“Is there something wrong at the plant?” she asked.

“Wrong doesn’t describe it,” he exclaimed bitterly.  “The man that he has done the most for and in whose loyalty he ought to have the right of implicit confidence, is robbing him blind.”

“Bince?” asked the girl.  Jimmy nodded.  “I didn’t like that pill,” she said, “from the moment I saw him.”

“Nor I,” said Jimmy, “but he is going to marry Miss Compton and inherit the business.  He’s the last man in the place that Compton would suspect.  It was just like suggesting to a man that his son was robbing him.”

“Have you got the goods on him?” asked Edith.

“I will have as soon as the C.P.A.’s get to digging into the pay-roll,” he replied, “and I just as good as got the information I need even without that.  Well, let’s forget our troubles.  What shall we do?”

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

He could not tell by either her tone or expression with what anxiety she awaited his reply.  “Suppose we do something exciting, like going to the movies,” he suggested with a laugh.

“That suits me all right,” said the girl.  “There is a dandy comedy down at the Castle.”

And so they went to the picture show, and when it was over he suggested that they have a bite to eat.

“I’ll tell you,” Edith suggested.  “Suppose we go to Feinheimer’s restaurant and see if we can’t get that table that I used to eat at when you waited on me?” They both laughed.

“If old Feinheimer sees me he will have me poisoned,” said Jimmy.

“Not if you have any money to spend in his place.”

It was eleven thirty when they reached Feinheimer’s.  The table they wanted was vacant, a little table in a corner of the room and furthest from the orchestra.  The waiter, a new man, did not know them, and no one had recognized them as they entered.

Jimmy sat looking at the girl’s profile as she studied the menu-card.  She was very pretty.  He had always thought her that, but somehow to-night she seemed to be different, even more beautiful than in the past.  He wished that he could forget what she had been.  And he realized as he looked at her sweet girlish face upon which vice had left no slightest impression to mark her familiarity with vice, that it might be easy to forget her past.  And then between him and the face of the girl before him arose the vision of another face, the face of the girl that he had set upon a pedestal and worshiped from afar.  And with the recollection of her came a realization of the real cause of his sorrow and depression earlier in the evening.

He had attributed it to the unpleasant knowledge he had been forced to partially impart to her father and also in some measure to the regrettable interview he had had with her, but now he knew that these were only contributory causes, that the real reason was that during the months she had occupied his thoughts and in the few meetings he had had with her there had developed within him, unknown to himself, a sentiment for her that could be described by but one word—­love.