ou?"

Lorrimer did not answer. A moment later an asthmatic gas-jet caught its
breath and he saw a bare studio room almost vacant of furniture. There
was a bed and a screen and a few chairs, one window facing an alley wall.
The stars had vanished.

"Pretty palatial quarters for a fellow on your job," Lorrimer remarked.
"How did you happen to get here?"

"Some--people I knowed of once lived here." Dickie's voice had taken on a
certain remoteness, and even Lorrimer knew that here questions stopped.
He accepted a chair, declined "the makings," proffered a cigarette.
During these amenities his eyes flew about the room.

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated, "is all that stuff your copying?"

There was a pile of loose and scattered manuscript upon the table under
the gas-jet.

"Yes, sir," Dickie smiled. "I was plumb foolish to go to all that labor."

Lorrimer drew near to the table and coolly looked over the papers.
Dickie watched him with rather a startled air and a flush that might
have seemed one of resentment if his eyes had not worn their
impersonal, observing look.

"All poetry," muttered Lorrimer. "But some of it only a line--or a
word." He read aloud,--"'Close to the sun in lonely lands--' what's that
from, anyway?"

"A poem about an eagle by a man named Alfred Tennyson. Ain't it the way a
feller feels, though, up on the top of a rocky peak?"

"Never been on the top of a rocky peak--kind of a sky-scraper sensation,
isn't it? What's all this--'An' I have been faithful to thee, Cynara,
after my fashion'?"

Dickie's face again flamed in spite of himself. "It's a love poem. The
feller couldn't forget. He couldn't keep himself from loving that-away
because he loved so much the other way--well, sir, you better read it for
yourself. It's a mighty real sort of a poem--if you were that sort of a
feller, I mean."

"And this is 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' And here's a sonnet, 'It was
not like your great and gracious ways'--? Coventry Patmore. Well, young
man, you've a catholic taste."

"I don't rightly belong to any church," said Dickie gravely. "My mother
is a Methodist."

Lorrimer moved; abruptly away and moved abruptly back.

"Where were you educated, Dick?"

"I was raised in Millings"--Dickie named the Western State--"I didn't
get only to grammar school. My father needed me to work in his hotel."

"Too bad!" sighed Lorrimer. "Well, I'll bid you good-night. And many
thanks. You've got a fine place here." Again he