"Who was that?" she asked interestedly. "A cow-puncher--Centipede Pete." "Some name! Why don't you ask me my name, Kurt? Don't look so contemptuous. I am going to tell you, because it doesn't sound like me. It's Penelope." "Oh!" he exclaimed, with something like a groan in his voice. "Nobody can help her name," she complained. "Don't you like it? I kind of thought it would suit you, because it doesn't sound like me. Sort of suggests respectability, don't you think?" "It was my mother's name," he replied tensely, as he walked a few paces away. Night that comes so fleetly in this country dropped like a veil. The girl followed him. "I didn't steal that--your mother's name, you know, Kurt," she said in an odd, confiding voice. "They gave it to me, you see, and maybe it will help that I've never been called by it. They used to call me Pen or Penny--a bad penny, I suppose you think." "Your name," he said frigidly, "or at least the one Bender knows you by--the one you went by in Chicago, is Marta Sills." She made an articulate sound suggestive of dismay. "That is one of my names," she admitted. "I had forgotten I gave that one to Bender." He made no comment. "You said," she continued pleadingly, "that there was no excuse for me and girls like me. Maybe you would find one if you knew what we are up against. Every one knocks instead of boosts, and tells us how low-down we are. Just as if a mirror were held up to an ugly-looking girl, and she were asked how anyone who looked like that could expect to be different. Suppose I should tell you I'd been to reformatories and places where I had learned that I must play the stupid act as I did with Bender so as to be kept from being sent up. There is no mercy for those who exhibit any glimpses of intelligence, you see. This time I thought I was a goner for life until you pried me loose. All doors seemed closed, but you opened the window. No one was ever really kind to me before, except a Salvation Army woman and--some one else." "What was the name of that some one else?" he interrupted. She hesitated, and for the first time seemed confused. "Was it," he demanded, "_Jo Gary_?" "Oh!" she gasped. Then quickly recovering, she continued: "You're quite a detective for an acting one. If you were the real thing, you'd be a regular Sherlock Holmes and make a clean sweep of crooks." "Answer my question." "It doesn't seem necessary to tell you anything; you know so much. I seem to know that name. Was he at a dance in Chicago--let me see, Hurricane Hall?" she asked serenely. "Is this his part of the country, and shall I see him?" "It _was_ his part of the country. You can _not_ see him." A wistful note crept into her voice as she said: