Dick has never been able satisfactorily to explain why, as soon as she had finished her breakfast that morning, she went to the bank. Just before starting she told Alice that John had run off without his eye-glasses, and that she was going to take them down to him, which was true, but not entirely adequate. She told herself that since Mrs. Sponley’s fever had abated, she was sure to want to know all about the happenings of the day before, and that telling her might have serious consequences. Alice would not be able to give her any information about it, and the morning paper containing the interview that had so badly frightened Curtin had been stuffed, as soon as Dick had read it, into John’s pocket, and was now on its way down town. So that if Dick herself was well out of the way, Mrs. Sponley might have whatever poor happiness ignorance affords, for a while longer. That was an excellent reason. A year later Jack Dorlin told her that she came to the bank on Thursday morning simply because he had not come to see her Wednesday evening, which was a piece of impudence Dick could well afford to answer merely with an infinitely scornful smile. They met at the corner, half a square away from the bank. “What on earth has brought you down here?” he exclaimed, as he came up with her. “Has anything gone wrong?” She waived the question. “Hello, Jack,” was all she said. There was small matter in the words to blush over; but the color sprang into her face, for something in the inflection of them had been almost a caress, and the fact that she had not offered him her hand and that she had barely glanced at him lent an emphasis to it that he would be sure to understand. They walked a score of paces in silence. The mere sense of nearness that came to them in the crowd was good enough without seeking to better it by talking. But the words that hung in Jack’s throat had to come out at last. “There’s something I must tell you--” Not there on that crowded sidewalk, with bank clerks and messenger boys, lawyers and merchants, rich men, poor men, beggar men,--all hurrying and jostling past,--to slip between them, and make an interruption at every three words. No, certainly not there, if Dick could help it. So Jack, who for all he knew of his surroundings at that moment might have been walking down a grassy lane, between hawthorn hedges that breathed softly into the moonlight; Jack, who knew only that it was Dick’s hand that brushed lightly by his own; poor, stupid Jack must needs again be interrupted. “There are a lot of things you must tell me,” she said. “All I know about what happened yesterday is what I saw in this morning’s paper. John was so thoroughly tired out when he came home that, as soon as he could get rid of the reporters, he went to bed, and--” She was talking aimlessly, for she saw how he was misunderstanding her, how her words must be hurting him, and she could think of nothing but that. Why, oh, why had he made her do it!