eless gesture.

"Oh, isn't this all sickening!--sickening!" she exclaimed. She looked
tired. Ghosts of sleepless nights circled her eyes. Suddenly she said,
"Come in. Oh, do come in, Peter." She reached out and almost pulled him
in. She was so urgent that Peter might have fancied Tump Pack at the
gate with his automatic. He did glance around, but saw nobody passing
except the Arkwright boy. The hobbledehoy walked down the other side of
the street, hands thrust in pockets, with the usual discontented
expression on his face.

Cissie slammed the door shut, and the two stood rather at a loss in the
sudden gloom of the hall. Cissie broke into a brief, mirthless laugh.

"Peter, it's hard to be nice in Niggertown. I--I just happened to think
how folks would gossip--you coming here as soon as Tump was arrested."

"Perhaps I'd better go," suggested Peter, uncomfortably.

Cissie reached up and caught his lapel.

"Oh, no, don't feel that way! I'm glad you came, really. Here, let's go
through this way to the arbor. It isn't a bad place to sit."

She led the way silently through two dark rooms. Before she opened the
back door, Peter could hear Cissie's mother and a younger sister moving
around the outside of the house to give up the arbor to Cissie and her
company.

The arbor proved a trellis of honeysuckle over the back door, with a
bench under it. A film of dust lay over the dense foliage, and a few
withered blooms pricked its grayish green. The earthen floor of the
arbor was beaten hard and bare by the naked feet of children.

Cissie sat down on the bench and indicated a place beside her.

"I've been so uneasy about you! I've been wondering what on earth you
could do about it."

"It's a snarl, all right," he said, and almost immediately began
discussing the peculiar _impasse_ in which his difficulty with Tump
had landed him. Cissie sat listening with a serious, almost tragic face,
giving a little nod now and then. Once she remarked in her precise way:

"The trouble with a gentleman fighting a rowdy, the gentleman has all to
lose and nothing to gain. If you don't live among your own class, Peter,
your life will simmer down to an endless diplomacy."

"You mean deceit, I suppose."

"No, I mean diplomacy. But that isn't a very healthy frame of mind,--
always to be suppressing and guarding yourself."

Peter didn't know about that. He was inclined to argue the matter, but
Cissie wouldn't argue. She seemed to assume tha