This sinfulness of the flesh she set down to the pain which his arm might be giving him and the unrest which came of many days in bed. As he grew stronger, she told herself, he would be his old, generous-minded and manly self once more. But Durkin gained strength very slowly. A rent-day came around, and rather than remind him of it Frances slipped out, on a rainy afternoon, and pawned her rings to get money for the payment. It was as she was creeping shamefaced out of the pawnshop that she looked up and caught sight of a passing automobile. It was a flashing sports-model with a lemon-colored body, and in it, beside a woman with lemon-colored hair, sat MacNutt, gloved, silk-hatted and happy-looking. At first she beheld the two with an indeterminate feeling of relief. Then a hot wave of resentment swept over her, as she watched them drive away through the fine mist. A consuming sense of the injustice of it all took possession of her, as her thoughts went back to the day of the theft, and she remembered what a little and passing thing Durkin’s money would be to MacNutt, the spender, the prodigal liver, while to her and to Durkin it had meant so much! She knew, too, that he would soon be asking about it; and this brought a new misery into her life. It was, indeed, only a day or two later that he said to her: “Do you know, I’m glad we didn’t take that girl’s money—the Van Schaick girl, I mean. It was all our own from the first!” Frances did not answer. “She was a decent sort of girl, really, wasn’t she?” he asked again, once more looking up at her. “I wish I had a woman like that for a friend,” Frances said, at last. “Do you know, Jim, it is years and years since I have had a woman friend. Yes, yes, my beloved own, I know I have you, but that is so different.” He nodded his head sorrowfully, and stretched out his hand for hers. “You’re better than all of ’em!” he said fondly. They were both silent for several minutes. “We’re going to be decent now, aren’t we, Frank?” he went on at last, quietly, joyously. “Yes, Jim, from now on.” “I was just thinking, this town has got to know us a little too well by this time. When we start over we’ll have to migrate, I suppose.” Then he smiled a little. “We ought to be thankful, Frank, they haven’t got us both pinned up by the Bertillon system, down at Headquarters!” “I’d defy Bertillon himself to find you,” she laughed, “underneath that two weeks’ beard.” He rubbed his hand over his stubbled chin, absent-mindedly. “Where shall we go, when we migrate?” he asked, not unhappily. She gazed with unseeing eyes through the window, out over the house-top.