She reflected, the grave expression in her eyes--the expression that gave whoever saw it the feeling of dread as before impending tragedy. "Yes--I suppose so," she said. "But---- Any sooner than as a working girl living in a dirty hole in a tenement? No--not so soon. And in this life I've got a chance if I'm careful of my health and--and don't let things touch _me_. In that other--there's no chance--none!" "What chance have you got in this life?" "I don't know exactly. I'm very ignorant yet. At worst, it's simply that I've got no chance in either life--and this life is more comfortable." "Comfortable! With men you don't like--frightful men----" "Were you ever cold?" asked Susan. But it made no impression upon him who had no conception of the cold that knows not how it is ever to get warm again. He rushed on: "Lorna, my God!" He caught hold of her and strained her to his breast. "You are lovely and sweet! It's frightful--you in this life." Her expression made the sobs choke up into his throat. She said quietly: "Not worse than dirt and vermin and freezing cold and long, long, dull--oh, _so_ dull hours of working among human beings that don't ever wash--because they can't." She pushed him gently away. "You don't understand. You haven't been through it. Comfortable people talk like fools about those things. . . . Do you remember my hands that first evening?" He reddened and his eyes shifted. "I'm absurdly sensitive about a woman's hands," he muttered. She laughed at him. "Oh, I saw--how you couldn't bear to look at them--how they made you shiver. Well, the hands were nothing--_nothing_!--beside what you didn't see." "Lorna, do you love someone else?" His eyes demanded an honest answer, and it seemed to her his feeling for her deserved it. But she could not put the answer into words. She lowered her gaze. "Then why----" he began impetuously. But there he halted, for he knew she would not lift the veil over herself, over her past. "I'm very, very fond of you," she said with depressing friendliness. Then with a sweet laugh, "You ought to be glad I'm not able to take you at your word. And you will be glad soon." She sighed. "What a good time we've had!" "If I only had a decent allowance, like Fatty!" he groaned. "No use talking about that. It's best for us to separate best for us both. You've been good to me--you'll never know how good. And I can't play you a mean trick. I wish I could be selfish enough to do it, but I can't." "You don't love me. That's the reason." "Maybe it is. Yes, I guess that's why I've got the courage to be square with you. Anyhow, John, you can't afford to care for me. And if I cared for you, and put off the parting--why it'd only put off what I've got to go through with before----" She did not finish; her eyes became dreamy. "Before what?" he asked. "I don't know," she said, returning with a sigh. "Something I see--yet don't see in the darkness, ahead of me."