ldn't go out with him so
much, if I were you. People will begin to notice it, and you know the way
they talk."

Helen tossed her head, but in her heart she knew that her cousin was
right--a knowledge which only made her the more defiant. Yes ...people
were beginning to notice it....

The Saturday afternoon before, when Burdon was taking her to the club in
his gallant new car, they had stopped at the station to let a train pass.
A girl on the sidewalk had smiled at Burdon and stared at Helen with
equal intensity and equal significance.

"Who was that?" asked Helen, when the train had passed.

"Oh, one of the girls at the office. She's in my department--sort of a
bookkeeper." Noticing Helen's silence he added more carelessly than
before, "You know how some girls act if you are any way pleasant to
them."

It was one of those trifling incidents which occasionally seem to have
the deepest effect upon life. That very afternoon, when Mary had tried to
warn her cousin, Helen had gone to the factory apparently to bring Mary
home, but in reality to see Burdon. She had been in his private office,
perched on the edge of his desk and swinging her foot, when the same girl
came in--the girl who had smiled and stared near the station.

"All right, Fanny," said Burdon without looking around. "Leave the
checks. I'll attend to them."

It seemed to Helen that the girl went out slowly, a sudden spot of colour
on each of her cheeks.

"You call her Fanny!" Helen asked, when, the door shut again.

"Yes," he said, busy with the checks. "They do more for you, when you are
decent with them."

"You think so?"

He caught the meaning in her voice and sighed a little as he sprawled his
signature on the next check. "I often wish I was a sour, old crab," he
said, half to Helen and half to himself. "I'd get through life a whole
lot better than I do."

Mary had come to the door then, ready to start for home. When Helen
passed through the outer office she saw the girl again, her cheek on her
palm, her head bent over her desk, dipping her pen in the red ink and
then pushing the point through her blotter pad. None of this was lost on
Helen, nor the girl's frown, nor the row of crimson blotches that
stretched across the blotter.

"She'll go in now to get those checks," thought Helen, as the car started
up the hill, and it was just then that Mary started to warn her about
going out so much with Burdon.

Once in the night Helen awoke and lay