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 "No," admitted Ellen.

"Sit down," bid Lew. "I'm not busy." He indicated a chair near him and she obeyed.

She had had time, now, to appreciate the change in him. His father, as long as he lived, must have been a check upon Lew and a check, certainly, for his own good. Lew was sallower, more nerveless, thinner and at the same time more coarsened than ever she had seen him. The deceptive, slightly ascetic look natural to him, and which might have been accentuated by his thinness, was instead sharpened away.

"Glad to see you," said Lew, his eyes lingering upon her. Of girls of the readily supplied sort, he had seen too much; of this sort, nothing; and she always attracted him. She had appeared, indeed, on a day when he would have said that no girl would have stirred him; but she did; and he liked it. Moreover, it flattered him that she had followed him of herself. He knew the Rountrees never had sent her after him.

"Like New York?" he asked her.

"Yes."

"Where you living?"

Ellen hesitated, and then told him.

He laughed at her but he liked her for her fear of him. The others had no fear!

"Know where I live?" he teased her.

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

She told him; and his street number, on her lips, was pleasantly titillating to him.