“I did my duty ...  I helped start him in business ...  I saved him from jail ...  I wrote him a letter every week, in spite of the fact that he never answered me...  What more would you have a woman do?”

What more, indeed?  How completely he read her now!  Yes, even between the lines of her nonchalant gossipings he could glimpse her soul in all its intricate completeness.  Her letters were salt on his deadened wound.  Perhaps that was why he did not return them unopened.  He felt vaguely that it would be a shameful thing to be ultimately sealed to indifference.

But one Saturday night two letters were put into his hand.  He read the strange one first.

I have not written you before because I had no news for you.  Yesterday I passed Hilmer’s house and saw your wife wheeling Mrs. Hilmer up and down the sidewalk.  Some day when I get a chance I shall speak to Mrs. Hilmer.

I am living in a lodging house on Turk Street.  My name is Sylvia Molineaux.  You will find my address below.  Write and tell me what you want.  And always remember that I am here watching.

     GINGER.

CHAPTER XV

Toward the middle of the following week Fred answered Ginger’s letter.  But his phrases were guarded and his description of life at the hospital full of studied distortion.  He knew quite well that every letter which left the institution was opened and censored, but, with certain plans lying fallow in his brain, he had a method back of the exaggerated contentment he pictured.  He had a feeling that Ginger would not be misled altogether.  She knew the deceitful bravado of life too well and, according to her own report, something of the existence he was leading in the bargain.  He found himself curiously willing to take anything from her hand that was in her power to supply.  He felt no sense of awkwardness, no arrogant pride, no irritating obligation.  She had become for him one of the definite, though unexplainable, facts of existence which he accepted with all the simplicity of a child of misfortune.

She answered promptly, sending cigarettes and tobacco and a pipe.  But her letter was devoid of news—–­except that she had passed Hilmer’s again and found Helen wheeling Mrs. Hilmer back and forth in the sunshine at the appointed hour.  But, as time wore on, it transpired that this seemingly innocent passing and repassing of the Hilmer house carried unmistakable point.  Presently, to Mrs. Hilmer, basking in the sun and deserted for a moment, Ginger had nodded a brief good-morning.  There followed other opportunities for even more prolonged greetings until the moment when Ginger had boldly carried on a short conversation in the coldly calm presence of Helen Starratt.  Helen must have known Ginger.  It was inconceivable that any woman, under the circumstances, could have forgotten.  But either indecision or a veiled purpose made her assume indifference, and Ginger’s progress was registered in a short sentence at the end of a brief scrawl which said: