"Oh, yes. He lost it a year ago. He has scarcely anything, I believe. He had a beautiful studio and apartment, wonderful treasures of antique furniture; he had about everything a rich young man fancies. It all went."
"What was the matter?"
"Nobody knows. He took a horrid little stable studio in Bleecker Street, and he lives there. And that's why Steve did that crazy, impulsive thing, I suppose."
"You mean she was sorry for him?"
"I think it must have been that—and the general fascination he had for her—and his persistency and devotion. Really, I don't know, myself, how she came to do it. She did it on one of her ill-considered, generous, headlong impulses. Ask her. All she ever told me was that she had married Oswald and didn't know how it was going to turn out, but had decided to keep her own name for the present and continue to live with me."
"Do they see each other—much?" he asked.
"Oh, they encounter each other here and there as usual. He drops in here every day."
"Does she go—there?"
"I don't know," said the girl gravely.
He had set aside his tea, untasted. She, still curled up in her arm-chair, ate and drank with a delightfully healthy appetite.