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Rh "Certainly! You know I went yesterday afternoon to call on Ruth Tracy, and while I was there this person came in."

"What person? Who?" asked Westgate.

"Why, that socialist widow."

"Mrs. Bradley?"

"Yes; and she said some impertinent things and I got up and left."

"And what happened then?" asked Westgate, tipping back in his office chair, putting his thumbs into the armholes of his vest, and trying hard to look serious.

"Well, it wasn't twenty minutes later that I was going up-town, and just as my car turned into Grove Street I saw this person, not three feet away from me, walking in a most clinging and confidential way with Stephen Lamar, the socialist and anarchist and atheist."

"But," inquired Westgate, "where does Barry get into the plot?"

"He doesn't get into it directly," replied Miss Chichester; "but it concerns him seriously. I want him to know what kind of a person this is he's been running after."

Then Barry spoke up.

"Mrs. Bradley isn't engaged to marry me," he said. "I don't know why she hasn't got a right to walk on the street with Stephen Lamar or any one else if she wants to."

"That isn't the point, Barry," protested Miss Chichester. "The point is that you haven't got a right to walk on the street with her, or haunt her office, or commend her beauty, after you know what she's done."

"Why," said Barry, "I don't think it's so very bad for her to be seen on the street with this man. Maybe it wasn't her fault that he was with her. I don't think I would deprive her of my friendship on that account, Jane."

"Oh, but wait! You haven't heard it all yet," ex-