too was making love to her; like Ditmar, he wanted her to use and fling away when he should grow weary.  Was he not pleading for himself rather than for the human cause he professed? taking advantage of her ignorance and desperation, of her craving for new experience and knowledge?  The suspicion sickened her.  Were all men like that?  Suddenly, without apparent premeditation or connection, the thought of the stranger from Silliston entered her mind.  Was he like that?...  Rolfe was bending toward her across the table, solicitously.  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

Her reply was listless.

“Nothing—­except that I’m tired.  I want to go home.”

“Not now,” he begged.  “It’s early yet.”

But she insisted....

CHAPTER XVII

The next day at the noon hour Janet entered Dey Street.  Cheek by jowl there with the tall tenements whose spindled-pillared porches overhung the darkened pavements were smaller houses of all ages and descriptions, their lower floors altered to accommodate shops; while in the very midst of the block stood a queer wooden building with two rows of dormer windows let into its high-pitched roof.  It bore a curious resemblance to a town hall in the low countries.  In front of it the street was filled with children gazing up at the doorway where a man stood surveying them —­the stranger from Silliston.  There was a rush toward him, a rush that drove Janet against the wall almost at his side, and he held up his hands in mock despair, gently impeding the little bodies that strove to enter.  He bent over them to examine the numerals, printed on pasteboard, they wore on their breasts.  His voice was cheerful, yet compassionate.

“It’s hard to wait, I know.  I’m hungry myself,” he said.  “But we can’t all go up at once.  The building would fall down!  One to one hundred now, and the second hundred will be first for supper.  That’s fair, isn’t it?”

Dozens of hands were raised.

“I’m twenty-nine!”

“I’m three, mister!”

“I’m forty-one!”

He let them in, one by one, and they clattered up the stairs, as he seized a tiny girl bundled in a dark red muffler and set her on the steps above him.  He smiled at Janet.

“This is my restaurant,” he said.

But she could not answer.  She watched him as he continued to bend over the children, and when the smaller ones wept because they had to wait, he whispered in their ears, astonishing one or two into laughter.  Some ceased crying and clung to him with dumb faith.  And after the chosen hundred had been admitted he turned to her again.

“You allow visitors?”

“Oh dear, yes.  They’d come anyway.  There’s one up there now, a very swell lady from New York—­so swell I don’t know what to say to her.  Talk to her for me.”

“But I shouldn’t know what to say, either,” replied Janet.  She smiled, but she had an odd desire to cry.  “What is she doing here?”