Smitherton was sitting at a desk littered with newspaper clippings and sheaves of copy-paper. His shirt-sleeves were rolled to the elbow and the light of his desk bulb shone on his ruffled hair as the "copy-kid" called out to him with that insouciant freshness which stamps his kind. "Dame wants you on the wire. Got a voice like a million-dollars worth of peaches an' cream." Mary with the receiver to her ear heard the subtle compliment of those mixed metaphors. Smitherton finished pasting a clipping into the blank place in a type-written page and rose slowly. "Well?" he inquired shortly. "What is it? This is Smitherton." At once he recognized the voice which replied, and recognized that it came faintly and full of indecision. "This is Mary Burton, Mr. Smitherton. Do you--do you think you could still find me work in vaudeville?" "Oh!" The reporter's office brusqueness fell away, and his tone changed. He knew that this was the girl's last stand, and that she had not admitted its necessity until every other effort had failed, every path of escape closed. "I don't think, Miss Burton," he assured her, "I am certain." "Do you think--" the voice was even fainter--"it would be possible to get just a little money--some sort of advance--soon--tomorrow?" "Leave that to me," he confidently commanded. "Just give me your address--and I'll be at your place in the morning." Mary slept little that night. Against her windows screamed and whined the wind, driving a swish of fine, hard snow in its breath. From two rivers came the dull groaning of the fog horns. But the storm which kept her eyes hot and sleepless was one within her own breast. Over and over again she told herself that the work for which she was volunteering was in no wise disgraceful. Probably many women who were her superiors were doing it with willingness, even with warrantable pride. It would mean for her mother, as the reporter had reminded her, comfort and competent nursing. Perhaps, in surroundings of greater ease, her father might even yet rehabilitate himself into a manlier old age. Save to serve them her own life was already lived out.