As I recall the minute now my first thought was of my appearance. I had noticed for some time past that it was running down, and had regarded the change almost with satisfaction. The more out at elbow I became the less would be the difference between me and any other young fellow looking for employment. It hadn’t escaped me that I grew shabby less with the honorable rough-and-tumble of a working-man than with the threadbare, poignant poverty of broken-down gentility; but I hoped that no one but myself would perceive that. I had thus grown careless of appearances, and during the past forty-eight hours more careless than I had been hitherto. Feeling myself a lamentable object, I had more or less dressed to suit the part. I knew instantly that it was this that had inspired the words I had just listened to. I knew, too, that I must bluff. Wretched as I looked, I must carry the situation off, with however pitiful a bit of comedy. Turning, I lifted my hat, with what I could command of the old dignity of bearing. "How early you are!" I smiled bravely. "I didn’t know young ladies were ever down-town by a little after ten." She nodded toward the neighboring bookshop. "I’ve been in there buying something for Lulu to read. She’s bored." She threw these explanations aside as irrelevant to anything we had to say, now that we had met. "Where have you been all these weeks? Why didn’t you let me know—?" "How could I let you know? I called at your old house, and you were gone." "You could have easily found out. If you’d merely called up Central she would have told you the new address of our number. It wasn’t kind of you." "Sometimes we have things to do more pressing than just being kind." "There’s never anything more pressing than that." "Not for people like you." "Not for people like any one. Listen!" she hurried on, as if there was not a minute to spare. "One of my trustees came to me yesterday. He said I had nearly thirty thousand dollars of accumulated income that there’s nothing to do with but invest." "Well? Don’t you like to see your money invested?" "I like it well enough when there’s nothing else to do with it." "Which you say that in this case there isn’t." "Oh, but there is—if you look at it in the right way." "I don’t have to look at it any way." "Yes, you do, when it’s—when it’s only common sense." "What’s only common sense?" "My being—being useful to you." "Oh, but you’re useful to me through—through your very kindness." "That’s not enough. Surely you—you see!" I could say quite truthfully that I didn’t see. "But suppose," I continued, "that we don’t talk of it." "Yes," she answered, fiercely, "and leave everything where we left it the last time. You see what’s come of that." "I see what’s come, of course; but I don’t know that it’s come of that." There were so few people in the neighborhood, and we were so plainly examining the Chinese rug, that we could talk together without attracting attention.