His first poignant disappointment over, and his plan of action decided upon, he wasted no time in seeking Mrs. Gallito.  He found her, to his satisfaction, quite alone, Hughie having, as she told him, gone to spend the evening with some friends.  She had, before his arrival, been reading the Sunday supplement of an eastern newspaper, gazing with longing eyes at the portraits of the daughters of fashion and intently studying some of the elaborate and intricate coiffures presented, in the hope that she might achieve the same effects.

“Why, Mr. Hanson!” she cried in surprise at the sight of him.  “I thought you’d gone sure, and Oh, mercy!” putting her hands to her head, “I ain’t on my puffs.”

“I wouldn’t ever have known it,” said Hanson truthfully.  “The fact is I’m not noticing anything much, Mrs. Gallito, I got a lot on my mind.”  He sighed unfeignedly and she noticed that he looked both tired and worried.  “And say, I wish you’d sit down and talk to me a little.”

She still stood looking at him hesitatingly, a distressed expression on her face.  “I—­I don’t know as I’d better,” she faltered.  “Gallito, he said, the very last thing he said, was that if you come around—­Oh, Mr. Hanson,” she sat down weakly in her chair and began to cry.  “I thought you was just about the nicest man I’d met for many a day, and here I find you’re a dreadful scamp.  Oh, dear!  Oh, dear!  I guess all men are alike!”

Hanson bent forward earnestly.  He had an end to gain and he meant to gain it.  “Now look here, Mrs. Gallito,” he said.  “You don’t want to condemn me unheard.  You’re not that kind of a lady.  I knew that the first minute I set eyes on you.  Now understand I’m not trying to persuade you that I’m any better than I am, but I just want you to believe that I’m not quite so black as I’m painted, not as black as your husband and Bob Flick want to paint me, anyway.”

She twisted a fold of her dress, already half-persuaded and yet still a little doubtful.  “But you never gave us a hint that you were married,” she ventured timidly.

“Honest to God, I forget it myself,” he asserted devoutly.  “How can a man be always thinking to tell everyone he meets that he’s still in a legal tie-up, when the only way he can remember it himself is by coming across his marriage certificate, now and then?  Why, it’s a good ten years since me and that woman parted.  You don’t call that married?”

His positive personality exerted its usual influence over Mrs. Gallito.  “’Course not,” she agreed, although she still sat with downcast eyes and pleated her dress.

“I’m a pretty lonely man,” pathos in his voice, “and I’d kind of gotten into the way of putting home and happiness and all like that away from me; and then I came here and saw Pearl,” he was sincere enough now, “and honest, Mrs. Gallito, it was all up with me then, right from the first minute, and I was so plumb crazy about her that I guess I lost my head.  I knew all the time that I ought to tell you and her just how I was fixed, I knew it, but, someways, try as I would, I couldn’t.  I didn’t have the nerve, so I just waited and let the cards fall as they would.  Maybe I was a fool and a coward.  The way things have turned out, it sure looks like I was, but I just couldn’t help it.”