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 him on the care of his health. At the corner, she took his arm and stopped him on the curb. "I've half a mind to take a car," she said.

"No, don't," he coaxed. "I want—I have something to ask you. Let us get off Broadway. Let us walk up Fifth Avenue. It will be quieter."

"Well, promise me you'll never do it again," she said, with a fond severity.

"Never again! Come on."

She tripped across the shining wet asphalt, on his arm, her skirts gathered above her ankles, as heedless of the rain as a Frenchwoman in a picture. When they came to the double file of electric globes that shone mistily, two by two, like a saluting guard, up the slope of Fifth Avenue, in the white obscurity of fog and rain, he said: "You remember—in the Park—the other day—you asked me about Miss Richardson?"

"Yes?"

"I've just had a letter from her. She's coming to New York."

"Oh?"

"She'll have to earn her living. They've lost whatever money they had. Her mother invested it—in stocks, I think. She wants me to tell her what to do—for work."

She had drawn back a little from him, at the first word of Miss Richardson, and a point of the umbrella had caught her cap. She felt her feather now—to see that it was not broken— and took his arm again. She asked: "What can she do?"

He explained the circumstances, as well as he could.