e wretched places. I
ate and slept in one or two, coming home. Rotten." The possibility of
Cissie finding herself in such a place moved Peter.

The girl nodded submissively to his judgment, and said in a queer voice:
"That's why I--I didn't want to travel alone, Peter."

"No, it's a bad idea--" and then Peter perceived that a queer quality
was creeping into the tete-a-tete.

She returned his look unsteadily, but with a curious persistence.

[Illustration: "You-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he
stammered]

"I--I d-don't want to travel a-alone, Peter," she gasped.

Her look, her voice suddenly brought home to the an the amazing
connotation of her words. He stared at her, felt his face grow warm with
a sharp, peculiar embarrassment. He hardly knew what to say or do before
her intent and piteous eyes.

"You--you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered.

The girl suddenly began trembling, now that her last reserve of
indirection had been torn away.

"Listen, Peter," she began breathlessly. "I'm not the sort of woman you
think. If I hadn't accused myself, we'd be married now. I--I wanted you
more than anything in the world, Peter, but I did tell you. Surely,
surely, Peter, that shows I am a good woman--th-the real I. Dear, dear
Peter, there is a difference between a woman and her acts. Peter, you're
the first man in all my life, in a-all my life who ever came to me k-
kindly and gently; so I had to l-love you and t-tell you, Peter."

The girl's wavering voice broke down completely; her face twisted with
grief. She groped for her chair, sat down, buried her face in her arms
on the table, and broke into a chattering outbreak of sobs that sounded
like some sort of laughter.

Her shoulders shook; the light gleamed on her soft, black Caucasian
hair. There was a little rent in one of the seams in her cheap jacket,
at one of the curves where her side molded into her shoulder. The
customer made garment had found Cissie's body of richer mold than it had
been designed to shield. And yet in Peter's distress and tenderness and
embarrassment, this little rent held his attention and somehow misprized
the wearer.

It seemed symbolic in the searching white light. He could see the very
break in the thread and the widened stitches at the ends of the rip. Her
coat had given way because she was modeled more nearly like the Venus de
Milo than the run of womankind. He felt the little irony of the t