“I don’t want to drink any more to-night, and I don’t want you to drink,” he said. “But I’ll pay my way, just the same.” He handed her a twenty-dollar gold piece: “Take this down to Madam Blanche and tell her your friend is buying her best for the house, and that it is the price he is paying to be let alone.” While she was gone, he made a slow circuit of the room, alert to all the small details of his surroundings. By this time he knew the household routine of such places--that each woman took care of her own room. There were little hints of personality that were not lost upon him: a single late-blooming rose in a tiny vase on the dresser, placed exactly in the middle of the freshly laundered linen cover; the girl’s comb and brush and toilet appliances as clean and shining as if they had just come from the shop; spotless cleanliness everywhere. He pulled the dresser drawers open, one by one; here, too, there were decent orderliness and the smell of fresh laundering. She came in just as he was closing the drawers and laughed good-naturedly. “Didn’t find anything to bite you, did you?” she asked. Then: “Blanche says the house is yours. She’ll turn everybody else out in the street, if you say so.” “I don’t want any part of the house but this,” he returned. Then he reminded her of an omission: “When I was here before, you didn’t tell me your name.” “A name’s nothing. They call me ‘Little Irish’ here, and I’ve never told ’em the name my mother gave me.” “But you will tell me, won’t you?” “If you care enough for me to want to know. It’s Mona--Mona Connaghey is the whole of it.” Philip sat down, and immediately she came and perched on his knee. Almost roughly he caught her up and planted her in a chair. “I want to talk sense to you, Mona, and I can’t do it if you stir up the devil in me,” he told her soberly. “Is it the devil you’re calling it?” she laughed. “Yes; and you know well enough that is the right name for it. But never mind; let me ask you this: I know it is a part of your business to tell lies and nothing but lies to any man who comes here. Can you tell the truth for once in a way, if you try?” “I guess so, maybe--to you.” He fixed her with a half-absent gaze. “How old are you, Mona?” “If I live till Christmas, I’ll be twenty.” “Twenty years old and well on the road to hell,” he said musingly; adding: “Or perhaps you are not calling it hell?” “Am I not?” she flashed back. “But what’s the use? You didn’t come here to put the whip to me, did you? God knows, I can do that well enough for myself!” “No,” he answered, “I came to ask you a few questions. What is there for a woman in your condition to look forward to?--or is there anything?” Her lips twisted in a wry smile. “A few years of this, maybe, and then a little bigger dose of the chloral than it takes to put you to sleep. That is, for them that have got the nerve.” “Nothing else?”