ave liked to take it and pet it. It would
have made her solitude less acute. At the movement, a ball of misty fur
bounded. Where it had been, there was air.

The abrupt evaporation distracted her. Before her the desert lay, but in
it now was her father. She had been going to him. Previously, she had
thought that, when she did go, her hands would be filled with gifts.
Instead they were bruised, bare to the bone. They would madden him and
she wondered whether she could endure it. The long, green afternoon,
that had been so brief, had been so torturesome that she doubted her
ability. But he would have to be told. She could not lie to him and
humanly she wished that it were to-morrow, the day after, the day after
that, when it would be over and done for, put away, covered by woes of
his own, though inevitably to be dragged out again and shown her, and
shown her, too, with the unconscious cruelty that those who love you
display.

It would be crucifying, but there was no help for it. Reaching for the
bundle, she stood up and went her way, across the Park, to the subway,
from which she got out in Harlem.

The loveliness of that land of love seemed to have changed, though the
change, she then recognised, was in herself. But at least the walk-up
was unaltered. In the grimy entrance was Mrs. Yallum, a fat Finn, who
looked like a dirty horse, and who yapped at her volubly,
incomprehensibly, but with such affection that Cassy, yapping back, felt
less lonely as she ascended the stair.

The comfort was mediocre. In the afternoon she had gone from a ruin. Now
she had the sensation of entering another, one from which she had also
gone, but to which she was returning and with a spirit so dulled in the
journey! Had she, she wondered, any spirit left at all? At least enough
remained to prevent any wish for the reconstruction of the ruin behind
her. About the fallen walls were forms of filth; in the crevices there
were vermin, and though, before her, the desert stretched, it was clean.
However arid, it was wholesome.

But now she was at the door. She let herself in, hurried to the
living-room, where, with the feigned cheerfulness of the unselfish, she
beamed at her father and bent over him.

"Here I am to look after you again! How well you look. I am so glad and
oh! where is your sling?"

In speaking she stroked him. His skin was clearer, she thought, and the
abandoned sling was a relief.

He looked up at her. "You got married wi