to which Ditmar had taken her and this detestable house?  Suddenly, seemingly by chance, her eyes fell on the box of drug-store candy from which the cheap red ribbon had been torn, and by some odd association of ideas it suggested and epitomized Lise’s Sunday excursion with a mama hideous travesty on the journey of wonders she herself had taken.  Had that been heaven, and this of Lise’s, hell?...  And was.  Lise’s ambition to be supported in idleness and luxury to be condemned because she had believed her own to be higher?  Did not both lead to destruction?  The weight that had lain on her breast since the siren had awakened her that morning and she had reached out and touched the chilled, empty sheets now grew almost unsupportable.

“It’s true,” said Janet, “all men are the same.”

Lise was staring at her.

“My God!” she exclaimed.  “You?”

“Yes-me,” cried Janet.—­“And what are you going to do about it?  Stay here with him in this filthy place until he gets tired of you and throws you out on the street?  Before I’d let any man do that to me I’d kill him.”

Lise began to whimper, and suddenly buried her face in the pillow.  But a new emotion had begun to take possession of Janet—­an emotion so strong as to give her an unlookedfor sense of detachment.  And the words Lise had spoken between her sobs at first conveyed no meaning.

“I’m going to have a baby....”

Lise was going to have a child!  Why hadn’t she guessed it?  A child!  Perhaps she, Janet, would have a child!  This enlightenment as to Lise’s condition and the possibility it suggested in regard to herself brought with it an overwhelming sympathy which at first she fiercely resented then yielded to.  The bond between them, instead of snapping, had inexplicably strengthened.  And Lise, despite her degradation, was more than ever her sister!  Forgetting her repugnance to the bed, Janet sat down beside Lise and put an arm around her.

“He said he’d marry me, he swore he was rich—­and he was a spender all right.  And then some guy came up to me one night at Gruber’s and told me he was married already.”

“What?” Janet exclaimed.

“Sure!  He’s got a wife and two kids here in Boston.  That was a twenty-one round knockout!  Maybe I didn’t have something to tell him when he blew into Hampton last Friday!  But he said he couldn’t help it—­he loved me.”  Lise sat up, seemingly finding relief in the relation of her wrongs, dabbing her eyes with a cheap lace handkerchief.  “Well, while he’d been away—­this thing came.  I didn’t know what was the matter at first, and when I found out I was scared to death, I was ready to kill myself.  When I told him he was scared too, and then he said he’d fix it.  Say, I was a goat to think he’d marry me!” Lise laughed hysterically.

“And then—­” Janet spoke with difficulty, “and then you came down here?”

“I told him he’d have to see me through, I’d start something if he didn’t.  Say, he almost got down on his knees, right there in Gruber’s!  But he came back inside of ten seconds—­he’s a jollier, for sure, he was right there with the goods, it was because he loved me, he couldn’t help himself, I was his cutie, and all that kind of baby talk.”