not at all his habit of conduct, and did indeed surprise him mightily. As for Gilder, he felt helpless in some puzzling fashion that was totally foreign to his ordinary self. He was still glowing with wrath over the method by which he had been victimized into giving the girl a hearing. Yet, despite his chagrin, he realized that he could not send her from him forthwith. By some inexplicable spell she bound him impotent.

"We work nine hours a day," the quiet voice went on, a curious pathos in the rich timbre of it; "nine hours a day, for six days in the week. That's a fact, isn't it? And the trouble is, an honest girl can't live on six dollars a week. She can't do it, and buy food and clothes, and pay room-rent and carfare. That's another fact, isn't it?"

Mary regarded the owner of the store with grave questioning in her violet eyes. Under the urgency of emotion, color crept into the pallid cheeks, and now her face was very beautiful--so beautiful, indeed, that for a little the charm of its loveliness caught the man's gaze, and he watched her with a new respect, born of appreciation for her feminine delightfulness. The impression was far too brief. Gilder was not given to esthetic raptures over women. Always, the business instinct was the dominant. So, after the short period of amazed admiration over such unexpected winsomeness, his thoughts flew back angrily to the matters whereof she spoke so ridiculously.

"I don't care to discuss these things," he declared peremptorily, as the girl remained silent for a moment.

"And I have no wish to discuss anything," Mary returned evenly. "I only want to give you what you asked for--facts." A faint smile of reminiscence curved the girl's lips. "When they first locked me up," she explained, without any particular evidence of emotion, "I used to sit and hate you."

"Oh, of course!" came the caustic exclamation from Gilder.

"And then, I thought that perhaps you did not understand," Mary continued; "that, if I were to tell you how things really are, it might be you would change them somehow."

At this ingenuous statement, the owner of the store gave forth a gasp of sheer stupefaction.

"I!" he cried, incredulously. "I change my business policy because you ask me to!"

There was something imperturbable in the quality of the voice as the girl went resolutely forward with her explanation. It was as 

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