stood still and pleasured in the ring of his foot falls down the
cement sidewalk. Not until they had quite died away did she go
on. She crept up the back stairs and across the kitchen to her
room, registering her thanksgiving that Sarah was asleep.

She lighted the gas, and, as she removed the little velvet hat,
she felt her lips still tingling with the kiss. Yet it had meant
nothing. It was the way of the young men. They all did it. But
their good-night kisses had never tingled, while this one tingled
in her brain as wall as on her lip. What was it? What did it
mean? With a sudden impulse she looked at herself in the glass.
The eyes were happy and bright. The color that tinted her cheeks
so easily was in them and glowing. It was a pretty reflection,
and she smiled, partly in joy, partly in appreciation, and the
smile grew at sight of the even rows of strong white teeth. Why
shouldn't Billy like that face? was her unvoiced query. Other men
had liked it. Other men did like it. Even the other girls
admitted she was a good-looker. Charley Long certainly liked it
from the way he made life miserable for her.

She glanced aside to the rim of the looking-glass where his
photograph was wedged, shuddered, and made a moue of distaste.
There was cruelty in those eyes, and brutishness. He was a brute.
For a year, now, he had bullied her. Other fellows were afraid to
go with her. He warned them off. She had been forced into almost
slavery to his attentions. She remembered the young bookkeeper at
the laundry--not a workingman, but a soft-handed, soft-voiced
gentleman--whom Charley had beaten up at the corner because he
had been bold enough to come to take her to the theater. And she
had been helpless. For his own sake she had never dared accept