“Hush, Maria!” He caught her arm again. “Some one will hear you!” “Why should I care? Do you think I don't know--” “Child, I don't know what on earth you mean!” “You do know! You play with me! You sent for your bags. Why didn't you come yourself?” “Why, that--” “When you saw me here you stopped--you went back--” Peter gulped. “I dropped my keys,” he cried eagerly. “I was swinging them. I had to go back and pick them up.” And triumphantly, with his free hand, he produced them from his pocket. Within the grip of his other hand he felt her soft arm tremble a little. Her gaze drooped. “It isn't just to-night--” he heard her trying to say. “Come, dear, here's a bus! We'll ride up-town.” She let him lead her to the curb. Solicitously he handed her up the winding little stairway to a seat on the roof. There is no one book of Peter's life. There are a great many little books, some of them apparently unconnected with any of the others. Maria Tonifetti, as you may gather from this unintelligible little scene on a street corner, had one of those detached Peter books all to herself. Up on the roof of the bus, Peter, reacting with great inner excitement from his experiences of the last three hours, slipped an arm about Maria's shoulders, bent tenderly over her, whispered softly into her ear. Before the bus reached Forty-second Street he had the satisfaction of feeling her nestle softly and comfortably against his arm, and he knew that once again he had won her. Slowly within his battered spirit the old thrill of conquest stirred and flamed up into a warm glow.... CHAPTER XXX--FIFTY MINUTES FROM BROADWAY |THE Worm sat on a wooden chair, an expression of puzzled gravity on his usually whimsical face. The room was a small kitchen. The two screened windows gave a view of a suburban yard, bounded by an alley and beyond the alley other yards; beyond these a row of small frame houses. There were trees; and the scent of a honeysuckle vine. Sue Wilde, her slim person enveloped in a checked apron, knelt by the old-fashioned coal range. The lower door was open, the ash-pan drawn half out. There were ashes on the floor about her knees. Henry Bates absently drew out his old caked brier pipe; filled and lighted it. Meditatively he studied the girl--her apron, the flush on her face, the fascinating lights in her tousled hair--telling himself that the scene was real, that the young rebel soul he had known in the Village was this same Sue Wilde. The scent of the honeysuckle floated thickly to his nostrils. He stared out at the row of little wooden houses. He slowly shook his head; and his teeth closed hard on the pipe stem. “Henry,” she cried softly, throwing out her fine hands, “don't you understand! I had a conscience all the time. That's what was the matter!”