Jerry’s destiny was indeed in the lap of the gods.  Whatever may have been my hope, during his visit to the Manor, of opening his eyes, I now confessed myself utterly at a loss.  He was dipping life up by the ladle-full and yet curiously enough thus far had missed the vital, the significant fact of existence.  I supposed that it was because the history of his early years was known to but few and that the men with whom he came into contact, nice enough fellows at the clubs, friends of Jack Ballard, had taken his worldliness for granted.  He had missed the filthy story perhaps, or if he had heard it, had ignored its point and turned away to topics he understood.  Business, too, had taken some of his time and Marcia had taken more.  The clubs, I had inferred, had not greatly interested him.  Flynn, his other crony, was no scandal-monger and the habits of the years at Horsham Manor would still be strong with him at the gymnasium.  As I have said before, Jerry hadn’t the kind of a mind to absorb what did not interest him.

It must be obvious, however, that I was greatly concerned over Jerry’s venture into pugilism.  I tried to view the Great Experiment as from a great distance, as across a space of time looking forward to the hour when Jerry would emerge scatheless from all his tests both material and spiritual.  But Jerry’s personality, his thoughts, his sensibilities bulked too large.  There was no room for a perspective.  To all intents and purposes I myself was Jerry, thinking his thoughts, tasting his enthusiasms and his regrets.  But I think if he had married a street wench or engaged in a conspiracy to blow up the Capitol at Washington I could scarcely have been more perturbed for him than I was at finding how strong was the influence that this girl Marcia exercised upon his actions.  His fondness for her was the only flaw I had ever discovered in Jerry’s nature.  He could speak of her spirituality as he pleased, but there was another attraction here.  I had felt the allure of her personality, a magnetism less mental than physical.  Physical, of course, and because incomprehensible to Jerry the more marvelous.  I had looked upon the boy as a perfect human animal, forgetting that he was only an animal after all.  Marcia, the woman without a heart, whose game was the hearts of others!  Bah!  No woman without a heart could hold Jerry.  If passion danced to him in the mask of a purer thing, Jerry’s honesty would strip off the disguise in time.  The danger was not now, but then, and even then perhaps more hers than his.

I waited long for Jack Ballard, but he did not return and so I went out into the streets and walked rapidly for exercise down town in the general direction of Flynn’s Gymnasium over on the East Side, where I proposed to meet Jerry later in the afternoon.  I had kept no record of the time and when my appetite advised me that it was the luncheon hour, I looked at my watch.  It was two o’clock.  I sauntered into a cross street, finding at last a quiet place where I could eat and think in peace.  “Dry-as-dust!” I was.  Twelve years ago I had railed at the modern woman and learned my lesson from her.  But now !  The years had swept madly past my sanctuary, license running riot.  Sin stalked openly.  The eyes of the women one met upon the streets were hard with knowledge.  Nothing was sacred nothing hidden from young or old.  And men and women of wealth and tradition I will not call them society, which is far too big a word for so small a thing men and women born to lead and mold public thought and conduct, showed the way to a voluptuousness which rivaled tottering Rome.

And this was the world into which my sinless man had been liberated!

I smiled to myself a little bitterly.  It was unfortunate that out of all the women in New York, Jerry should have fallen in love with the first hypocrite that had come his way, a follower of strange gods, cold, calculating, too selfish even to be sinful!  Eheu!  She was getting on my nerves.  Analysis always analysis!  I could not let her be.  She obsessed me as she had obsessed Jerry a slender wisp of a thing that I could have broken in my fingers and would still, I think, unless reason returned.

I paid my bill and would have risen, but just at that moment through the door beside my table entered, to my bewilderment, Jerry himself and a girl.  I was so amazed at seeing him in this place that I made no sound or motion and watched the pair pass without seeing me and take a table beyond a small palm tree just beside me, and when they were seated my amazement grew again, for I saw that his companion was the girl Una Una Habberton who had called herself Smith.  Their appearance at this moment together found me at a loss to know what to do.  To get up and join them would interfere with a tete-a-tete which, whatever its planning, I deemed most fortunate; to get up and leave the room without being observed would have been impossible, for Jerry faced the door.  So I sat debating the matter, watching the face of the girl and listening to the conversation, aware for a second time that I was playing the part of eavesdropper upon these two and now without justification.  And yet no qualm of conscience troubled me.  Brazen she may have seemed at Horsham Manor, but here in New York in her sober suit and hat she seemed to have lost something of her raffish demeanor, and there was a wholesomeness about her, a frankness in her smile, which was distinctly refreshing.

It was not until several days later that I heard from Jerry how they had happened to meet.  It seems that after leaving Ballard’s apartment Jerry had gone home, attired himself in his old suit and made his way to meet Flynn, with whom he had an appointment to go down to Finnegan’s saloon to attend to some final details of his match with Clancy.  This business finished, the party came out upon the street, Jerry, Flynn, Finnegan (in his shirt sleeves) and Clancy’s manager, Terry Riley.  In the midst of a brogue of farewells Jerry fairly bumped into the girl.  He took off his hat and apologized, finding himself looking with surprise straight into Una’s face.  She started back and would have gone on, but Jerry caught her by the arm.

“Una!” he said.  “Don’t you know me?”

“Yes, Jerry.  Of course, but it seems so strange to see you here ” She paused.  “To see you down here in the Bowery.”

“It is, isn’t it?” he stammered.  “But I I’ll explain in a minute if you’ll let me walk with you.”

She looked him over with a sober air, her gaze passing for a moment over his soft hat pulled down over the eyes, his rough clothing, the cigarette in his fingers (he hadn’t really begun rigid training yet), and then shrugged.

“Of course, I can have no objection,” she said coolly.

Jerry threw the cigarette away.

“I suppose you think it’s very curious to see me down here at Finnegan’s,” Jerry repeated.

No reply.

“I’ve been there on er a matter of business with with Flynn.  He’s my athletic instructor, you know.  It’s a sort of secret.  I I’m supposed to belong up town.”

“Oh, are you?” Still, I think, the cool, indifferent tone.

“You know I I’m awfully glad to see you.  I’ve been hunting for you ever since I came out of the the asylum you know.”

It must have pleased her that Jerry should have remembered her phrase.

“Really!” her tone melting a little.  “It’s pleasant to be remembered.”

She turned and again searched him slowly with her gaze, smiling a little.

“How long have you been in New York?”

“Oh, ages almost two months.”

“And in that time,” she said quizzically, “the Faun has learned the habit of saloons and cigarettes.  You’ve progressed, haven’t you?”

“Oh, I say, Una.  That’s not quite fair.  I don’t make a habit of saloons, and a cigarette once in a while doesn’t hurt a fellow if his wind and heart are good.”

“And are your wind and heart good?” she asked with her puzzling smile.

“Now you’re making fun of me.  You always did though, didn’t you?  You know it’s awfully fine to hear you talk like that.  Makes it seem as if we’d just met by the big rock on the Sweetwater.  You remember, don’t you?”

“Yes, I remember,” she replied.

He eyed her sober little profile curiously.  She seemed strangely demure.

“I don’t think you’re very glad to see me,” he said.  “I thought perhaps you would be.  There were so many things that we began to talk about and didn’t finish.  I’ve thought about them a good deal.  I really want to talk to you about them again.  Couldn’t we er go somewhere and Have you had lunch yet?  Can’t we find a place to get a cup of tea?”

She turned toward him and their eyes met.  When her gaze turned away from him she was smiling.

“Yes.  I’d like a cup of tea,” she said after a moment of deliberation.

He didn’t very well know this part of the city, but he remembered a restaurant he had once gone to with Flynn, the very one, it seems, where I had taken refuge.  And there they were, looking at each other across the table, the girl, as Jerry expressed it, a little demure, a little quizzical, possibly a little upon the defensive, but friendly enough.  If she hadn’t been friendly, he argued, most properly, she wouldn’t have come with him.

“I can’t seem to think it’s really you,” Jerry began after he had given his order.  “You’re different somehow soberer and a little pale.”

“Am I?”

“Yes, I can’t think just how I expected you to look in New York.  Of course, you wouldn’t wear leather gaiters, or carry a butterfly net.  There aren’t any butterflies in the Bowery, are there?”

“No no butterflies.”  She paused a moment.  “Only moths with singed wings.”

She examined him furtively, but he was frankly puzzled.

“Moths !  I don’t think I understand.”

“Yes moths I I spend a good deal of my time at the Blank Street Mission.”

“And what is that?”

She gazed for a moment at him wide-eyed.

“A home a refuge,” she went on haltingly, “for for women in trouble.  They’re the moths bewildered by the lights of the town they they singe their wings and then we try to help them.”

“It’s great of you, Una.”

“And what do you do with your time?” she broke in quickly.  “Whom have you met?  Is the riddle of existence easier for you in New York than at Horsham Manor?”

“No,” he blurted out.  “I don’t understand it at all.  I’m always making the most absurd mistakes.  I’m fearfully stupid.  Do you ever use rouge, Una?”

The suddenness of the question took her aback, but in a second she was smiling in spite of herself.

“No, I don’t, Jerry.  But lots of girls do.  It’s the fashion.”

“I know, but do you approve of it?”

“It’s very effective if not overdone,” she evaded.

“But do you approve of it?” he insisted.

“There’s no harm in it, is there?  I’d wear it if I wanted to.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“No.  Why do you want to know?”

But he didn’t seem to hear her question.

“Do you drink cocktails?  Or smoke cigarettes?”

“No.  I don’t like cocktails.  Besides they’re not served at the Mission.  We think they might create false notions of the purposes of the organization.”

He didn’t laugh.

“But surely you smoke cigarettes!”

“No, I don’t smoke.  I don’t like cigarettes.”

“But if you liked them, would you smoke?” he questioned eagerly.

“What a funny boy you are!  What difference does it make what I do or don’t do?”

“Would you smoke, if you liked to?” he still insisted.

She was very much amused.

“How can I tell what I’d do if I liked to when I don’t like to?”

“Do you approve of them then for women, I mean?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Just because I’d like to know what you think of such things because you seem to me to be so calm, so sane in your point of view.  You always impressed me that way from the very first, even when you were making fun of me.”

“Why do you think I’m sane?” she asked amusedly.

“Because there’s no nonsense about you.  There are a lot of things I’d like to talk to you about things I don’t quite understand if you’d only let me see you.”

“You’re seeing me now, aren’t you?”

“Yes.  But I can’t talk about them all at once.”

“You’ve made a pretty good start, I should say.”

Jerry laughed.  “I have, haven’t I?  That’s the way I always do when I’m with you.”

“Always?” she inquired, raising her brows with a show of dignity.  “Do you realize that I have only met you once twice before in my life and then most informally?”

“I feel as if I’d known you always.”

“But you haven’t.  And I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all.”

“But you do, better than anybody almost.  It was awfully good of you to come here with me today after my meeting you the way I did.  I ought to apologize.  Girls don’t like to go with fellows when they come out of saloons, but I wasn’t drinking, you know.”

“Oh, weren’t you?”

“No,” he said hastily.  And then to cover a possible misconception of his meaning, “But of course I would drink, if I wanted to.  I don’t see any difference between having a drink at Finnegan’s and having it in a club uptown.”

She regarded him for a moment in silence and then,

“You do belong to some of the clubs, then?”

“Oh, yes.  The Cosmos, the Butterfly and several others ” He broke off with a laugh.  “You see, I’m supposed to be something of a swell”

“You don’t look much of a swell today,” she said with a glance at his clothes.  “And Finnegan’s, though exclusive for the Bowery, is hardly what might be called smart.  I am curious, Jerry.  Curiosity is one of my besetting sins otherwise I’d never have gotten inside your wall.  I’ve been wondering what on earth you could have been doing in Finnegan’s saloon.”

Jerry sipped at his tea and was silent.  The girl’s eyes still questioned good-humoredly and then, still smiling, looked away.  But Jerry would not speak.  A coward she had once called him.  Was it that he feared her sober judgment of this wild plan of his?  Did he see something hazardous in the conservatism of her calm slate-blue eyes that would put his new mode of thought, his new habit of mind to tests which they might not survive?

“I I said it was on business of Flynn’s,” he evaded at last.  “He’s a very good friend of mine.  It wouldn’t interest you in the least, you know,” he finished lamely.

“Possibly not,” she said calmly.  “I hope you’ll forgive my impertinence.”

He felt the change in her tone and was up in arms at once.  “Don’t talk in that way, Una.  I’d let you know if there was any possible use.”  He paused and then decidedly, “But there isn’t, you see.  Won’t you take my word for it?”

She laughed at his serious demeanor.

“You know I am a curious creature, unduly so about this.  But you do seem a little like the Caliph in the Arabian Nights, or Prince Florizel in London.  You aren’t a second-story man, are you?  Or a member of a suicide club?”

He gazed at her in perplexity and then laughed.  “You’re just as real as ever, aren’t you?”

“Real!  I should hope so.  But you aren’t.  The first time I see you, you’re a woodland philosopher, living on berries and preaching in the wilderness; the second time, you’re merely a caged enthusiast without a mission; the third time you’re Haroun al Raschid, smoking cigarettes at Finnegan’s.  I wonder what you’re going to be next.”

He felt the light sting of irony, but her humor disarmed him.

“I’m not going to be anything else,” he said slowly.  “And I’m not an enthusiast without a mission.  I may have been then, but I’m not now.  You don’t just understand.  I’m pretty busy in a way, learning the ropes, business, social and all the rest of them, but I’m not idle.  I’m learning something all the time, Una, and I’m going to try to help I can, too.”

“Do you really mean that?” she asked incredulously when he paused.

“Yes, I mean it.  I want to try to help right away, if you’ll let me.  See here, Una ” He leaned across the table in a sudden burst of enthusiasm.  “I don’t want you to think that I’ve ever said anything I don’t mean.  I said up there at Horsham Manor that I wanted to help you in your work, and I’m going to prove it to you that whatever your doubts of me I haven’t changed my purposes.  You didn’t believe me when I said I’d been hunting for you.  You don’t have to, if you don’t want to, but you’ll have to believe me now when I tell you that I want to set aside a fund for you to use to administer yourself.  Oh, you needn’t be surprised.  I’ve got more money than I know what to do with.  It’s rotting in a bank piling up.  I don’t want it.  I don’t need it, and I want you to take some of it right away and put it where it will do the most good.  You’ve got to take it you’ve got to, if only to prove that you don’t believe me insincere.  I’m going to start giving money now and if you don’t help me I’ll have to ask somebody else.  I’d rather have you do it, personally, than work through some big charity organization, that would spend seven or eight dollars, in overhead charges, before they could distribute one.  That kind of charity is all very well and does fine work, I suppose, but I want to feel that I’m helping personally directly.  I’ll want to pitch in down here some day and do what I can myself.  You’ve got to do it, Una let me give you some money to start with right away, won’t you?”

He paused breathless awaiting her reply.  Her face was turned toward me during the whole of Jerry’s rather long speech and I watched the play of emotion upon her features.  She had been prepared, I suppose, from the appearance of Jerry’s companions at Finnegan’s, to find her woodland idyl shattered, and she followed Jerry word by word through his boyish outburst, incredulously at first, then earnestly and then eagerly.  She had an unusually expressive countenance and the transition I observed was the more illuminating in the light of my previous knowledge of their acquaintance.  Jerry was enthroned again, panoplied in virtues.

“You almost take my breath way,” she said at last.  “It’s very bewildering,” she smiled.  “But are you sure you’re ” she paused.  “I mean, isn’t there someone else to be consulted?”

“No,” he cried, I think a little triumphantly.  “No one, I’m my own master.  I can do as I please.  How much do you want, Una?  Would five thousand help?  Five thousand right away?  And then five thousand more the first of each month?”

She started back in her chair and gazed at him in an expression of mingled incredulity and dismay.

“Five thou !”

“And five thousand a month,” Jerry repeated firmly.

“You can’t mean ”

“I do.  See here.  I’ll show you.”

He felt in his pockets, I suppose for his check-book, but could not find it.  Naturally!  It evidently wasn’t a habit of the pugilist Robinson to carry about in his hand-me-down suit a check-book carrying a bank balance of forty or fifty thousand dollars.  He was rather put out at not finding it and felt that she must still consider his magnificent offer somewhat doubtfully.

“Well, I’ll send it to you tomorrow.  You’ll see if I don’t.”

The boy was uppermost in him now and I saw the gay flash of her eye which recognized it the enthusiast of Horsham Manor who wanted to help cure the “plague spots.”

“I knew it,” she laughed at him.  “I knew you’d be somebody else if I only waited long enough.  Now you’re Prester John and Don Quixote rolled into one.  You propose by the simple process of financing the operation to turn our slums into Happy Valleys, our missions into gardens of resurrection.  It’s a very beautiful purpose, Jerry, quite worthy of your colorful imagination, but the modern philanthropist doesn’t wed his Danae with a shower of gold.  He’s discovered that it’s very likely to turn her head.”

“But if it’s wisely given ” he put in peevishly.

“Oh, wisely!  That’s just the point.”

“It ought not to be so difficult.”

She smiled at him soberly.

“Charity isn’t merely giving money, Jerry,” she said.  “Money sometimes does more harm than good.”

“I can’t see that.”

“It’s quite true.  We try to keep people from being dependent.  What you propose is a kind of philanthropic chaos.  If I used your money as freely as you would like, it wouldn’t be long before half the people in my district would be living on you giving nothing no effort, no work, no self-respect in return.  You don’t mind if I say so, but that sort of thing isn’t charity, Jerry.  It’s merely sentimental tomfoolery which might by accident do some good, but would certainly do much harm.”

Jerry’s eyes opened wide as he listened.  She was frank enough, but I couldn’t help admitting to myself that she was quite wise.  Jerry was discovering that it wasn’t so easy to help as he had supposed.  Whatever he may have thought of her theories of social science, he made no comment upon them.

“Then you won’t let me help you?” he asked quite meekly, for Jerry.

“Oh, no,” she smiled coolly.  “I didn’t say that.  I was merely trying to show you what the difficulties are.  We’re very glad to get voluntary contributions when we’re sure just what we can do with them.  I know of several cases now ”

“Yes,” eagerly.  “Whatever you need ”

“But five thousand ”

“Couldn’t you use it?” eagerly.

She paused and then smiled brightly across the table at him.

“I’ll try to, Jerry.”

“And the five thousand a month?” he urged.  “Oh, you don’t know, Una.  It isn’t a third of my income even now and later I’ve got more so much that I’m sick thinking of it.  You’ve got to use it, somehow.  If you can’t help the women, use it on the men, or the children ”

“We might add a day nursery ” she murmured thoughtfully.

“Yes, that’s it a day nursery wonderful thing a day nursery.  Add two of ’em.  You must.  You’ve got to plan; and if your organization isn’t big enough to handle it, you must get the right people to help you.”

He reached across the table, upsetting a teacup, and seized her hands in both of his.  “Oh, you will, Una, won’t you?”

She withdrew her hands gently and looked at him, on her lips a queer little crooked smile.

“What are you now?  The philosopher, the enthusiast or the Caliph?  You’re very insistent, aren’t you?  I think you must be the Caliph or the Grand Cham!”

“Then you agree?” he cried.

“I’ll try,” she said quietly.

Jerry gave a great gasp.  “By Jove,” he said with a boyish laugh.  “I can’t tell you what a relief it is to get this off my mind.  I know I ought to be down here helping, but I I can’t just now.  Uncle Jack that’s Ballard Junior says I’ve got a place in the world to keep up and a lot of rubbish about ”

“That’s very right and proper of course,” she said, gathering up her gloves.

He noted the motion.

“Oh, don’t go yet, Una.  There are a lot of things I’d like to ask you.”

“I think I will have to go.”

“But you’ll let me see you and talk to you about things, won’t you?”

“Of course, I’ll have to make an accounting of your money ”

“Oh, yes the check.  You’ll get it tomorrow.”

“But, Jerry ”

“Your address, please,” he insisted with a stern and business-like air.

The moment was propitious.  They would certainly see me when they got up, so when their heads were bent together over the slip of paper the waiter brought, I quietly rose and, braving detection, went out of the door.