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pose. She paled a little, and searched my face with deep, grave eyes. She said nothing at all.
    "It was arranged to have you sent to the infirmary, so you and I could talk without exciting any suspicion, Mme. Storey sent me to see you about the letter you wrote her."
    Still that silence. Her dark eyes, a little widened, remained fixed on my face with an inscrutable expression. Stilled like that, her face was wonderfully soft and touching. A long, long silence. Finally her eyes fell, and she elaborately smoothed the bedspread with one hand. Evidently some sort of struggle was going on within her. The silence made me extremely uneasy; but it seemed best to me to let her work out the problem without interruption.
    At last she said in low tones without looking at me: "You get me wrong, kid. I'm no fist with the pen."
    "Perhaps not," I said. "But you wrote this letter."
    "Was it signed with my name?" she asked cunningly.
    "No," I said.
    "Then how did she know it was from me?"
    "Nobody can deceive her," I said. "She sees to the bottom of a thing."
    "Oh, yes, I've heard of those know-it-all people," she said with a painful sneer.
    I waited again, hoping to see her better nature assert itself.
    "What was in the letter?" she asked with pretended innocence.
    "What's the use?" I said. "You know."
    Another silence while her lashes lay on her cheeks. Then, apparently, she made up her mind. With a toss of her bobbed head she said in a louder, harsher tone. "I don't get it, kid. I don't get it at all. I don't know why the hell anybody should write to Mme. Storey about me. I've got nothing to complain of."
    I was deeply disappointed. When Melanie became profane, you felt that you had lost her. But I wasn't going to give up yet. "You asked her to help you," I said. "She wishes to help you. Are you going to turn it down."
    "You will have it that I wrote to her. Excuse me, but you seem bugs to me on the subject, sister," said Melanie.
    "Well, say that you didn't write to her then," said I. "She has interested herself in you for any reason that you like. She had me watch your trial for her, and she sent me here to talk to you."
    "And after you told her the way I carried on at the trial was she still interested?" demanded Melanie.
    "More than ever," I said.
    An extraordinary expression passed over the girl's face. You could actually see the two elements of her nature struggling there. She sneered—and her eyes seemed to be about to fill with tears. "Huh! she must be a funny one!" she said.
    I waited.
    "And what did you think of me yourself?" she demanded.
    "You made me think of when I was a child, and got in bad."
    She flashed a look at me—a soft look, instantly hidden, and I was astonished to hear her laugh softly. Just one note. "That's not a bad way to put it," she said. Then immediately, in a tone of agony: "Oh, my God!"
    I was very close to her then. I almost held my breath for fear of saying the wrong thing.
    But the decision went against me. "No!" she cried with a violent shake of the black mane. Her face turned hard again. "What can Madame Storey do for me?" she demanded. "Can she get me out of here?"
    I could make no answer to that.
    Melanie went on in the old sneering, boastful vein: "Tell Madame Storey I thank you for her interest in me, but I can't use it in my biz. I'm a crook, and I'll herd with my own kind. I ask no favours of nobody. I stand on my own bottom, and take what comes as it comes. Nobody ever heard me whine for mercy!"
    There was not so much hurt in it this time, and presently she broke off to ask me with eager curiosity. "What's she like, on the level. I suppose all that I read in the papers was just publicity stuff."
    "We don't employ a press agent," I said.
    "How old is she?"
    "I don't know," I said frankly. "Young."
    "Is she as good a looker as they make out?"
    "You must have seen her photographs."
    "Oh, I thought they were touched up."
    "She's better looking than any of her photographs."
    "And you're her private