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 impertinent intrusion on the apartment. Don refused to join in any attempts to achieve a more companionable mood. They finished the meal as they had begun it.

Don helped Walter to pack his trunk and accompanied him to Kidder's office; and when they had said good-bye at the railway-station, Don went to the library and sat down to his books with a sigh of relief. He felt that he had returned to solitude, and he was glad of it. He was ready, now, for his future, his salary assured and his work before him.

He spent the greater part of the day in the library, lunching at a ten-cent restaurant so as to avoid a mid-day meeting with Conroy. He did not think of Miss Morris, until he met her on the stage, that night; and then she was so smilingly oblivious to what had passed between them on the previous evening that he was unable to refer to it. They talked about his playwriting, about his new responsibilities in the dressing-room, about Conroy's return and about Walter Pittsey's departure; and he looked out on the world of his stage work and his petty worries from the charmed circle of her friendship, feeling himself solaced and protected in it.

When he received a letter from his uncle, asking him to take charge of $30 a month for Conroy's maintenance, on the old conditions, he talked this letter over with her; and they agreed that it would be better to have Conroy independent of him. "Get them to send it to the other Pittsey," she advised. "He'll only quarrel with you more than ever."

"That's so," he said. "Bert has his confidence still. And he may know how to handle him."