“I don’t see where you come in,” she told him.

He turned and smiled at her.

“Do you remember when I was here that evening about two months ago I said I should like to be your friend?  Well, I meant it.  And I have often hoped, since then, that some circumstance might bring us together again.  You seemed to think that no friendship was possible between us, but I have tried to make myself believe that you said so because you didn’t know me.”

“Honest to God?” she asked.  “Is that on the level?”

“I only ask for an opportunity to prove it,” he replied, striving to speak naturally.  He stooped and laid the dustpan on the hearth.  “There!  Now let’s sit down.”

She sank on the sofa, her breast rising and falling, her gaze dumbly fixed on him, as one under hypnosis.  He took the rocker.

“I have wanted to tell you how grateful Mrs. Garvin, the boy’s mother —­was for the roses you brought.  She doesn’t know who sent them, but I intend to tell her, and she will thank you herself.  She is living out in the country.  And the boy—­you would scarcely recognize him.”

“I couldn’t play the piano for a week after—­that thing happened.”  She glanced at the space where the instrument had stood.

“You taught yourself to play?” he asked.

“I had music lessons.”

“Music lessons?”

“Not here—­before I left home—­up the State, in a little country town, —­Madison.  It seems like a long time ago, but it’s only seven years in September.  Mother and father wanted all of us children to know a little more than they did, and I guess they pinched a good deal to give us a chance.  I went a year to the high school, and then I was all for coming to the city—­I couldn’t stand Madison, there wasn’t anything going on.  Mother was against it,—­said I was too good-looking to leave home.  I wish I never had.  You wouldn’t believe I was good-looking once, would you?”

She spoke dispassionately, not seeming to expect assent, but Hodder glanced involuntarily at her wonderful crown of hair.  She had taken off her hat.  He was thinking of the typical crime of American parents,—­and suddenly it struck him that her speech had changed, that she had dropped the suggestive slang of the surroundings in which she now lived.

“I was a fool to come, but I couldn’t see it then.  All I could think of was to get away to a place where something was happening.  I wanted to get into Ferguson’s—­everybody in Madison knew about Ferguson’s, what a grand store it was,—­but I couldn’t.  And after a while I got a place at the embroidery counter at Pratt’s.  That’s a department store, too, you know.  It looked fine, but it wasn’t long before I fell wise to a few things.” (She relapsed into slang occasionally.) “Have you ever tried to stand on your feet for nine hours, where you couldn’t sit down for a minute?  Say, when Florry Kinsley and me—­she was the girl I roomed with —­would get home at night, often we’d just lie down and laugh and cry, we were so tired, and our feet hurt so.  We were too used up sometimes to get up and cook supper on the little stove we had.  And sitting around a back bedroom all evening was worse than Madison.  We’d go out, tired as we were, and walk the streets.”