waited.
His breath was like steam on her leg. Nobody had ever intruded upon his
roof before, and he panted for the movement or the word that would let
him spring his jaw. Instead, Hedger's hand seized his throat.

"Wait a minute. I'll settle with him," he said grimly. He dragged the dog
toward the manhole and disappeared. When he came back, he found Eden
standing over by the dark chimney, looking away in an offended attitude.

"I caned him unmercifully," he panted. "Of course you didn't hear
anything; he never whines when I beat him. He didn't nip you, did he?"

"I don't know whether he broke the skin or not," she answered
aggrievedly, still looking off into the west.

"If I were one of your friends in white pants, I'd strike a match to find
whether you were hurt, though I know you are not, and then I'd see your
ankle, wouldn't I?"

"I suppose so."

He shook his head and stood with his hands in the pockets of his old
painting jacket. "I'm not up to such boy-tricks. If you want the place
to yourself, I'll clear out. There are plenty of places where I can spend
the night, what's left of it. But if you stay here and I stay here--" He
shrugged his shoulders.

Eden did not stir, and she made no reply. Her head drooped slightly, as
if she were considering. But the moment he put his arms about her they
began to talk, both at once, as people do in an opera. The instant avowal
brought out a flood of trivial admissions. Hedger confessed his crime,
was reproached and forgiven, and now Eden knew what it was in his look
that she had found so disturbing of late.

Standing against the black chimney, with the sky behind and blue shadows
before, they looked like one of Hedger's own paintings of that period;
two figures, one white and one dark, and nothing whatever distinguishable
about them but that they were male and female. The faces were lost, the
contours blurred in shadow, but the figures were a man and a woman, and
that was their whole concern and their mysterious beauty,--it was the
rhythm in which they moved, at last, along the roof and down into the
dark hole; he first, drawing her gently after him. She came down very
slowly. The excitement and bravado and uncertainty of that long day and
night seemed all at once to tell upon her. When his feet were on the
carpet and he reached up to lift her down, she twined her arms about his
neck as after a long separation, and turned her face to him, and her
lips, with their perfu