It was one night after a lucky plunge on a 20 to 1 horse had brought him in an unexpected fortune of eighteen hundred dollars, that Durkin, driving past Madison Square through the chilly afternoon of the late autumn, with a touch of winter already in the air, allowed his thoughts to wander back to what seemed the thin and empty existence as a train-despatcher and a Postal-Union operator. As he gazed out on the closed cars and the women and the lights, and felt the warmth of the silent girl at his side, he wondered how he had ever endured those old, colorless days. He marvelled at the hold which the mere spectacular side of life could get on one. He tried to tell himself that he hated the ill-gotten wealth that lay so heavy and huge in his pocket at that moment; and he smothered his last warmth of satisfaction with the phrase which she had used a few days before: “Their diseased lust for gain without toil.” Then he tried to think of the life he was leading, with one figure eliminated; and the blankness of the prospect appalled him. With a sudden impetuous motion he caught up her hand, where it lay idly in her lap, and held it close. She tried to draw it away, but could not. “Everything seems so different, Frank, since I’ve known you!” he said, a little huskily. “It’s different with me, too!” she all but whispered, looking away. Her face, in the waning light, against the gloom of the dark-curtained taxi-cab, looked pale, and, as he had so often felt, almost flower-like. “Frank!” he cried in a voice that started her breathing quickly. “Won’t you—won’t you marry me?” She looked at him out of what seemed frightened eyes, with an unnatural and half-startled light on her pale face. “I love you, Frank, more than I could ever tell you!” he went on, impetuously. “You could walk over me, you could break me, and do what you like with me, and I’d be happy!” “Oh, you don’t know me, you don’t know me!” she cried. “You don’t know what I’ve been!” And some agony of mind seemed to wrench her whole body. “I don’t care what you’ve been—I know what you _are_! You’re the woman I’d give my life for—I’d lay it down, without a thought, for you! And, good Lord, look at me! Don’t you think I’m bad enough myself—and a hundred times more weak and vacillating than you! I love you, Frank; isn’t that enough?” “No!” she mourned, “it’s not enough!” “But you’ve got to be loved, you want to be loved, or you wouldn’t have eyes and a mouth like that! It’s the only thing, now, that can make life worth while!” She let him catch her up to his shoulder and hold her there, with her wet cheek against his; she even said nothing when he bent and kissed her on the lips, though her face grew colorless at his touch. “I do love you,” she sighed weakly. “I do love you! I do!” and she clung to him, childishly, shaken with a sob or two, happy, yet vaguely troubled. “Then why can’t we get away from here, somewhere, and be happy?” “Where?” she asked.