“Isn’t there some place we can talk, Gerald?  I’ve thirty minutes before my friends call for me.”

“‘Thirty minutes?’”

“Your rooms?  Haven’t you rooms or a room where we could go and sit down?”

“Why—­why, no, Hester,” he said, still red.  “I’d rather you didn’t go there.  But here.  Let’s stop in at the St. James Hotel.  There’s a parlor.”

To her surprise, she felt herself color up and was pleasantly conscious of her finger tips.

“You darling!” She smiled up at him.

They were seated presently in the unaired plush-and-cherry, Nottingham-and-Axminster parlor of a small-town hotel.

“Hester,” he said, “you’re like a vision come to earth.”

“I’m a bad durl,” she said, challenging his eyes for what he knew.

“You’re a little saint walked down and leaving an empty pedestal in my dreams.”

She placed her forefinger over his mouth.

“Sh-h!” she said.  “I’m not a saint, Gerald; you know that.”

“Yes,” he said, with a great deal of boyishness in his defiance, “I do know it, Hester, but it is those who have been through the fire who can sometimes come out—­new.  It was your early environment.”

“My aunt died on the town, Gerald, I heard.  I could have saved her all that if I had only known.  She was cheap, aunt was.  Poor soul!  She never looked ahead.”

“It was your early environment, Hester.  I’ve explained that often enough to them here.  I’d bank on you, Hester—­swear by you.”

She patted him.

“I’m a pretty bad egg, Gerald.  According to the standards of a town like this, I’m rotten, and they’re about right.  For five years, Gerald, I’ve—­”

“The real you is ahead of—­and not behind you, Hester.”

“How wonderful,” she said, “for you to feel that way, but—­”

“Hester,” he said, more and more the big boy, and his big blond head nearing hers, “I don’t care about anything that’s past; I only know that, for me, you are the—­”

“Gerald,” she said, “for God’s sake!”

“I’m a two hundred-a-month man now, Hester.  I want to build you the prettiest, the whitest little house in this town.  Out in the Briarwood section.  I’ll make them kowtow to you, Hester; I—­”

“Why,” she said, slowly, and looking at him with a certain sadness, “you couldn’t keep me in stockings, Gerald!  The aigrettes on this hat cost more than one month of your salary.”

“Good God!” he said.

“You’re a dear, sweet boy just the same; but you remember what I told you about my crepe-de-Chine soul.”

“Just the same, I love you best in those crispy white shirt waists you used to wear and the little blue suits and sailor hats.  You remember that day at Finleys’ picnic, Hester, that day, dear, that you—­you—­”

“You dear boy!”

“But it—­your mistake—­it—­it’s all over.  You work now, don’t you, Hester?”