On his recovery David had resumed his Wednesday evening visits to his accustomed doorway near St. Christopher's. One night he saw that which poured a new agony into the cup he had thought already overbrimming. When Helen Chambers stepped from the Mission a man he had never before seen was beside her—a tall man, of maturity and dignity. With the instant instinct of the lover he recognized here another lover; and he read, in a smiling glance she turned up as they passed the doorway, that this man had her admiration and her confidence.
The next morning—the night had held the cup constantly to his lips—he went to the Astor Library and secured a copy of the Social Register. The man's name, as it had come to him across the darkness in Helen's low resonant voice, was Allen. There were many Allens in the Register, but only one that could possibly be the Allen he had seen the night before. The Register's data, and deductions therefrom, informed David that Mr. Henry Allen was forty, a member of half a dozen clubs, a man of wealth and social standing, and a lawyer of notable achievement.
Just the sort of husband Helen Chambers deserved! David closed the book and crept out.
The evening of the day before he found work in the department store, Kate Morgan had told him she had just secured a new place. "Did you get it through Miss Chambers?" he had suspiciously demanded.
"No," she had answered, smiling defiantly. At parting she had said with sharp decision, standing at his door: "You've had enough of the honest life. You're going to be with me on this job. Set that down." Without giving him a chance to reply, she had stepped out and closed the door.
He did not see her again till the middle of December, when one Sunday evening she knocked, walked in and promptly sent Tom on an errand.
"I can only stay for two minutes," she said, speaking rapidly and in a low voice. "This is supposed to be my Sunday off, but one of the maids is sick, so instead of a day I get an hour and a half. Say, it's certainly a swell house. The family is just a man and his mother. Just them two in a house big enough for a town—and think of the way we rub ribs down here! They've got carloads of silver, all of it solid; and the old lady has simply got barrels of jewelry. They're going to have a big blow-out on Christmas, so none of the servants get a holiday then. But almost all of them are going to get New Year's Eve and New Year's Day out. The house will be almost empty New Year's Eve. That's when we'll clean it up."
"You seem to have no doubt that I shall join you," David said dryly.
"None at all!" she answered promptly.
"Well, I shall certainly not!"