In the derision and boo that went up she escaped, hurrying this time and without uncertainty. The Union Square Family Theater showed the lighted but quiet front of a performance in progress. At the stage entrance the old doorman with his look of sea dog recognized her, admitting her with a nod. The titter of music came back through the wings and quick, loud thumps of a tumbling act in progress. The smell of grease paint, like the flop of a cold, wet hand to her face, smote her with a familiarity out of all proportion to her limited experience in the theater. She wound, unchallenged, up the short spiral staircase. Through an open doorway of an office that had been refurnished in large mahogany desk, filing case, and a stack of sectional bookcases, Robert Visigoth sat tilted on a swivel chair, his hands locked at the back of his head, gaze and cigar toward the ceiling. She stood in the doorway a second, watching his perceptions dawn. "Hel-lo!" he said, finally, uncrossing a knee grown slightly corpulent and his rather small eyes crinkling to slits. "Hel-lo!" She was arch and laughed back. "A bad penny, you see." He swung a chair toward her without rising. "Turned up, didn't you? Good." She seated herself, with that coquetry of hers which she could force on occasion, feeling his glance as it ran over her dawning shabbiness as searingly as a flame. It darted on downward to her feet, and because that very day the leather in her right shoe had cracked, showing a grin of white lining, she wound that foot up around the chair rung. "I took sick--that time," she explained, fatuously. He lifted her hand, bending back each finger to match his words. "You are a naughty girl. Why did you run away?" She sat swallowing through obvious gulps, but increasingly determined to be arch. "Please--don't," trying to withdraw her hand. "Come now," he said through a half smile and watching her redden almost to purple, "you don't hate me that badly or you wouldn't be back here." "I know I don't." "What?" "Hate you." "Good! Now we're getting on." "I need something, Mr. Visigoth--terribly." "We're not using that song specialty any more," he said, kindly. "I've given up that sort of thing, too, Mr. Visigoth. I'm a stenographer now." "Smartest thing you ever did." "I--I'm in a little difficulty right now--a money one. That's why I thought if you--Could you use me in the office? I know stenography and typewriting. I--It would be a godsend, Mr. Visigoth. I dislike having to put it so strongly--but my present difficulty is serious--very." "What's troubling you?" "I must have an office position. I want my evenings free and I cannot be situated so that I might have to go on the road at any time." "Married?" "Why, I--I thought--assumed that you knew I was married from the beginning. I--We aren't together, though; haven't been--" "Umph!" "It's just that I'm temporarily embarrassed."