sighed. "I dare say--one
of these days--"

He was absent and irritable again. Dickie accompanied him down the three
long, narrow flights and climbed back to his loneliness. He was, however,
very much excited by his adventure, excited and disturbed. He felt
restless. He walked about and whistled to himself.

Until now he had had but one companion--the thought of Sheila. It was
extraordinary how immediate she was. During the first dreadful weeks of
his drudgery in the stifling confusions of the restaurant, when even the
memory of Sylvester's tongue-lashings faded under the acute reality of
the head waiter's sarcasms, that love of his for Sheila had fled away and
left him dull and leaden and empty of his soul. And his tiny third-story
bedroom had seemed like a coffin when he laid himself down in it and
tried to remember her. It had come to him like a mountain wind,
overwhelmingly, irresistibly, the desire to live where she lived: the
first wish he had had since he had learned that she was not to be found
by him. And the miracle had accomplished itself. Mrs. Halligan had been
instructed to get a lodger at almost any price for the long-vacant studio
room. She lowered the rent to the exact limit of Dickie's wages. She had
never bargained with so bright-eyed a hungry-looking applicant for
lodgings. And that night he lay awake under Sheila's stars. From then on
he lived always in her presence. And here in the room that had known her
he kept himself fastidious and clean. He shut out the wolf-pack of his
shrewd desires. The room was sanctuary. It was to rescue Sheila rather
than himself that Dickie fled up to the stars. So deeply, so intimately
had she become a part of him that he seemed to carry her soul in his
hands. So had the young dreamer wedded his dream. He lived with Sheila as
truly, as loyally, as though he knew that she would welcome him with one
of those downward rushes or give him Godspeed on sultry, feverish dawns
with a cool kiss. Dickie lay sometimes across his bed and drew her cheek
in trembling fancy close to his until the anguish wet his pillow with
mute tears.

Now to this dual loneliness Lorrimer had climbed, and Dickie felt, rather
gratefully, that life had reached up to the aching unrealities of his
existence. His tight and painful life had opened like the first fold of a
fan. He built upon the promise of a friendship with this questioning,
impertinent, mocking, keenly sympathetic visitor.

But a fortni