Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/219

 she had been kept so ignorant of life that she not only had failed to suspect the secret of her father's but had utterly failed to comprehend it when, by accident, she had discovered it.

And she realized that Mr. Dantwill, in obliterating that address through which she might meet knowledge of the forbidden, was continuing what men had been doing to her all her life,—protecting her, keeping her from what they knew and would not have her know. But here she was because she meant, now, to know; so surely the most stupid act possible was for her to step from her protected home to another protected and approved shelter merely in another locality.

From the sidewalk, glancing back through the plate glass, she saw Mr. Dantwill still at the counter and gazing after her, although another woman was standing before him and trying to get his attention; and Marjorie hurried on.

Retracing her way to Clearedge Street, she found the forbidden number to be—as she recollected—a six-apartment building, recently made over into the sort of hostelry which, in France, Marjorie would have denominated a pension. Here in Chicago she did not know what to call it; evidently it was not exactly a hotel, neither was it a boarding house. If she did not know what to name it, neither did its proprietor seem to; for it bore no designation at all on the front except the street number and the sign "Rooms to Rent." Inside the door was nothing but the ordinary flat vestibule with six letter boxes surviving from the epoch when but six families domiciled the premises; but five of the card spaces were empty and in the sixth was the name "J. A. Cordeen."

A bell was below this, but Marjorie did not ring, for