n, somewhat dazed conversation. Philip had resumed the
consumption of his chicken. He raised an over-filled glass to his lips
steadily and drank it without spilling a drop.

"Mistook me for some one," he remarked coolly.

She nodded.

"Man who disappeared from the Waldorf Astoria. They made quite a fuss
about him in the newspapers. I shouldn't have said you were the least
like him--to judge by his pictures, anyway."

Philip shrugged his shoulders. He seemed very little interested.

"I don't often read the newspapers.... So that is Stella."

"That is Stella," she assented, a little defiantly. "And if I were she--I
mean if I were as good-looking as she is--I'd be in her place."

"I wonder whether you would?" he observed thoughtfully.

"Oh! don't bother me with your problems," she replied. "Does it run to
coffee?"

"Of course it does," he agreed, "and a liqueur, if you like."

"If you mean a cordial, I'll have some of that green stuff," she decided.
"Don't know when I shall get another dinner like this again."

"Well, that rests with you," he assured her. "I am very lonely just now.
Later on it will be different. We'll come again next week, if you like."

"Better see how you feel about it when the time comes," she answered
practically. "Besides, I'm not sure they'd let me in here again. Did you
see Stella's coat? Fancy feeling fur like that up against your chin!
Fancy--"

She broke off and sipped her coffee broodingly.

"Those things are immaterial in themselves," he reminded her. "It's just
a question how much happiness they have brought her, whether the thing
pays or not."

"Of course it pays!" she declared, almost passionately. "You've never
seen my rooms or my drunken father. I can tell you what they're like,
though. They're ugly, they're tawdry, they're untidy, when I've any work
to do, they're scarcely clean. Our meals are thrown at us--we're always
behind with the rent. There isn't anything to look at or listen to that
isn't ugly. You haven't known what it is to feel the grim pang of a
constant hideousness crawling into your senses, stupefying you almost
with a sort of misery--oh, I can't describe it!"

"I have felt all those things," he said quietly.

"What did you do?" she demanded. "No, perhaps you had luck. Perhaps it's
not fair to ask you that. It wouldn't apply. What should you do if you
were me, if you had the chance to get out of it all the way that she
has?"

"I am not a woman," he rem