breakfast. Since you insist on waiting 'round for me like Mary's
little lamb, I suppose I've got to feed you."

Rodney's wide grin responded, for the first time in many days. He
bustled about, completing his toilet, and ten minutes later the two
young men started out together with a lightness of spirit which each
enjoyed and neither wholly understood. Both had a healthy horror of
"sentimental stuff" and a gay, normal disregard of each other's feelings
in ordinary intercourse. But in the past half-hour, for the first time
in their association, they had come close to a serious break, and the
soul of each had been chilled by a premonitory loneliness as definite as
the touch of an icy finger. In the quick reaction they experienced now
their spirits soared exultantly. They breakfasted in a fellowship such
as they had not known since Barbara's marriage, the month before.

If Bangs had indulged in any dream of a change of life in Laurie,
however, following this reconciliation, the next few days destroyed the
tender shoots of that hope. Laurie's manner retained its pleasant
camaraderie, but work and he met as strangers and passed each other by.
The routine of his days remained what they had been during the past five
weeks. He gadded about, apparently harmlessly, came home at shocking
hours, and spent most of the bracing January days wrapped in a healthful
slumber that infuriated Bangs, who wandered in and out of their
apartment like an unhappy ghost. On the rare occasions when he and
Rodney lunched or dined together, Laurie was entirely good-humored and
when Epstein was with them seemed wholly impervious to any hints thrown
out, none too subtly, by his producing partner.

"Listen, Laurie," said that disgusted individual, almost a month after
the new year had been ushered in, "the new year's here. That's a good
time for a young fella to get busy again on somethin' vorth while. Ain't
I right?"

Laurie suppressed a yawn and carefully struck off with his little finger
the firm ash of an excellent cigarette. He was consuming thirty or
forty cigarettes a day, and his nerves were beginning to show the effect
of this indulgence.

"I believe it is," he courteously agreed. "It has been earnestly
recommended to the young as a good time to start something."

"Vell," Epstein's voice took on the guttural notes of his temperamental
moments, "don't that mean nothin' to you?"

Laurie grinned. He had caught the quick look of warning Bangs