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 When he took her home shortly before five in the morning, she kissed him good-night and climbed out of the roadster with a heavy sigh.

"Boy, you sure can love!" she said weakly and tottered into her cheap hotel.

Tony arose at noon that day. A close shave with plenty of powder at the end made him look a little less haggard. There was a curious sense of elation singing within him. At last he had mastered a real woman, a woman much older and more experienced than he. He had found, too, that it was the mastering of another that he enjoyed in love. The thirst for power was almost a mania with him. And the fact that circumstances and conditions made it so that he had no right to ever expect to have any made him want it all the more.

His sister, Rosie, a tall, pretty girl of sixteen, cooked a meal for him. The six other children were at school. He ate hurriedly and in silence. There was so much to do now.

Clattering down the stairs, his mother's raucous, commanding shout reached his ears. He hesitated a moment, then entered the store, looking sullen and defiant. Mrs. Guarino was a squat, wrinkled Italian woman of fifty, with a figure like a loosely packed sack tied tightly in the middle, dressed in a