The room was small, dark, and unventilated, and there was the vile odor of soured liquor that mingled nauseatingly with the stench of stale tobacco smoke. There was a narrow, tousled bed, with the white paint long since peeled from the metal framework, a broken-backed chair upon which rested a bottle of homemade whisky, that the old hag downstairs sold for ten dollars the quart. "Why did you send for me, Don?" demanded Helen. She was plainly frightened. Looking at him she found it hard to believe that this haggard man was the same person she had first known as "Nifty Don." Don had been handsome--once. Don Haskins placed the bottle on the floor and with a sarcastic courtesy waved her to the chair. "Be seated, Mrs. Haskins," he sneered, and himself occupied the edge of the bed. Helen shivered, her fingers working nervously. For a moment he sat there staring. "You still got the looks," he muttered thickly. "I--I guess I ain't ever goin' to get over bein' crazy about you, Helen--even--even when I'm hatin' you. His grimy hand reached out to her; his touch might have been tender, but at her shuddering recoil his eyes blazed again, and his fingers crushed about her white wrist until she gave a cry of pain. "You always did think you was too good for your own kind," he snarled. "Now that I've got you where I can put on the screws, I ought to get you sent up; that's what I ought to do with you. After what you done to me----" "I've done nothing to you, Don. Why did you send for me? You told that woman downstairs that I am----" "Yeah, it was a good stall, tellin' 'Eighth Avenue Annie' that I gotta rich sister that would put up for me. See? Thirty bucks a week I gotta give the grafter for hidin' me away in this room, and ten dollars a bottle for this rat poison she calls whisky. I owe her a hundred now, and she won't let me skip until I pay up. If I don't pay--well, Annie fixes that by givin' the bulls a tip where I can be located. See? That's why I sent for you--to take me outta hock." He grinned sardonically. "When a guy's in trouble, ain't it the most natural thing in the world that he turns to--to his wife." Helen shivered. "I'm not your wife!" she cried. "You know I'm not. I've never been your wife!" "The law says different," retorted Don Haskins. "You married me, didn't you?" "Yes," Helen admitted bitterly, "I married you. I liked you, and when you got into that trouble I--I thought I loved you. It was only pity. You rushed me into it so that I wouldn't have to testify against you--a wife can't be made to testify against her husband. I knew, before you got out of the Tombs, that I'd made a mistake." This revival of old and bitter memories convulsed Don Haskins' face with anger.