"That is not the point," said Barbara, "and this is: Are you sorry? If you really have been rotten, do you want to be sound and fine? If you do I'm your friend, and whatever help I can give you, you shall have." "If you knew," he said humbly, "how I dread the bust being finished! I'll be like a child stealing a ride by the strength of his arms, I'll have to drop off then--won't I?--back into the mud." "I'm not offering you friendship," she said, "merely while you are useful to me. Do well, Mr. Blizzard, and do good, and I will always be your friend." "Do you believe that I want to do well, that I want to do good? That I want to wipe the past from the slate?" "You have only to tell me," she said loyally, "and I shall believe." "Then I tell you," he said, and Barbara jumped impulsively to her feet and shook hands with him. "And I may come to you," he pleaded, "for advice, and help? Old habits are hard to shake. My friends are thieves, crooks, and grafters. My sources of income are not clean. Even now I have dishonest irons in the fire. Shall I pull them out?" "Of course." "But people who have trusted me will be hurt." "You must work those problems out in your own conscience." To Blizzard, believing that he was actually making progress into the fastnesses of her heart, and that he might in time gain his ends by propinquity and his own undeniable force and personality, a sudden, cheeky knocking upon the door proved intensely irritating. It was a very small messenger-boy with a box of jonquils. Blizzard watched very closely the expression of Barbara's face while she opened the box. She held up the flowers for him to see. "Aren't they pretty?" she said. "They are very pretty," said Blizzard, and he found it difficult to control his voice. "And it was very sweet of him to send them. Isn't that the rest of the speech?" "Of course," said Barbara gayly. She lifted the flowers until the lower half of her face was hidden. "Mr. Allen, I suppose," said the beggar. "Why should you suppose that?" said Barbara, a little coldly. "There is no card." Blizzard felt his mistake. And Barbara felt that he felt it. She went into the next room for a vase of water, and returned presently with heightened color. She had heard Harry West's slow grave voice explaining something to Bubbles. Her heart told her that West had sent the flowers, and she meant to get rid of Blizzard and find out. So, the vase of flowers in one hand, she held out the other to him, and said: "To-morrow." Blizzard was loath to go, but he felt that there was a certain finality in her voice, and he swung out of the studio, his heart gnawed with jealousy. XVIII Through Bubbles, Harry West received the happy news that Miss Ferris wished to speak with him. But when he saw her with the vase of jonquils in her hand, and the empty box in which they had come at her feet, his stout heart failed him a little. "Mr. West," said Barbara, "some person is annoying me." "Annoying you?"