She had started away from Washington Square in the same dull pain in which she had previously left the Ninth Street boarding-house presided over by the stony-breasted Mrs. Alberta Turner; she had been only a wounded dog, whose sole desire was to find a dark corner in which she could suffer unobserved; but slowly there reasserted itself in her torpid brain that new impulse toward a questioning of life which had so appalled Philip Beekman. The whole she could not see; her own case bulked so far in the foreground that little else of the picture was visible to her. But she knew that an ill-constructed world was against her; she concluded that all legitimate doors were closed upon her, and she felt gradually kindling a wrath that would end in general reprisal. How she chanced into Rivington Street she did not know. She had no clear idea as to where she was to go, except that she must not return to burden Katie Flanagan. Yet, almost before she was clearly conscious of her whereabouts, she found herself accosted by a voice that proved to come from the lips of Marian Lennox. "Mary Morton! How do you do? Where are you going? Where on earth have you been? Come in here; I'm just getting back from a walk. I am so anxious to hear how you are getting on, and I have been so disappointed because you never let me hear from you." The rivulet of cheerful words poured from the calm-faced woman with unheeding force. Each one of them fell upon her auditor with an unintended shock. Mary, who had almost forgotten the pseudonym under which she had been presented at the Settlement, could say nothing. She was carried up the steps and into the house, up the stairs and into the deserted sitting-room on the second floor; and there she sank limply into a wicker chair beside a magazine-littered table, tête-à-tête with her former benefactress. Marian, all good intentions, rested her delicate chin upon her white hands. "Now," she said, "I am anxious to hear all about you." Mary, with a perplexed frown, looked hard at the floor. "Why, there isn't much to tell, Miss Lennox," she replied. "Nonsense. Of course there is, my dear. You must understand that I am interested in everything about you--in everything." Mary's eyes sought, for a moment, the pure, cameo-like face. They could see no evil there, and they could see much kindliness. "Well, then," she hesitated, "I don't know exactly where to begin." "At the beginning, of course. How do you like your place?" "Which place, Miss Lennox?" "The place we sent you to." "I'm not there no more." "Not there?" Marian raised her perfectly arched brows. "But, my dear Mary, why not? Didn't you like it?" "I didn't mind." "Then you have found a better place?" Again Mary studied her questioner. "Miss Lennox," she said, "I guess you people here have all sorts of girls comin' around, don't you?"