I

T was an unusually gloomy night, even for a New York February. A keen, gusty wind bit into the blood of the few figures yet on the street, while sudden flurries of wind-borne sleet whirled madly through the canyons between the buildings.

Janet Smith stood at the window of her third-floor "apartment" and stared down into the street. Her supper cooked and eaten, her mending done, her tiny bank balance checked, there seemed nothing to do but snap out the light and, under the covers of her bed, forget the shabbiness of her surroundings and the drabness of her life in sleep.

It had been a hard day at the office. The easiest day at Marr and Company's ("real estate, mortgages, investments and loans," their letterheads proclaimed) was enough to set the average girl's nerves ajangle, and this had been the hardest day in Janet's memory.

James Marr, senior partner, corpulent of figure and snarlingly overbearing of manner, had seemed impossible to please. Five times had Janet, who was considered the most efficient cog in the office machinery, written a letter concerning an important loan, before he had scrawled his heavy backhand signature across the bottom.

It was not customary for Janet to deplore the years she had spent in the office, even though they had been empty ones, untouched by any color or happiness. But tonight the dreariness of the view before her seemed symbolical of her life, past, present and, it seemed likely, future. A sudden storm of noiseless weeping swept over her and she knelt before the window, her face upon her arms, with spasmodically heaving shoulders.

"I'm sick of it all," she sobbed. "Slave, slave; day in, day out. Six years of it already and nothing but more slaving to look forward to."

She crossed the room to her shabby little dressing table and stared at the reflection of her tear-streaked face in the mirror above it. It was not a homely face, by any standard. When one's eyes got past the tightly-drawn "spinstersknot," the dull golden gleam of the hair itself lent beauty to the well-shaped little head. Despite their hopeless dullness, soft, dark-brown eyes full of dancing lights before James Marr had bullied the smiles from her face, told of happiness past and hinted at joy to come.

As for her figure, it suffices to say that even the skimpy folds of the Turkeyred kimona failed to hide its soft, full roundness.

Yet no man had ever displayed more than momentary interest in Janet. She did not consider the deterring effect of sombre colors-particularly unsuited to her type-upon men. Too, by day hair and eyes, her most attractive features, were hidden in a dusky corner of the office.

Among the girls at Marr and Company's, girls who boasted during the lunch-hour of their conquests, Janet was considered a "mess." This dictum she lacked courage to dispute. Indeed, by reiteration, it had come to be regarded by her as an unalterable thing. Yet the longing for a rational woman's life with all that the term implies, almost overwhelmed her at times, it was so deep and strong.

With a sigh she turned toward her bed, then paused, as a knock sounded upon her door. It was a soft, hesitating tap, as if the person outside did not care

to be heard by the occupants of adjoining apartments.

Janet crossed to the door, drawing her kimona closely about her, then stood undecided. She knew of no one who should be knocking at her door at ten o'clock. "Who is it?" she asked tremulously. "Open the door, please; I want to speak to you."

It was a soft, slow voice, yet appeal ing by its intensity of tone, and Janet shot back the bolt. The door opened swiftly and a man slipped inside, closing it quickly after him.

"They're after me!" he gasped and leaned breathlessly against the wall.

Janet hardly grasped the import of his words, but stood regarding him with an expression of almost childlike curiosity. He was different from the men she saw daily, with a difference resting not so much in his clothing, which was conventional, but rather in the personality of the man himself. He was well above middle height, muscular of figure, with an atmosphere of activity about him even when still. His face and hands were deeply tanned, as by the sun of years and about his grey eyes were fine wrinkles. Janet remembered seeing the same mark on the face of deep-water sailors on the waterfront. It was the brand of the outdoor man who stares across wide, sun-swept spaces to far horizons. "They'll be here in a minute!" he whispered.

"Who? What have you done?"

"The police. I hit a man-the wrong one."

Now the natural thing for a girl of Janet's training to do in such a case was to shriek for assistance. Such action would have been entirely correct, even imperative, according to the standards of her mother, as well as by her more recent habit of life. But tonight, as it has been remarked before, the taste of her usual manner of existence was bitter in her mouth. Or it may have been the dim groping after Adventure which comes to all of us at some time which inspired her most unusual mood.

She paled, then flushed warmly beneath the man's direct gaze. He, watch

ing her keenly, decided that basically she was not at all bad-looking, but his fingers twitched to loosen her wonderful hair.

"Tell me what you did; why they are after you," Janet whispered.

Footsteps sounded faintly in the hall, approaching the door.

"I had an argument with a fellow who's by way of being a big gun in politics. It was in a saloon owned by one of his men. He struck at me and missed and I didn't give him a chance to hit again. I knocked him clean out, then the whole darn' gang jumped for me. I held them off with my gun until I could back out of an alley-door, then took to my heels. As soon as this fellow came to, he swore out a warrant for my arrest for assault to murder. I've been dodging the police all afternoon."

He turned swiftly to the door and listened for an instant, his hand near the front of his coat.

"It means a trip up the river, if I'm caught," he said, turning again to Janet, "for he's got witnesses galore. I'd almost as soon be hung as do time behind walls. It would kill me-the confinement.'

49

The footsteps halted outside, and there came a sharp, authoritative knock on the door. The man, with a quick glance at Janet, slipped his hand inside his unbuttoned coat with a movement almost too rapid for the eye to follow, and brought out a heavy, bone-handled revolver of the kind known as the "Frontier Model." This he cocked deftly with the thumb of his gun-hand and held at hip-level. The knock sounded again, more imperatively.

Janet touched the man's arm. He leaned toward her and she placed her lips to his ear.

"Don't speak. I'll see who it is. They shan't take you."

Noiselessly she stepped backward to her bed and leaned heavily upon the creaky springs.

"Who is it?" she demanded tremulously.

"A city detective."

"What do you want?"

"Have you seen a man in the hall? I'm looking for a desperate character; wanted for assault to murder."

"No. I haven't seen him." The lie slipped easily from her lips. Truly, this was a night of surprises for Janet the Prosaic, who could number the falsehoods of her calm existence upon two fingers.

"All right. Maybe he's on the next floor."

When the footsteps had passed out of hearing the man turned to Janet, warm gratitude lighting up his bronzed face.

"You're a little bit of all right, girl," he said fervently. "I could have shot my way out, I guess, but I hate to do any thing like that except as a last resort."

He spun the revolver upon his forefinger, caught it by the barrel and replaced it in the holster beneath his left

arm.

"Not many women would have done as much for an absolute stranger, a criminal, for all you know."

"But you're not a criminal," Janet protested. "I-I know you're not becausebecause you're not," she ended somewhat lamely.

Now, I

"No-o, not a criminal. Your extremely logical conclusion is correct. think I'd better go."

That, of course, was what he should have done. Janet, by the laws of the respectability which she had been taught to worship all her life, should have sent him packing, with, perhaps, a lecture into the bargain. But he had brought Roman into the dull confines of her apartment and she found herself strangely loth to let it pass out again. The rebellion against her commonplace life was working a veritable rebirth within her.

She felt that her grey, commonplace existence, envisualized in the light of this evening's tense adventure would be unendurable. It dawned upon her suddenly that it had always been hateful and that, come what might, she could never again be the same Janet Smith, who had let this stranger through her door.

This is not a satisfactory explanation of her almost unexplainable actions, but

it is extremely doubtful if Janet herself could have given a better one, so engrossed was she with the experience. Complex emotion, when all is said and done, is almost impossible of dissection.

"Have you had supper?" she faltered. "You- you must be both hungry and tired, after running from the police all afternoon."

"I haven't had a bite since breakfast," admitted her protege with a smile.

She noted that his teeth were white and even and that the quizzical smile magically lifted years from his face; he looked but little older than herself in that moment.

With heightened color she turned away to escape his frankly admiring gaze. It was a new experience for her to feel that she had inspired this light in a man's eyes and to hide her confusion she began to place upon the table the materials for a meal.

He stepped forward to help her, but she, afraid to raise her eyes, set out boiled ham, bread, lettuce and mustard without looking up. He picked up the butcher-knife and began to make sandwiches, while she put on water to boil for coffee.

When the sandwiches were neatly piled upon a plate and the coffee ready, he insisted upon her bearing him company at supper. He kept up a runningfire of humorous comment during the meal, but Janet said little, being content merely to listen.

At last, after his third cup of coffee, he declared himself a man again and began the manufacture of a cigarette. This done, he flicked a match-head across his thumbnail and smoked in silence for a moment.

"By the way," he said finally, “I haven't even asked your name."

"Janet Smith," he repeated when she told him, his soft drawl making music of the prosaic words.

"And yours?" she asked, for he had again relapsed into silence. "Dale Hendricks."

"I-I suppose you'll be leaving New York as soon as you can, won't you?" "Leaving?"

"Yes. To escape this charge."

He looked up and caught her soft gaze upon his face.

"Miss Smith," he said, scowling at his plate, "this farce has gone far enough. I'm going to tell you the truth and throw myself upon your mercy—”

"Farce?" she interrupted bewilderedly. "Won't you please explain. Did you do something worse than thrash that man? Anyway," she added defiantly, "I don't care."

He stared at her curiously for an instant, then smiled.

"You improve upon acquaintance, Miss Smith," he said. "That was spoken like a true woman."

He smiled whimsically across at her. "Do you know that when first I stepped inside this room and looked at you, then considered what I had to say, I believed that you would throw up your hands, scream murder and collapse at my feet?"

His smile was infectious. Janet found herself unconsciously returning it.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because-forgive me if I seem rude-you were at first glance such a perfect type of the old maid. That little knot at the back of your head, for instance; it's a crime to abuse hair like yours that way. Don't you ever loosen it-let it curl around your neck and forehead? Why, you'd be a little beauty if you did your hair nicely, dressed in colors suited to you, instead of that convict-grey-” he pointed to her street dress, lying across the bed"-and took care of your complexion."

He stared at her appraisingly for a long moment through narrowed eyes, until a hot wave of color swept over her face from neck to brow.

"Now!" he said triumphantly. "Let down your hair and three-fourths the women in New York would be jealous of you.

"The trouble with you has been that you were afraid to live-because you had been taught that it wasn't respectable. Hasn't it?"

He smiled at her tell-tale blush.
"When you bought clothes," he went

51

on remorselessly, "you bought them for service and neatness, regardless of color, style and everything else that make a girl's outfit clothes instead of merely covering.

"Live, girl, live! You only do it once. Throw overboard that burden of respectability you've packed all your life. Dowdiness and virtue aren't necessarily the same.

"Tonight, you've showed signs of the real girl beneath the shell. You took me in, lied for me and fed me when I knew that, had you really been the human icicle your usual actions indicate, you'd have turned me out. There was the real Janet Smith. Keep that side of you alive, girl, for your own sake."

He halted rather embarrassedly and rolled another cigarette. Janet, watching him covertly from beneath her lashes, wondered why she was not furious at the way he had laid bare her character, ruthlessly torn it from her and held it up to expose its faults. She harbored no such feeling and decided to beg the question.

"You spoke of a farce," she reminded him, surprised to find her voice calm.

"A deception, rather. I owe you an abject apology. I'm not a criminal, not wanted by the police at all. I lied to you at the door. It all arose from a bet I made last night.

"I was born on a ranch in Texas, but dad bought out the S-Bars-S in New Mexico fifteen years ago and it's been our home ever since. Five years ago I graduated from Harvard and because of my father's death went home to take up the management of the ranch.

"For the last five years I've slaved, improving the ranch, importing a better breed of cattle and installing an irrigation system. Today it's one of the bestpaying properties in the State. So last month I decided to take my longdeferred vacation.

"At the Harvard Club here I met some old classmates. Last night we had a dinner. Afterwards we got upon the subject of Western hospitality and one of my friends he spent last summer on the ranch with me-spoke of the Western

"I know Mr. Simmons," she said, "and I suppose that his impression of me wasn't far wrong-until tonight. Tell me the rest."

"The gang watched me into the house and Simmons stood at the head of the stairs while I knocked at your door, waiting, he said, to hear you scream for the police."

"But the detective?" "That was Simmons."

Dale turned toward the window. Faintly, from the street, three stories below, came the long, ululating wail of a motor-siren, three long blasts.

"There's the gang now," he said and rose from the table.

Janet rose also and Dale stepped up beside her. She was not conscious of moving her hands, but suddenly she

found them held in Dale's brown palms.

But

"So you see," he concluded, "I'm a rank impostor and I offer you my apologies. If you had been the utterly proper young-old maid I had expected, I wouldn't be so ashamed of myself. you've acted tonight like-like a regular fellow. The fact that I'm not wanted by the police has only one bright side: I don't have to leave New York tomorrow, or until I choose, so I'll be able to see you again, real soon, if you're willing.

"I'm ashamed of myself, but not sorry that I made the bet with Simmons, for if I hadn't made it, I'd not have found you."

"I-I'm glad you made it, too," said Janet, a bit unsteadily, then added with apparent irrelevance, "there's an old-rose gown I've seen in a shop-window; I be lieve it would suit my coloring. I-I'll be glad to have you call whenever you like; I-I want to hear about your ranch."

Her head was bent, so that he could not see her eyes, but his face grew radiant.

"Do you really want to hear about the ranch? It's in God's own country Janet."

Dale bent close to the little golden head.

"I've got two weeks yet to tell you about it and I warn you that I intend to describe it so alluringly that you'll not be content to live anywhere else, once you've heard."

For a long moment Janet looked up into his eyes, then dimpled most adorably.

"I'm a good listener-Dale," she said.