“Very humorous,” he replied, almost curtly.

“I had been sick all day—­oh, for lots of days.  But I was trying to keep on.  I had lost two other places by staying away for being sick—­and I didn’t dare—­just didn’t dare—­lose this one.  You don’t know how afraid you get—­how frightened you are—­when you’re afraid you’re going to be sick.”

The fear—­sick fear that fear of sickness can bring—­that was in her eyes as she talked of it suddenly infuriated him.  He did not know what or whom he I was furious at—­but it was on Ann it broke.

He rose, overturning his unsteady chair as he did so, and, seeking command, looked from the window which looked down into a squalid court.  The wretchedness of the court whipped his rage.  “Well for God’s sake,” he burst forth, “what did you do it for!  Of all the unheard of—­outrageous—­unpardonable—­What did you mean”—­turning savagely upon her—­“by selling false hair?”

“Why I sold false hair,” said Ann, a little sullenly, “so I could live.”

“Well, didn’t you know,” he demanded passionately, “that you could live with us?”

She shook her head.  “I didn’t think I had any right to—­after—­what happened.”

He came back to her.  “Ann,” he asked gently, “haven’t you a ’right to’—­if we want you to?”

She looked at him again in that strange way.  “Are you sure—­you know?”

“Very sure,” he answered briefly.

“And do you mean to say you would want me—­anyhow?” she whispered.

He turned away that she might not see how badly and in what sense he wanted her.  His whole sense of fitness—­his training—­was against her seeing it then.

The pause, the way she was looking at him when he turned back to her, made restraint more and more difficult.  But suddenly she changed, her face darkening as she said, smolderingly:  “No—­I’m not that weak.  If I can’t live—­I’ll die.  Other people make a living!  Other girls get along!  Katie would.  Katie could do it.”

She sat up; he could see the blood throbbing in her neck and at her temples.  She was gripping her hands.  She looked so frail—­so helpless.

“But Katie is strong, Ann,” he said soothingly.

“Yes—­in every way.  And I’m not.”  She turned away, her face twitching.  “Why I seem to be just the kind of a person that has to be taken care of!”

He did not deny it, filled with the longing to do it.

“It’s—­it’s humiliating.”

He would at one time have supposed that it would be, should be; would have held to the idea that every man and woman ought be able to make a living, that there was something wrong with them if they couldn’t.  But not after the things he had seen that summer.  The something wrong was somewhere else.

“And yet you don’t know,” Ann was saying brokenly, “how hard it is.  You don’t know—­how many things there are.”