e next morning, when Roseleaf awoke, he was for some time in a sort of
stupor. Through the bright sunlight that filled his room he seemed to
scent the fumes of tobacco and of liquor. The place was filled, he
imagined, with that indefinable aroma that proceeds from a convivial
company made up of both sexes. He half believed that Jennie Pelham and
Mrs. Delavan were sitting by his bed, more brazen than the bell which,
from a neighboring steeple, told him the hour was ten. And surely, by
those curtains there, hiding the flame that filled their cheeks, were
the two "shop-girls," their pinched faces denoting slow starvation.
Boggs, and Isaac Leveson, and Archie Weil were there, all of them; and
the young man tossed uneasily on his pillow, struggling with the
remnant of nightmare that remained to cloud his brain.

When he was able to think and see clearly he sat up and rang for a
pitcher of ice water. He was consumed by thirst, and his forehead ached
blindly. When he had bathed his head and throat he turned, by a sudden
impulse, to his table, and took out the MSS. of the story he had begun.
Slowly he read over the pages, to the last one. Then, seizing his pen,
he devoted himself to the next chapter, without dressing, without
breakfasting.

It was four o'clock when he ceased work. He realized all at once that he
was feeling ill. The fact dawned upon him that he needed food, and
donning his garments, he took his way listlessly to a restaurant and
ordered something to eat. As he swallowed the morsels, he fell to
wondering how much temptation _he_ would be able to bear, with hunger as
a background.

He passed a good part of the evening in walking the streets, selecting,
instinctively, sections where he was least likely to meet any one he
knew. When he returned to his room he read over the MSS. he had written
that day, and into his troubled brain there came a sense of pleasure.
Gouger was right. To tell of such matters in a novel, one should know
them himself. Roseleaf could never have written of vice before he saw
Leveson's. Now, it was as plain to him as print, almost as easy to use
in fiction as virtue. What was to follow? He pondered over the plot he
had mapped out, and it grew clearer.

Daisy had given him no further encouragement--at least in words--since
that day she had said it was "risky" to ask her father, but he felt
certain that she regarded him with favor, and that if Mr. Fern put no
obstacles in the way she would