"A fellow come along presently that looked pretty good to me. I met him over to Casey's dance-hall, I remember, and from the first it was all up with him. He was better than the fellows I'd been running with; a good dresser, always flashing his roll--you know race-horse people used to make good money before the Pari-Mutuels--And when he wanted me to come over here to Louisville with him--well, it looked to be my chance--Imagine starting out to be a lady, in company with Joe Markheim!" said Effie May grimly. Joan exclaimed, "Not that dreadful-looking creature you were talking with to-day?" The other nodded. "Only he wasn't dreadful-looking then. He was real handsome--or he looked that way to me. You see I was only sixteen," she sighed. "Almost anything in pants that'd take me away from home would have looked good to me then, I guess!--But I talked to Mom about it, and she thought I'd better take a chance, too. So I went." The girl had begun to shiver a little. "You mean--you married him?" Effie May gave her a queer look. "Well, yes. As near as I could. You see he had a wife at the time." "He--betrayed you, then?" gasped Joan. "Oh, no, dearie, I knew. So did Ma. But we thought I'd better take a chance.... You see, things like that depend on how you're raised. To us it was almost the same as being married. Not like poor Mame, you know. There's a whole lot of difference between a kept woman, and _her_ sort." "Is there?" said Joan with stiff lips. "My, yes! Sometimes if the man sees you're straight, he marries you after a while.... But Joe didn't. I'm sure I don't know why I stuck to him as long as I did, except, that I'm sort of an affectionate disposition and don't like to change," she ruminated. "And then he began to play in pretty bad luck, too, and that's not the time to leave a man, when he's down and out. I guess I'd have been sticking yet, if he'd acted decent--I ain't going to tell you what he asked me to do once when he got on his uppers," she said, darkly flushing, "but it was something no gentleman would have proposed to a woman who'd stuck to him through thick and thin for years! That's when I left him for Calloway." "Did--did Mr. Calloway marry you?" asked Joan faintly. "Sure he did! Just before he died. He got religion, and the priest told him he ought, so as he could leave me his money without any fuss. He was a good old sport, that priest! And so was Calloway. Never turned a hair. 'Wish I'd done it before!' says he--Don't you think that's a pretty good recommendation for a woman, when a man's willing to marry her after living with her for fifteen years?" she asked wistfully. "I suppose so," murmured Joan--The usual thing was happening to her. Old standards receded. Inevitably, irresistibly, she was beginning to see things through the other's eyes. This was Joan's great weakness--though there were people who considered it her strength.