your face as I came in I gathered that he had just been proposing that you should perform a similar act of Christian charity. Had he?”

Mary clenched her hands.

“It’s this awful New York!” she cried. “Eddy was never like that in Dunsterville.”

“Dunsterville does not offer quite the same scope,” said Joe.

“New York changes everything,” Mary returned. “It has changed Eddy—it has changed you.”

He bent towards her and lowered his voice.

“Not altogether,” he said. “I’m just the same in one way. I’ve tried to pretend I had altered, but it’s no use. I give it up. I’m still just the same poor fool who used to hang round staring at you in Dunsterville.”

A waiter was approaching the table with the air, which waiters cultivate, of just happening by chance to be going in that direction. Joe leaned farther forward, speaking quickly.

“And for whom,” he said, “you didn’t care a single, solitary snap of your fingers, Mary.”

She looked up at him. The waiter hovered, poising for his swoop. Suddenly she smiled.

“New York has changed me too, Joe,” she said.

“Mary!” he cried.

“Ze pill, sare,” observed the waiter.

Joe turned.

“Ze what!” he exclaimed. “Well, I’m hanged! Eddy’s gone off and left me to pay for his lunch! That man’s a wonder! When it comes to brain-work, he’s in a class by himself.” He paused. “But I have the luck,” he said.


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