oth so well comes to an end. I won't have the face to edit
stuff like this much longer." Lorrimer did not realize in his amazement
that Dickie's mind had always busied itself with this exciting and
nerve-racking matter of choosing words. From his childhood, in the face
of ridicule and outrage, he had fumbled with the tools of Lorrimer's
trade. No wonder that now knowledge and practice, and the sort of
intensive training he was under, magically fitted all the jumbled odds
and ends into place. Dickie had stopped looking over his shoulder. The
pursuing pack, the stealthy-footed beasts of the city, had dropped
utterly from his flying imagination. There was only one that remained
faithful--that craving for beauty--half-god, half-beast. Against him
Dickie still pressed his door shut. Lorrimer's gift of work had not
quieted the leader of the pack. But it had brought Dickie something that
was nearly happiness. The very look of him had changed; he looked driven
rather than harried, keen rather than harassed, eager instead of vague,
hungry rather than wistful. Only, sometimes, Dickie's brain would
suddenly turn blank and blind from sheer exhaustion. This happened to him
now. The printed lines he was studying lost all their meaning. He put his
forehead on his hands. Then he heard that eerie, light tapping above him
on the skylight. But he was too tired to look up.

It was on that very afternoon when Sheila rode down the trail with her
flowers tied before her on the saddle, singing to keep up her heart. It
was that very afternoon when she had cried out half-consciously for
"Dickie--Dickie--Dickie"--and now it was, as though the cry had traveled,
that a memory of her leapt upon his mind; a memory of Sheila singing.
She had come into the chocolate-colored lobby from one of her rides with
Jim Greely. She had held a handful of cactus flowers. She had stopped
over there by one of the windows to put them in a glass. And to show
Dickie, a prisoner at his desk, that she did not consider his
presence--it was during the period of their estrangement--she had sung
softly as a girl sings when she knows herself to be alone: a little
tender, sad chanting song, that seemed made to fit her mouth. The pain
her singing had given him that afternoon had cut a picture of her on
Dickie's brain. Just because he had tried so hard not to look at her. Now
it jumped out at him against his closed, wet lids. The very motions of
her mouth came back, the positive