respect a woman that's got courage enough to give up everything for him?”      

       Tillie was crying softly into her apron. He put a work-hardened hand on her head.     

       “It isn't as if I'd run around after women,” he said. “You're the only one, since Maggie—” He drew a long breath. “I'll give you time to think it over. Suppose I stop in to-morrow morning. It doesn't commit you to anything to talk it over.”      

       There had been no passion in the interview, and there was none in the touch of his hand. He was not young, and the tragic loneliness of approaching old age confronted him. He was trying to solve his problem and Tillie's, and what he had found was no solution, but a compromise.     

       “To-morrow morning, then,” he said quietly, and went out the door.     

       All that hot August morning Tillie worked in a daze. Mrs. McKee watched her and said nothing. She interpreted the girl's white face and set lips as the result of having had to dismiss Schwitter again, and looked for time to bring peace, as it had done before.     

       Le Moyne came late to his midday meal. For once, the mental anaesthesia of endless figures had failed him. On his way home he had drawn his small savings from the bank, and mailed them, in cash and registered, to a back street in the slums of a distant city. He had done this before, and always with a feeling of exaltation, as if, for a time at least, the burden he carried was lightened. But to-day he experienced no compensatory relief. Life was dull and stale to him, effort ineffectual. At thirty a man should look back with tenderness, forward with hope. K. Le Moyne dared not look back, and had no desire to look ahead into empty years.     

       Although he ate little, the dining-room was empty when he finished. Usually he had some cheerful banter for Tillie, to which she responded in kind. But, what with the heat and with heaviness of spirit, he did not notice her depression until he rose.     

       “Why, you're not sick, are you, Tillie?”      

       “Me? Oh, no. Low in my mind, I guess.”      

       “It's the heat. It's fearful. Look here. If I send you two tickets to a roof garden where there's a 

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