of strength and comfort, came also a sense of
the little conventions that belong; and she began to tell him her little
story. It was one of a thousand such as the city yawns at every day--the
shop girl's story of insufficient wages, further reduced by "fines" that
go to swell the store's profits; of time lost through illness; and then
of lost positions, lost hope, and--the knock of the adventurer upon the
green door.

But to Rudolf the history sounded as big as the Iliad or the crisis in
"Junie's Love Test."

"To think of you going through all that," he exclaimed.

"It was something fierce," said the girl, solemnly.

"And you have no relatives or friends in the city?"

"None whatever."

"I am all alone in the world, too," said Rudolf, after a pause.

"I am glad of that," said the girl, promptly; and somehow it pleased the
young man to hear that she approved of his bereft condition.

Very suddenly her eyelids dropped and she sighed deeply.

"I'm awfully sleepy," she said, "and I feel so good."

Then Rudolf rose and took his hat. "I'll say good-night. A long night's
sleep will be fine for you."

He held out his hand, and she took it and said "good-night." But her
eyes asked a question so eloquently, so frankly and pathetically that
he answered it with words.

"Oh, I'm coming back to-morrow to see how you are getting along. You
can't get rid of me so easily."

Then, at the door, as though the way of his coming had been so much less
important than the fact that he had come, she asked: "How did you come
to knock at my door?"

He looked at her for a moment, remembering the cards, and felt a sudden
jealous pain. What if they had fallen into other hands as adventurous
as his? Quickly he decided that she must never know the truth. He would
never let her know that he was aware of the strange expedient to which
she had been driven by her great distress.

"One of our piano tuners lives in this house," he said. "I knocked at
your door by mistake."

The last thing he saw in the room before the green door closed was her
smile.

At the head of the stairway he paused and looked curiously about him.
And then he went along the hallway to its other end; and, coming back,
ascended to the floor above and continued his puzzled explorations.
Every door that he found in the house was painted green.

Wondering, he descended to the sidewalk. The fantastic African was still
there. Rudolf confronted him with his two cards in