She was now nervously engaged before her looking-glass. All the tools of her trade lay at hand. A momentous problem confronted her. The child must be won back. He must be convinced of her worth. Therefore she must be beautiful. He thought her pretty. She would be pretty. But how impress him? By what appeal? The pathetic? the tenderly winsome? the gay? She would be gay. Marvellous lies occurred to her--a multitude of them: there was no end to her fertility in deception. And she would excite his jealousy. Upon that feeling she would play. She would blow hot; she would blow cold. She would reduce him to agony--the most poignant agony he had ever suffered. Then she would win him. To this end, acting according to the enlightenment of her kind, she plied her pencil and puffs; and when, at last, she stood before the mirror, new gowned, beautiful after the conventions of her kind, blind to the ghastliness of it, ignorant of the secret of her strength, she had a triumphant consciousness of power. "He'll love me," she thought, with a snap of the teeth. "He's got to!" Jim Millette knocked--and pushed the door ajar, and diffidently intruded his head. "Hello, Jim!" she cried. "Come in!" The man would not enter. "I can't, Millie," he faltered. "I just got a minute." "Oh, come on in!" said she, contemptuously. "Come in and tell me about it. What did you do it for, Jim? You got good and even, didn't you? Eh, Jim?" she taunted. "You got even!" "It wasn't that, Millie," he protested. "Oh, wasn't it?" she shrilled. "No, it wasn't, Millie. I didn't have no grudge against you." "Then what was it? Come in and tell me!" she laughed. "You dassn't, Jim! You're afraid! come in," she flashed, "and I'll make you lick my shoes! And when you're crawling on the floor, Jim, like a slimy dog, I'll kick you out. Hear me, you pup? What you take my child in there for?" she cried. "Hear me? Aw, you pup!" she snarled. "You're afraid to come in!" "Don't go on, Millie," he warned her. "Don't you go on like that. Maybe I _will_ come in. And if I do, my girl, it won't be me that'll be lickin' shoes. It might be _you_!" "Me!" she scorned. "You ain't got no hold on me no more. Come in and try it!" The man hesitated. "Come on!" she taunted. "I ain't coming in, Millie," he answered. "I didn't come up to come in. I just come up to tell you I was sorry." She laughed. "I didn't know you was there, Millie," the man continued. "If I'd knowed you was with the Forty Flirts, I wouldn't have took the boy there. And I come up to tell you so." Overcome by a sudden and agonizing recollection of the scene, she put her hands to her face. "And I come up to tell you something else," the acrobat continued, speaking gently. "I tell you, Millie, you better look out. If you ain't careful, you'll lose him for good. He took it hard, Millie. Hard! It broke the little fellow all up. It hurt him--awful!"