Again she laughed, and then rippled out in her irrepressible generosity, her sympathy. “Poor chap!” said she. “Haven’t you got ahead any farther than that in two years?” Polly Pendleton could not see any suffering unmoved. She herself had lived. “It’s odd,” she said, something of his old story coming back to her. “You must be thirty-five or six, aren’t you?—or maybe forty?” “Not yet quite thirty,” said he. “And you said you were married?” “I was—once.” “Then what are you doing here? What were you doing there in my apartments in New York? Don’t you ever stop to think?” “I’ve stopped to think about everything in my life except this. But now all that’s done. I’m not going back to school any more.” He looked directly at her now. “Why? What do you mean? Why do you say that? You talk foolish! Why, listen, where do you get this sort of stuff, anyhow? What are you making me out to be? Have I ever asked anything of you, I’d like to know? What do I owe you, or you owe me? I don’t get you, neighbor.” “No, I reckon not,” said David Joslin, still staring at her steadily from his end of the sofa in the dim light. “I don’t reckon you do. I don’t reckon a woman like you can understand a man like me.” “Am I so bad, then? God! I wish there wasn’t a man in all the world, that’s all—I’m sick of them! I’ve got to make a living, haven’t I? Well, it’s jolly hard business sometimes to do that. Why, listen—it’s only an angel, and a good one, that’s kept us on our feet. I’m wearing all my old clothes and hats and things. And I don’t know if I can go back to Broadway again. You don’t have all the trouble in the world.” “An angel?” said David Joslin, not in the least understanding her, more than she had him in his last remark, which she thought so slighting to herself. “Yes, I reckon it was an angel brought you to me. I was walking through here, going back to my school, and here I find you! It was as though an angel of heaven had brought us two together. What for?” “You can search me!” said Polly Pendleton. “I haven’t got the answer. All sorts of things happen in this game, of course, but I’m free to say I wasn’t looking for you to-night—and to tell the truth”—she rippled out in laughter again—“I don’t know what to do with you now I’ve got you. Won’t you please go away? I’m getting pretty hungry, man!” “Miss Pendleton,” said David Joslin, “that’s not the way to treat me.” Silence fell between them. Polly Pendleton, hurt and grieved still over the sting of his earlier words—which he had spoken only in condemnation of himself, not her, began to tremble about her lips. She heard his low, vibrant voice go on. “I couldn’t bear to see you reach out your hands to those men there to-night. You touched _me_, once! For sake of that, I’m quitting my school.” “It was only in a song!” she broke out “I’ve done that to a thousand men, I expect, and I didn’t care a cent for any one of them. It’s in the game—it’s part of my way of making a living. I’ve got to live.”