“How much a week was it?” he enquired, with sympathy.

“Ten dollars,” she replied.  “Little enough, but I can’t live without it.”

He changed his attitude, suddenly realising the volcanic sensitiveness of her attitude towards him and life in general.  Instinctively he felt that at a single ill-considered word she would even then, in her moment of weakness, have left him, have pushed him on one side, and walked out to whatever she might have to face.

“What a fool you are!” he exclaimed, a little brusquely.

“Am I!” she replied belligerently.

“Of course you are!  You call yourself a daughter of New York, a city whose motto seems to be pretty well every one for himself.  You know you did my typing all right, you know my play was a success, you know that I shall have to write another.  What made you take it for granted that I shouldn’t want to employ you, and go and hide yourself?  Lock the door when I came to see you, because it was past eight o’clock, and not answer my letters?”

“Can’t have men callers now dad’s away,” she told him, a little brusquely.  “It’s not allowed.”

“Oh, rubbish!” he answered irritably.  “That isn’t the point.  You’ve kept away from me.  You’ve deliberately avoided me.  You knew that I was just as lonely as you were.”

Then she blazed out.  The sallowness of her cheeks, the little dip under her cheekbones—­she had grown thinner during the last week or so—­made her eyes seem larger and more brilliant than ever.

“You lonely!  Rubbish!  Why, they’re all running after you everywhere.  Quite a social success, according to the papers!  I say, ain’t you afraid?”

“Horribly,” he admitted, “and about the one person I could have talked to about it chucks me.”

“I don’t know anything about you, or what you’ve done,” she said.  “I only know that the tecs—­”

He laid his hand upon her fingers.  She snatched them away but accepted his warning.  They were served then with their meal, and their conversation drifted into other channels.

“Well,” he continued presently, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone, “I’ve found you now, and you’ve got to be sensible.  It’s true I’ve had a stroke of luck, but that might fall away at any moment.  I’ve typing waiting for you, or I can get you a post at the New York Theatre.  You’d better first do my typing.  I’ll have it in your rooms to-morrow morning by nine o’clock.  And would you like something in advance?”

“No!” she replied grudgingly.  “I’ll have what I’ve earned, when I’ve earned it.”

He sipped his claret and studied her meditatively.

“You’re not much of a pal, are you?”

She scoffed at him, looked him up and down, at his well-fitting clothes, his general air of prosperity.

“Pal!” she jeered.  “Look at you—­Merton Ware, the great dramatist, and me—­a shabby, ugly, bad-tempered, indifferent typewriter.  Bad-tempered,” she repeated.  “Yes, I am that.  I didn’t start out to be.  I just haven’t had any luck.”