when he began to talk about it I told him it would cut him off from his swell friends, and I knew his father might turn him loose.  Oh, it wasn’t the money!  Well, he’d get mad all through, and say he never got along with the old man, and that his friends would have to take me, and he couldn’t live without me.  He said he would have me educated, and bought me books, and I tried to read them.  I’d have done anything for him.  He’d knocked around a good deal since he’d been to Harvard College,—­he wasn’t what you’d call a saint, but his heart was all right.  And he changed, too, I could see it.  He said he was going to make something out of himself.

“I didn’t think it was possible to be so happy, but I had a feeling all along, inside of me, that it couldn’t come off.  I had a little flat in Rutger Street, over on the south side, and everything in the world I wanted.  Well, one day, sure enough, the bell rang and I opened the door, and there stood a man with side whiskers staring at me, and staring until I was frightened to death.  I never saw such eyes as he had.  And all of a sudden I knew it was his father.

“‘Is this Miss Marcy?’” he said.

“I couldn’t say anything at all, but he handed me his card and smiled, I’ll never forget how he smiled—­and came right in and sat down.  I’d heard of that man all my life, and how much money he’d made, and all that.  Why, up in Madison folks used to talk about him—­” she checked herself suddenly and stared at Hodder in consternation.  “Maybe you know him!” she exclaimed.  “I never thought!”

“Maybe I do,” he assented wearily.  In the past few moments suspicion had become conviction.

“Well—­what difference does it make—­now?  It’s all over, and I’m not going to bother him.  I made up my mind I wouldn’t, on account of him, you understand.  I never fell that low—­thank God!”

Hodder nodded.  He could not speak . . . .  The woman seemed to be living over again that scene, in her imagination.

“I just couldn’t realize who it was sitting there beside me, but if I hadn’t known it wouldn’t have made any difference.  He could have done anything with me, anyway, and he knew how to get at me.  He said, now that he’d seen me, that he was sure I was a good girl at the bottom and loved his son, and that I wouldn’t want to ruin the boy when he had such a big future ahead of him.  I wouldn’t have thought, to look at the man, that he could have been so gentle.  I made a fool of myself and cried, and told him I’d go away and never see his son any more—­that I’d always been against marrying him.  Well, he almost had tears in his eyes when he thanked me and said I’d never regret it, and he pulled an envelope out of his pocket.  I said I wouldn’t take any money, and gave it back to him.  I’ve always been sorry since that I didn’t make him take it back—­it never did anything but harm to me.  But he had his way.  He laid it on the table and said he wouldn’t feel right, and took my hand—­and I just didn’t care.