keeper, for she drew away a little till I laughed and explained.

"You're a swell, then?" she said. She said it with conviction. She said it as a question too.

"If you'll tell me what you mean by that," said I, "I'll tell you if you're right."

Whereupon for a few moments she was silent, but when I prompted her for an answer, she said,

"A swell's a swell."

"Then certainly the description doesn't apply to me," I replied, and, taking out the latchkey, I opened my door.

At first she hesitated to come in, but I took her arm. The sleeve of her dress was drenched.

"You mustn't stay outside," said I. "Just come and wait in my sitting-room while Moxon gets a 'taxi.' He won't be long."

The moment I opened the door, there, sure enough, was Dandy to his feet, but at the sight of my visitor he arrested all motion and glared. At this time of night I was his personal belonging. He had me to himself. There was no doubt he resented this intrusion of another person, and when he realized it was a woman, his contempt was wonderful. With just a glance at me, he turned round and stared into the fire. I never saw reproach so clearly drawn in the outline of a dog's back before.

"This is just a foretaste," thought I, "of what we shall get from Moxon," and I rang the bell.

When I turned round, she was looking all about the room with a silent wonder in her eyes. It is comfortable, I know. I have been told that. But no one has ever surveyed it with such an expression in their eyes as she had then. I felt almost ashamed of myself for calling it my own; for in that look I seemed to see all the dull, cheap finery of her own squalid little rooms in Bloomsbury.

"The world is hard on women," I said to myself, and again the name of Clarissa came like an echo into my thoughts. Clarissa in her little gown of canary-colored satin.

I was just going to ask her more about herself when she forestalled me.

"Do you live here alone?" she asked.

I nodded my head.

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