it was only when he came on something that belonged the to her that he felt a sudden renewal of the old feeling the strange impulse that drew him to her voice but drove him from her hand so that even now at sight of anything she had touched his heart contracted painfully it happened seldom nowadays her little presents one by one had disappeared from his room and her letters kept from some vanity in the possession of such treasures seldom came beneath his hand her letters will be of special value � her letters why he must have hundreds of them � enough to fill a volume sometimes it used to seem to him that they came with every post � he used to avoid looking in his letter box when he came home to his rooms � but her writing seemed to spring out at him as he put his key in the door he stood up and strolled into the other room lounging away from the window had joined himself to a languidly group of men to whom in phrases as halting as though they struggled to define an ultimate idea he was the cursed nuisance of living in a hole with such a damned climate that one had to get out of it by february with the difficulty of there being no place to take one s to in winter but that other played out hole the from the outskirts of this group wandered to another where a voice as different as possible from s organ another circle of languid listeners come and hear talk about his patent the sion � one of the men sang out in a tone of mock resignation turned to the confident of his smile give it another six months and it u be talking about itself he declared it s pretty nearly articulate now can it say else inquired s smile broad you be glad to say papa to it year from now he it be able to support you in look just let me explain to you � moved away the men at the � all but those who were in it � were tired of s patent and none more so than whose knowledge of its merits made it loom large in the d catalogue of lost the tions between the two men had always been friendly and s urgent offers to take him in on tiie ground floor had of late s sense of his own inability to meet good half way some of the men who had paused to listen were already in evening clothes others on their way home to dress and with an accustomed of humiliation said to himself that h he lingered them it was in the miserable hope that one of the might ask him to dine miss had told him that she was to go to the opera that evening her rich aunt and if he should have the luck to pick up a din i the ner invitation he might join her there without extra he moved about the room lingering here and there in a affectation of interest but though the men greeted him pleasantly no one asked him to dine doubtless they were all engaged these men who could afford to pay tor their dinners who did not have to hunt for as a beggar for a crust in an ash barrel but no � as left the circle about the table an admiring youth called out stop and dine turned on him the crude countenance that looked like the wrong side of a more finished face sorry i can t i m in for a banquet threw himself into an arm chair why go home in the rain to dress it was folly to take a cab to the opera it was worse folly to go there at all his perpetual meetings with were as unfair to the girl as they were to himself since he could n t marry her it was time to stand aside and give a better man the chance � and his thought admitted the that in the terms of the phrase might stand for s the n t te dined alone and walked home to his rooms in the rain as he turned into fifth avenue he caught the wet gleam of es on their way to the and he took the first side street in a moment of irritation against the petty that every impulse it was ridiculous to give up the opera not because one might possibly be bored there but because one must pay for the experiment in his sitting room the of the had the on a photograph of placed in the silver frame just where as memory reminded him margaret s picture had long in its stead miss s features cruelly justified the she had the kind of beauty that comes of a happy accord of face and spirit it is not given to many to have the lips and eyes of their mood and some women go through life behind a mask expressing only their anxiety about the butcher s bill or their inability to see a joke with miss face and mind had the same high serious she looked like a justice by some grave painter and it seemed to that her most attribute or that at least to which her conduct gave most consistent expression was a kind of passionate � the feminine that the is so much than a reasoned circumstances had combined to develop this instinct into a conscious habit she had seen more than most girls of the shabby side of life of the perpetual tendency of want to the noblest attitude poverty and misfortune had her childhood and she had none of the pretty about life that are supposed to be the crowning grace of this very which gave her a touching made s situation more difficult than 