over to one side, set the needle on a phonograph record, pressed the
starter, and absorbed himself in rolling and lighting a cigarette. This
accomplished, he put his hands behind his head and, wreathed in aromatic,
bluish smoke, gave himself up to complete enjoyment of the music.

It was a song from some popular light opera. A very high soprano and a
musical tenor duet, sentimental, humoresque:

"There, dry your eyes,
I sympathize
Just as a mother would--
Give me your hand,
I understand, we're off to slumber land
Like a father, like a mother, like a sister, like a brother."

Listening to this melody, Dickie Hudson's face under the gaslight
expressed a rapt and spiritual delight, tender, romantic, melancholy.

He was a slight, undersized youth, very pale, very fair, with the face of
a delicate boy. He had large, near-sighted blue eyes in which lurked a
wistful, deprecatory smile, a small chin running from wide cheek-bones
to a point. His lips were sensitive and undecided, his nose unformed, his
hair soft and easily ruffled. There were hard blue marks under the
long-lashed eyes, an unhealthy pallor to his cheeks, a slight
unsteadiness of his fingers.

Dickie held a position of minor importance in the hotel, and his pale,
innocent face was almost as familiar to its patrons as to those of the
saloon next door--more familiar to both than it was to Hudson's
"residence." Sometimes for weeks Dickie did not strain the scant welcome