laring he should always consider himself engaged to her,
even if she did not consider herself engaged to him; begging that she
wear his class pin, or at least keep it for him if she would not wear
it, because the thought of its being in her possession would comfort him
in his loneliness.

It had comforted her in those first dreadful days after the fire to
think that he was alive and on his way to her. It never entered her head
but what he would come at once: when friends were looking for friends
and enemies were succoring one another, how should he fail her?

And then--not one word. Not even an inquiry in the paper; when that was
about all the papers were made up of for days after--column after column
of addresses and inquiries, along with the death notices.

And afterwards--not one word----

II

"I won't pretend this is accidental, Miss Stanton."

Ikey looked up startled, began to curl her feet up under her skirt,
decided that it was not worth while,--he was only one of the
boarders,--and offered buns and candy with indifferent promptness.

"There's a gang of toughs coming down over the hill. Strikers, maybe. I
thought they might startle you."

He seated himself unceremoniously on a rock near by.

Ikey settled back with a little comfortable movement against her own
rock and raised her eyebrows.

"The proper thing for me to do at this stage is to inquire in a haughty
voice how you happened to know I was here."

"I followed you."

There was no hint of apology, and she looked at him more closely. She
had sat opposite him at the unesthetic boarding-house dining-table for
the past six weeks now. He ate enormously,--but in cultured wise,--never
said anything, was something over six feet tall, wore ready-made,
dust-colored clothes, and was utterly inconspicuous. "Like a big gray
wall." Just now it was the expression of his face, intangibly
different--or had she never taken the trouble to notice him
before?--that fixed her attention.

He was looking straight at her.

"I've been following you ever since you left your office," he said after
a deliberate pause; and Ikey's eyes grew large and frightened as she
took in his meaning.

"Then you saw----"

"I did." There was another pause. "It won't happen again." His tone was
quite final. "Why do you lay yourself open to that sort of thing? Don't
you know that the burnt district is no place for any woman at all these
days--not even one block of it? Why don't you