rather paler than usual and her eyes were very serious.

"You don't want to take me," she said. "I wonder why men always try to keep girls from knowing things—from learning of the world as it is—and then blame them for their ignorance! You naturally think I am a very silly, light girl, but—"

A great panic overtook John Martin's heart. He could hardly keep back the tears. He felt the blood rush to his face again, but he did not know just what he said.

"I do not—I do not! You are—I—I—should hate to be the one to introduce you to such a view of life. I was an old fool to talk as I did this evening. I—"

"Oh, that is it!" exclaimed Gertrude, relieved. "You found me ignorant, and content because I was ignorant, and you regret that you have struck a chord—a serious chord—where only make-believe or merry ones were ever struck between us before."

John Martin fidgeted.

"No, it is not that I would like to strike the first serious chord for you—in your heart, Gertrude."

He had called her Gertrude for years. Indeed the Miss upon his lips was of very recent date, but there was a meaning in the name just now as he spoke it that gave the girl a distinct shock. She felt that he was covering retreat in one direction by a mendacious advance in another. She arose suddenly.

"Lizzie Feedour is looking her best tonight," she said. "She grows handsomer every day."

She had moved forward a step, but he caught the hand that hung by her side. She faced him with a look of mingled protest and surprise in her face; but when her eyes met his, she understood.

"Gertrude, darling!" was all he could say. This time the blood dyed her face and a mist blinded her for a moment. She remembered feeling glad that her back was turned to everyone but him, and that the window drapery hid his face from the others, for the intensity of appeal touched with the faintest shimmer of happiness and hope told so plain a story that she felt, rather than thought, how absurd it would look to anyone else. She did not realize why it seemed less absurd to her. She drew her hand away and the color died out of his face. Her own was burning. She had turned to leave the room when his disappointed face swam before her eyes again. She put out her hand quickly as if bidding him good-night and drew him toward the door. He moved beside her as in a dream.

"After you take me to see the Spillini family," she said, trying to appear natural to any eyes that might be upon her, "we—I—" They had reached the portière. She drew it aside and he stepped beyond.

"There is no companionship between two people who look upon life so unequally. Those who know all about the world that contains the Spillini family and those who know nothing of such a world are very far apart in thought and in development There is no mental comradeship. I feel very far from my father to-night for the first time—mamma and I. I have looked at her all the evening in wonder—and at him. I wonder how they have contrived to live so far apart. How could he help sharing his views and knowledge of life with her, if he thinks her and wishes her to be his real companion and comrade. I could not live that way."

She seemed to have forgotten the newer, nearer question, in contemplating the problem that had startled her earlier in the evening. John Martin thought it was all a bit of kind-hearted acting to cover his retreat. He dropped her hand. A man-servant was holding his coat. He thrust his arms in and took his hat.

"Will you take me to see the Spillini family tomorrow?" asked a soft voice from the portière. A great wave of joy rushed over John Martin. He did not know why.

"Yes," he said, in a tone that was so distinctly happy that the man-servant stared. The folds of the portière fell together and John Martin passed out onto Fifth Avenue, in an ecstasy.

He is willing to share his knowledge of life with me—of life as he sees and knows it—she thought, as she lay awake that night. He does not wish to live on one plane and have me live on another. That looks like real love. Poor mamma! Poor papa! How far apart they are. To him life is a real thing. He knows its meaning and what it holds. She only knows a shell that is furbished up and polished to attract the eye of children. It is as if he were reading a book to her in a language he understood and she did not. The sound would be its entire message to her, while he gathered in and kept to himself all the meaning of the words—the force of the thoughts. How can they bear such isolation. How can they? she thought with a new feeling of passionate protest that mingled with her dreams.

III.

Sure an' I'd like to die meself if dyin' wasn't so costly," remarked Mrs. Spillini, as she gazed with tear-stained eyes at the little body that occupied the only chair in the dismal room. "Do the best we kin, buryin' the baby is goin' to cost more than we made all winter out o' all three boarders. Havin' the baby cost a dreadful lot altogether, an' now it's dyin's a dreadful pull agin."

Gertrude Foster opened her Russian leather purse and Mrs. Spillini's eyes brightened shrewdly. There was no need for the hesitancy and choice of words that gave the young girl so much care and pain. Familiarity with all the mean and gross of life from childhood until one is the mother of six living and four dead children, does not leave the finest edge of sentiment and pride upon the poverty-cursed victims of fate.

"If you would allow me to leave a mere trifle of money for you to use for the baby, I don't—it is only—" began Gertrude; but the ready hand had reached out for the money and a quick "Thanky mum; much obliged" had ended the transaction.

"I shall not tell mamma that", thought Gertrude, and she did not look at John Martin. It was her first glimpse into a grade of life to which all things, even birth and death, take on a strictly commercial aspect; where not only the edge of sentiment is dulled by dire necessity, but where the sentiment itself is buried utterly beneath the incrustations of an ignorance that is too dumb and abject to learn, and a poverty that is too insistent to recognize its own ignorance and degradation.

"Won't you set down?" inquired Mrs. Spillini, as with a sudden movement she slid the small corpse onto the floor under the edge of the table. "I'd a' ast you before, but—"

"O, don't!" exclaimed the girl; but before her natural impulse to stoop and gather up the small bundle had found action possible, John Martin had placed it on the table.

"Oh, Lord; don't!" exclaimed the woman, in sudden dismay. "The boarders'd kick if they was to see it there. Boarders is different from the family. We could ate affen the table afther, but boarders—boarders'd kick."

"Could—do you think of anything else we could do for you?" inquired Gertrude, faintly, as she held open the door and tried to think she was not dizzy and sick from the dreadful, polluted air, and the shock of the revelation, with all that it implied, before her.

Four dirty faces, and as many ragged bodies, were too close to her for comfort. There was a vile stew cooking on the stove. The air was heavy and foul with it Gertrude distinctly felt the greasy moisture on her kid gloves as they touched each other.

"No, I don't know's they's anything more you can do," replied the passive, hopeless wreck of what it was almost sacrilege to call womanhood. "I don't know's they's anything more you could do unless you could let the boarders come in now. They ain't got but a little over ten minutes to eat in an' dinner's ready," she replied, as she lifted the pot of steaming stuff into the middle of the table and laid two tin plates, a large knife and a bunch of iron forks and spoons beside it.

"Turn that chair to the wall," she added sharply to one of