In the turn our talk had taken there was so much human need that I found my efforts at confession paralyzed. That a family whom I had regarded as enviably care-free should be living in the shadow of a great tragedy, and nursing a sorrow in which there was this element of remorse, was curiously illuminating as a discovery. It seemed to cast into other people’s lives the sort of sharp revealing ray that a flash of lightning throws on a dark road. Here was a girl whom I had thought of hitherto as immune from the more sordid varieties of trial; and yet she had at least tasted of their cup. It gave me a new conception of her. I began to see her not as a flat surface or as static like a portrait, but as a living, palpitating human being with duties round her and a vista of experiences as background. The immediate inference was that I must assist them over Christmas, as they would assist me; and to do that I must put off telling Regina Barry where she had seen me first. To be quite free, however, I had to get a kind of permission from Lovey. My relations with him had grown to be peculiar. He seemed to develop two personalities, from the one to the other of which he glided more or less unconsciously. Though even in our privacy he refused any longer to speak of us as buddies and fellas together, he called me Slim and sonny, and referred without hesitation to our fraternal past. On my part I found it almost consoling, in view of the bluff I was putting up, to have some one near me who knew me at my worst. Where I had to pretend before others there was no pretense at all with him; and so I got the relief that comes at any time when one can drop one’s mask. Here in Atlantic City I was paying all his expenses, but no wages. In New York I offered him nothing but his room. How he lived I didn’t always know, beyond the fact that it was honestly. As to this he was so frank that I could have little doubt about it. “There’s many a good thing I lets go by, Slim, all on account o’ you. Washin’ windows ain’t nothink but old woman’s work when a man’s been a ’atter. If it wasn’t to save you, sonny—” “Yes, I know, Lovey. One of these days I may get a chance to make it up to you.” “Oh, well, as for makin’ it up, so long as you goes on with the fancy you took to me that night at Stinson’s, like—” “Oh, I do. You see that, don’t you?” “Yes; I see it right enough, Slim. It kind o’ passes the buck on me, as you might say. But there! Lord love ye, I don’t complain! Ye’re a fine young fella, and what I does for you—self-denial ye might call it—I don’t grudge. When I sees ye goin’ round like a swell with other swells I just says to myself, ‘Lovey, that’s your work, old top’; and I feels kind o’ satisfied.” It was kind o’ satisfied that he showed himself when I told him I had been asked to eat my Christmas dinner with Mrs. and Miss Barry. “Ain’t that grand!” he commented, exultingly. “Ye’ll put on them swell togs—”