"Oh, no!" she said, interrupting him impulsively. "Don't send any women out of the world you live in to see me. They are cruel--they have dreadful thoughts of me. They look at me strangely and suspect me. Oh, no--I'd rather take my baby to the end of the earth and hide from them. I beg you not to send any one to see me." Noel hastened to promise her that he certainly would not go against her wish, and was wondering how he should find out the things he longed so to know, when suddenly the carriage stopped. The driver got down and rang the bell. As Noel was helping Christine to get out, the door was opened and the figure of Dallas appeared. It was a surprise to him, somehow, and an unwelcome one. How his spirit rose in abhorrence of this man! Christine went up the steps with the baby, and as he had her bag and shawl Noel followed, telling the driver to wait. It was a miserable little house, poor and cheap, and empty, and but for the counteracting effect of his anger against Dallas, Noel thought he must have almost sobbed to see Christine here. Dallas himself was not at all discomposed as he recognized his visitor and asked him in, offering a hand which Noel managed to touch. The baby was still asleep, and when Christine had placed it carefully on a wretched little couch, she seemed, for the first time, free to think of Noel. She turned and asked him to sit down--at the same time glancing about her with a sudden rush of consciousness, which until now a nearer interest had crowded out. The poverty-stricken look of her surroundings was made the more evident by the few objects belonging to other days that lay about--a charming sacque, smartly braided and lined with rich silk, hung on the back of a chair, and a handsome travelling rug was folded under the baby on the sofa. Everything was clean, for Christine even yet had not come to contemplate the possibility of doing without a servant. There was a small kerosene lamp on a table, over which were spread a lot of cards with their faces up. Some one had evidently been playing solitaire, and as evidently, on the witness of another sense, been accompanying the game by the smoking of bad tobacco. The room reeked with it to a degree that made Noel feel it an outrage to Christine. But what was he to do? There was but one thing. He said good-by and went away, carrying the memory of Christine's face flushed scarlet for shame. He remembered afterward that Dallas had taken no notice of the baby--not even glancing at it or inquiring for it--a thing which the poor mother had taken as a matter of course. He thought, as he shook hands with her at parting, that Christine had tried to speak--perhaps a word of thanks--but something stopped it and she let him go in silence.