understand quite a while ago,” the man continued weakly. “She put the ideas in my head. More than once she pulled me out of a jam. Not now, though. She won’t forgive me. Oh, she’s feminine, all right. When I got on her bad side, I was sunk. She’s smart, for a juke-box. A mechanical brain? Or—I don’t know.

“I’ll never know, now. I’ll be dead pretty soon. And that’ll be all right with me.”

The nurse came in then....

Jerry Foster was coldly frightened. And he was drunk. Main Street was bright and roaring as he walked back, but by the time he had made up his mind, it was after closing hour and a chill silence went hand in hand with the darkness. The street lights didn’t help much.

“If I were sober I wouldn’t believe this,” he mused, listening to his hollow footfalls on the pavement. “But I do believe it. I’ve got to fix things up with that—juke-box!”

Part of his mind guided him into an alley. Part of his mind told him to break a window, muffling the clash with his coat, and the same urgent, sober part of his mind guided him through a dark kitchen and a swinging door.

Then he was in the bar. The booths were vacant. A faint, filtered light crept through the Venetian blinds shielding the street windows. Against a wall stood the black, silent bulk of the juke-box.

Silent and unresponsive. Even when Foster inserted a nickel, nothing happened. The electric cord was plugged in the socket, and he threw the activating switch, but that made no difference.

“Look,” he said. “I was drunk. Oh, this is crazy. It can’t be happening. You’re not alive—Are you alive? Did you put the finger on that guy I just saw in the hospital? Listen!”

It was dark and cold. Bottles glimmered against the mirror behind the bar. Foster went over and opened one. He poured the whisky down his throat.

After a while, it didn’t seem so fantastic for him to be standing there arguing with a juke-box.

“So you’re feminine,” he said. “I’ll bring you flowers tomorrow. I’m really beginning to believe! Of course I believe! I can’t write songs. Not by myself. You’ve got to help me. I’ll never look at a—another girl.”

He tilted the bottle again.

“You’re just in the sulks,” he said. “You’ll 

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