"Say, Eloise," she said late that afternoon over the telephone to the friend she had made at the Dorothy Dorr Home. "When can I see you?... Yes.... No.... Well, you see I'm out of a job at present.... No, I can't tell you about it. This is a rooming-house. There is no telephone in my room. I am telephoning from the hall. And so I'd rather wait until I see you. But in brief, I'm eating at Child's, soda-fountains and even peanut stands. I'm really getting back my girlish figure. Only I think I'm going to be a regular O. Henry story. Headlines as follows: _Beautiful Titian-haired_ (mark that _Titian-haired_, Eloise) _Blonde Dead of Starvation. Drops Dead on Fifth Avenue. Too Proud to Beg._ I hope that none of those wicked reporters will guess that my new shoes with the cut-steel buckles cost thirty-five dollars. All right! All right.... The 'Attic' at seven. I'll be there promptly as usual and you'll get there late as usual.... Oh yes, you will! Thanks awfully, Eloise. I feel just like going out to dinner." Eloise, living up to her promise, made so noble an effort that she was only ten minutes late. Then, as usual, she came dashing and sparkling into the room; a slim brown girl, much browner than usual, for her coat of seashore tan; with narrow topaz eyes and deep dimples; very smart in embroidered linen and summer furs. The Attic restaurant occupied the whole top floor of a very high, downtown West Side skyscraper. Its main business came at luncheon, so the girls sat almost alone in its long, cool quiet. They found a table in a little stall whose window overhung the gray, fog-swathed river which seamlessly joined gray fog-misted sky. A moon, opaque as a scarlet wafer, seemed to be pasted at a spot that could be either river or sky. The girls ordered their inconsequent dinner. They talked their inconsequent girl chatter. They drank each a glass of May wine. Susannah had quite recovered her poise and her spirit. She described her new room with great detail. She suggested that Eloise, whom she invariably addressed as, "you pampered minion of millions, you!" should call on her in that scrubby hall bedroom. In fact, her narrative went from joke to joke in a vein so steadily and so augmentingly gay that, when Eloise had paid the bill and they sat dawdling over their coffee, suddenly she found herself on the verge of breaking her vow of secrecy, of relating the horrors of the last week. "Eloise," she began, "I'm going to tell you something that I don't want you ever to--" And then the words dried on her lips. Her tongue seemed to turn to wood. She paled. She froze. Her eyes set on-- O'Hearn was walking into the Attic. He did not perceive that instant terror of petrification; for it happened he did not even glance in their direction. He walked, self-absorbed apparently, to the other end of the room. But his face--Susannah got it clearly--was stony too. It had the look somehow of a man about to perform a deed repugnant to him.