last and walked in the least frequented streets, and
Peter held her hand; the warmth of it ran with a pleasant tingling in
his veins. He seemed to have touched in her palm the point at which the
city came alive to him. They walked and walked and yet it seemed that
something lacked to bring the evening to a finish; it was incredible to
Peter that after all his loneliness he should have to let her go.

"We could go up to my place," Ethel suggested. "It's up here." He hadn't
suspected that she had been guiding him.

"I guess not to-night." Peter's blood was singing in his ears. In the
dark of the unfrequented street he could feel her young body leaning
toward his.

"Say, you know I ain't after the money the way some girls are; I like
you ... honest----"

"I guess I'd better go home." But they went on up the side street a
little farther. "Good-bye," he said, but he did not let her go.

She shook her hand free at last.

"Oh, well, of course, if you don't want to...." He felt her soft hands
fumbling at his face; she drew him down to a kiss. Suddenly she sprang
away, laughing. "Go, you silly!"

"Ethel!" he cried, but he lost her in the dark. He should have let her
go at that; he knew he should. In spite of her paying half, his dinner
had cost him more than two ordinary dinners ... and besides.... He
couldn't help, however, walking around by the viaduct for several
evenings the next week, and at last he saw her. She was going by without
speaking, but he got squarely in front of her.

"Ethel!"

She pretended just to have recognized him.

"Oh, you here? I thought you'd gone back to the country!"

"You aren't mad with me about ... the other night?" He did not quite
know how to express the quality of his desertion.

"Who? Me?" airily. "Oh, I guess there's just as good fish in the
sea----" She changed all at once under his young hunger for
companionship. "You're good," she said; "you're the real thing."

"You're good, too," he was certain, "when you're with me."

"Oh, it rubs off. Say, kid, I guess you got folks at home you're sending
money to and all that, and you got to get ahead in the world. Well, you
don't want to have nothing to do with my kind, and that's straight." The
deviltry she put on toward him failed pitifully. "Chase yourself, kid; I
just ain't good for you any more." Nevertheless they moved along the
parapet to the dark interval between the lights and there they kissed
again, this time with no underc