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 objects in the more obscure pawnshop windows, she was likely to avert her eyes quickly at recognition of some object not only intimate but familiar. Magnolia thought of Kim, safe, secure, comfortable, in the convent on Wabash Avenue.

"I must have felt this thing coming," she said to Ravenal. "Felt it in my bones. She's out of all this. It makes me happy just to think of it; to think of her there."

"How're you going to keep her there!" demanded Ravenal, gloomily. "I'm strapped. You might as well know it, if you don't already. I've had the damnedest run of luck."

Magnolia's eyes grew wide with horror. "Keep her there! Gay! We've got to. I wouldn't have her knocking around here with us. Gay, can't you do something? Something real, I mean. Some kind of work like other—I mean, you're so wonderful. Aren't there things—positions—you know—with banks or—uh—those offices where they buy stocks and sell them and make money in wheat and—wheat and things?" Lamely.

Ravenal kissed her. "What a darling you are, Nola. A darling simpleton."

It was a curious and rather terrible thing, this love bond between them. All that Parthy had grimly predicted had come to pass. Magnolia knew him for what he was. Often she hated him. Often he hated her. Often he hated her because she shamed him with her gaiety, her loyalty, her courage, her tenderness. He was not true to her. She knew this now. He knew she