Charity, having insured her husband's life, said: “And now, Jimmie old boy, I mustn't see you any more. Gossip has linked our names. We must unlink them. My husband and you will butcher each other if I'm not careful, so it's good-by for keeps, and God bless you, isn't it? Promise?” “I'll promise anything, if you'll go on away and let me alone,” Jim groaned, his broken arm being quite sufficient trouble for him at the moment. Charity laughed and went on away. She was deeply comforted by a promise which she knew he would not keep. Dyckman himself, as soon as his broken bones ceased to shake his soul, groaned with loneliness and despaired of living without Charity--vowed in his sick misery that nobody could ever come between them. He could not, would not, live without her. Still the gossip oozed along that he had not lived without her. CHAPTER XVI Kedzie had come to town with no social ambitions whatsoever beyond a childish desire to be enormously rich and marry a beautiful prince. Her ideal of heaven at first was an eternal movie show interrupted at will by several meals a day, incessant soda-water and ice-cream and a fellow or two to spoon with, and some up-to-date duds--most of all, several pairs of those white-topped shoes all the girls in town were wearing. The time would shortly come when Kedzie would abhor the word _swell_ and despise the people who used it, violently forgetting that she had herself used it. She would soon be overheard saying to a mixed girl of her mixed acquaintance: “Take it from me, chick, when you find a dame calls herself a lady, she ain't. Nobody who is it says it, and if you want to be right, lay off such words as _swell_ and _classy_.” Later, she would be finding that it took something still more than avoiding the word _lady_ to deserve it. She would writhe to believe that she could never quite make herself exact with the term. She would hate those who had been born and made to the title, and she would revert at times to common instincts with fierce anarchy. But one must go forward before one can backslide, and Kedzie was on the way up the slippery hill. She had greatly improved the quality of her lodgings, her suitors, and her clothes. Her photographic successes in risky exposures had brought her a marked increase of wages. She wore as many clothes as she could in private, to make up for her self-denial before the camera. Her taste in dress was soubrettish and flagrant, but it was not small-town. She was beginning to dislike ice-cream soda and candy and to call for beer and Welsh rabbit. She would soon be liking salads with garlic and Roquefort cheese in the dressing. She was mounting with splendid assiduity toward the cigarette and the high-ball. There was no stopping Kedzie. She kept rising on stepping-stones of her dead selves. Landladies are ladder-rungs of progress, too; Kedzie's history might have been traced by hers.