And yet not to go back made her feet like lead as she dragged herself down the interminable steps. CHAPTER VII "Shall I ever go in or out of this door again?" Jennie lingered on the threshold to ask herself this question, and, as she did so, saw Bob Collingham lift his hat. For the time being she had forgotten him. That is, she had a way of putting him out of her mind except when, as he expressed it to herself, he came bothering her. Bothering her meant asking her to marry him, which he had done perhaps twenty times. Each time she refused him she considered that it was for good. There was a quality in him that raised her ire—a certainty that, pressed by need, she would one day come to him. That, Jennie said to herself, would be the last thing! She wouldn’t do it as long as there was any other possibility on earth. In view, however, of the state of things at home and Wray’s cold-bloodedness at the studio it had sometimes seemed to her of late as if earth would not afford her any other possibility. If she welcomed him now, it was chiefly as a distraction from thoughts which, were she to keep dwelling on them, would drive her mad. Her temperament being naturally happy, anguish was the more anguishing for being so unnatural. The mere necessity of having to strive with Bob called forth in her that spirit of sex-wrestling which was not so much second nature in her as it was first. She greeted him, therefore, with a sick little smile, and allowed him to limp along beside her. The studio building was in a street in the Thirties and east of Lexington Avenue. To take the way by which she usually went, they sauntered toward the sunset. "You’re in trouble, Jennie, aren’t you?" The kindly tone touched her. He was always kind. He was always looking for little things he could do. It was part of the trouble with him from her point of view that he was so watchful and overshadowing. He poured out so much more than her cup was able to receive that he frightened her. All the same, his sympathy, coming at this minute, started her tears afresh. "Is it things at home?" he persisted, when she didn’t respond. Thinking this enough for him to know, she admitted that it was. "I’ve got something in my pocket that would—that would help all that—in the long run." From anyone else this would have alarmed her. She would have taken it to mean money, money which she would in her own way be expected to repay. As it was she merely turned her swimming eyes toward him in mild curiosity. "Look!" Seeing a little white box which could contain nothing but a ring held between his thumb and forefinger on the edge of his waistcoat pocket, she flushed with annoyance. "I think you’d better go away," she said, coldly, pausing to give him the chance to take his leave. "And chuck you back upon your trouble?"