden one with the nails on
it. It must have been so uncomfortable."

He said nothing. Even now, when those things were only a
remembrance, the pity of them made him dumb.

"And the next time you came," said she, "you made a fire for me.
Don't you remember?"

He remembered. He felt again that glow of self-congratulation which
warmed him whenever he considered the comfort of her present state;
or came into her room and found her accumulating, piece by piece,
her innocent luxuries. Nobody but he had helped her. It was
disagreeable to him to think that another man should have had a hand
in it.

Yet there would be others. He had already revealed her to two or
three.

"I wonder how you knew," she said.

"How I knew what?"

"That I was worth while."

He gave an inward start. She had made him suddenly aware that in
those days he had not known it. He had had no idea what was in her.
She had had nothing then "to show" him.

It was as if she were asking him, as if he were asking himself, what
it was that had drawn him to her, when, in the beginning, it wasn't
and couldn't have been the gift? Why had he followed her up when he
might so easily have dropped her? He had found her, in the
beginning, only because his old friend, Mrs. Dysart, had written to
him (from a distance that left her personally irresponsible), and
had asked him to look for her, to discover what had become of her,
to see if there was anything that he could do. Mrs. Dysart had
intimated that she hardly thought anything could be done; that there
wasn't, you know, very much in her--very much, that is to say, that
would interest Wilton Caldecott. They had been simply pitiful, the
girl's poor first efforts, the things that, when he had screwed his
courage to the point of asking for them, were all she had to show
him.

"I was too bad for words, you know," said she, tracking his thought.

"You were. You were."

"There wasn't a gleam, a spark----"

"Not one."

They laughed. The reminiscence of her "badness" seemed to inspire
them both with a secret exultation. They drew together, uncovering,
displaying to each other the cherished charm of it. Neither could
say why the thought of it was so pleasing.

"And look at you now," said Caldecott.

"Yes," she cried, "look at me now. What was it, do you t