the hall and tried the front door. Coming back she took a pad and pencil from the desk, drew a small table up to the divan, spread the newspaper on it, and copied the paragraph on to the pad. It ran as follows:

“Sister Carrie:

Edmund stoney broke but Albert able to help him. Think we ought to chip in. Can a date be arranged for discussing his affairs?

Sam and Lewis.”

She studied it for some time, the pencil suspended.[Pg 20] Then it descended, crossing out letter after letter, till three words remained—“Edmunton, Alberta, Canada.” The signature she guessed as the name he went by.

[Pg 20]

She burned the written paper, grinding it to powder in the ash-tray. The newspaper she threw into the waste-basket where Luella, the mulatto woman who “did up” for her, would find it in the morning. She felt certain Luella was paid to watch her, that the woman had a pass-key to the mail-box and every torn scrap of letter or note was foraged for and handed on. But she had continued to keep the evil-eyed creature, fearful that her dismissal would make them more than ever wary, strengthen their suspicion that Sybil Saunders was in communication with her lover.

The deadly danger of it was cold at her heart as she lay back on the divan and closed her eyes. Through her shut lids she saw the paragraph with the words of the address standing out like the writing on the wall. She had heard directly from him once, a letter the day after he had fled; the [Pg 21]only one that even he, reckless in his despair, had dared to send. In that he had told her to watch the personal column in a certain paper and had given her the names by which she could identify the paragraphs. She had watched and twice found the veiled message and twice waited in sickening fear for discovery. It had not happened. Now he had grown bolder, telling her where he was—it was as if his hand beckoned her to come. She could write to him at last, do it this evening and take it out after dark. Lying very still, her hands clasped behind her head, she ran over in her mind letter-boxes, post-offices where she might mail it. Were the ones in crowded districts or those in secluded byways, the safest? It was like walking through grasses where live wires were hidden.

[Pg 21]

A ring at the bell made her leap to her feet with wild visions of detectives. But it was only Anne Tracy, come in to 

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