"After all," he said, as he sat with Violet in the many-colored back parlor, a half-empty bottle between them, his usually pale face aglow, his gray eyes filmy, and his black hair tumbled by the constant passage through it of his long, nervous fingers--"after all, you see, you and I are in the same boat. You can't get out because, if you do, the sharks will eat you, and I daren't get out because I can't swim." Always haunted by the fear that, in some manner, her true story might reach her own town and her own people, Violet had told him only as much as she dared, and what she had said had moved his impulsive generosity. "But anyway," he insisted, "you can do one thing that I can't." She clutched at the straw. "What's that?" she asked. "You can get help from shore." "How do you mean?" "I mean that if you'll write a letter home, I'll mail it." She shook her head: the straw crumpled in her fingers. "There's no use of that," she said. "Of course there is. After all, your father's your father, you see, and I don't know a father that wouldn't help his daughter out of the sort of mess you've got into." "I know one," said Violet, grimly. "Not till you try him, you don't." "Yes, I do. If you was in my place would your father----" "Which father?" laughed Beekman. "My one won't have anything to do with me because I live with the other, and the other won't have anything to do with me because I'm the son of his predecessor.--You take my advice and write home." "I'd never get an answer." She spoke in an even tone, but there was no mistaking the tragedy that underlay it. Beekman looked at her and blinked queerly. He brought his fist down smartly among the jangling glasses. "It's a rotten shame!" he said. "A dirty, rotten shame! Why, don't you know that that yid who got you into this makes a business of such things? Don't you know there's a whole army of them that do? I wish to the Lord I could do something, but there isn't a policeman or a magistrate in the city who'd listen to me--they know too well where they get the jam for their bread and butter--and I can't get a job for even myself, let alone you!" She had not, however, heard his last sentence. Her blue eyes wide, she was hanging on his reference to Max. "A business?" she repeated. "Do you mean that men make money--that way?" "Of course I do." The film passed suddenly from Beekman's eyes, leaving them alert with purpose. "Look here," he said, "there is one thing I can do, and I don't know anything that I'd enjoy more: you give me that little kyke's name, and I'll push his face out of the back of his head!" Then there happened a strange thing. She had long guessed and now she knew, but guessing or knowing, she would not believe. As much for her own sanity as for Max's safety, she lied. "The name he gave me," she said, "wasn't his right one. It wasn't even one he mostly used. And I never knew no other."