"Very humorous," he replied, almost curtly.

"I had been sick all day--oh, for lots of days. But I was trying to keep on. I had lost two other places by staying away for being sick--and I didn't dare--just didn't dare--lose this one. You don't know how _afraid_ you get--how frightened you are--when you're afraid you're going to be sick."

The fear--sick fear that fear of sickness can bring--that was in her eyes as she talked of it suddenly infuriated him. He did not know what or whom he I was furious at--but it was on Ann it broke.

He rose, overturning his unsteady chair as he did so, and, seeking command, looked from the window which looked down into a squalid court.

The wretchedness of the court whipped his rage. "Well for God's sake," he burst forth, "what did you _do_ it for! Of all the unheard of--outrageous--unpardonable--What did you _mean_"--turning savagely upon her--"by selling false hair?"

"Why I sold false hair," said Ann, a little sullenly, "so I could live."

"Well, didn't you know," he demanded passionately, "that you could _live_ with _us_?"

She shook her head. "I didn't think I had any right to--after--what happened."

He came back to her. "Ann," he asked gently, "haven't you a 'right to'--if we want you to?"

She looked at him again in that strange way. "Are you sure--you know?"

"Very sure," he answered briefly.

"And do you mean to say you would want me--anyhow?" she whispered.

He turned away that she might not see how badly and in what sense he wanted her. His whole sense of fitness--his training--was against her seeing it then.

The pause, the way she was looking at him when he turned back to her, made restraint more and more difficult. But suddenly she changed, her face darkening as she said, smolderingly: "No--I'm not _that_ weak. If I can't live--I'll _die_. Other people make a living! Other girls get along! Katie would. Katie could do it."

She sat up; he could see the blood throbbing in her neck and at her temples. She was gripping her hands. She looked so frail--so helpless.

"But Katie is strong, Ann," he said soothingly.

"Yes--in every way. And I'm not." She turned away, her face twitching. "Why I seem to be just the kind of a person that has to be taken care of!"

He did not deny it, filled with the longing to do it.

"It's--it's humiliating."

He would at one time have supposed that it would be, should be; would have held to the idea that every man and woman ought be able to make a living, that there was something wrong with them if they couldn't. But not after the things he had seen that summer. The something wrong was somewhere else.

"And yet you don't know," Ann was saying brokenly, "how hard it is. You don't know--how many things there are."

She turned to him impetuously. "I want to tell you! Then maybe it will go. I couldn't tell Katie. But I don't know--I don't know why--but I could tell you anything."

He nodded, not clear-eyed, and took one of her hands and stroked it.

Her cheeks grew more red; her eyes glitteringly bright. "You see--it's _men_--things like--that's what makes it hard for girls."

He pressed her hand more firmly, though his own was shaking.

"Katie told you--Katie must have told you about--the first of it--" She faltered. He drew in his breath sharply and held it for an instant. "And after that--" She turned upon him passionately. "_Do_ they know? _Does_ it make a difference?"

He did not get her meaning for an instant and when he did it brought the color to his face; he had always been a man of great reserve. But Ann seemed unconscious. This was the reality that realities make.

He shook his head. "No. You only imagine."

"No, I don't imagine. They pretend. Pretend they know."

He gritted his teeth. So those were the things she had had to meet!

"They lie," he said briefly. "Bluff." And for an instant he covered his eyes with her hand.

"You see after--after that," she went on, "I couldn't go back to the telephone office. I don't know that I can explain why--but it seemed the one thing I couldn't do, so--oh I did several things--was in a store--and then a girl got me on the stage--in the chorus of 'Daisey-Maisey.' I thought perhaps I could be an actress, and that being in the chorus would give me a chance."

She laughed bitterly. "There are lots of silly people in the world, aren't there?" was her one comment on her mistake.

"That night--the last night--" she told it in convulsive little jerks--"the manager said something to me. _He_ pretended. And when he saw how frightened I was--and how I loathed him--it made him furious--and he said things--vowed things--and he kissed me--and oh he was so _terrible_--his face--his lips--"

She hid her face, rocking back and forth. He sat on the bed beside her, put his arm around her as he would around Katie or Worth, holding her tenderly, protectingly, soothingly, his own face white, biting his lips.

"He vowed things--he claimed--I knew I couldn't stay with the company. I was even afraid to stay until it was over that night. I had a chance to run away--Oh I was so _frightened_." She kept repeating--"I was so _frightened_.

"I can't explain it--you'd have to see him--his _lips_--his thick, loose awful lips!"

"Ann," he whispered. "Please, dear--don't talk about it--don't think about it!"

"But I want it to go away! I don't want to be alone with it. I want somebody to know. I want _you_ to know."

"All right," he murmured. "All right. I want to hear." His whole body was set for pain he knew must come.

Ann's eyes were full of terror, that terror that lives after terror, the anguish of terror remembered. "It's awful to be alone with awful thoughts," she whispered. "To be shut in with something you're afraid of."

"I know--I know," he soothed her. "But you're going to tell me. Tell _me_. And then you'll never be alone with it again."

"I've been afraid so much," she went on sobbingly. "Alone so much--with things that frightened me. That night I was alone. All alone. And afraid.

You see I went and went and went. Just to be getting _away_. And at last I was out in the country. And then I was afraid of _that_. I went in something that seemed to be a barn. Hid in some hay--"

He gripped her arm as if it were more than he could stand. His face was colorless.

"I almost went crazy. Why I think I _did_ go crazy--with fear. Being alone. Being afraid."

He looked away from her. It seemed unfair to her to let himself see her like that--her face distorted--unlovely--in the memory of it.

"When it came daylight I went to sleep. And when I woke up--when I woke up--" She was laughing and sobbing together and it was some time before he could quiet her. "When I woke up another man was bending over me--an old man--so _old_--so--

"Oh, I suppose it was just that he was surprised at finding me there. But I thought--I hadn't got over the night before--

"So again I went. Just went. Just to get away. And that was when I saw it was life I'd have to get away from. That there wasn't any place in it for me. That it meant being alone. Afraid. That it was just _that_--those thick awful lips--that old man's eyes--Oh no--no--not that!"

She was fighting it with her hands--trying to push it away. It took both tenderness and sternness to quiet her.