l, and
songs beyond compare. The very atmosphere of her was still in the place
and things of hers were yet on the dressing table, including the button
hook, which I pocketed. They made me think of saintly relics to be
worshipped. Baby Paul's crib appealed to me. She had so often bent over
it, wistfully, as I watched her, admiring the wondrous curve of her
neck, the sunlit glory of her hair.

Mrs. Milliken suddenly caught me there, and I felt a sense of heat in my
cheeks.

"Yes," she said, "I'll give it a thorough cleaning. It needs it real
bad. And next week I'll put new paper on the walls and have the carpet
took up and beaten. I was wishin' you'd stay away long enough so I could
do the same to yours. I've known all my life men are mussy, but that
room of yours is the limit, Mr. Cole, all littered up with paper so a
body don't dare touch anything."

I made no answer. I suppose that house cleaning is a necessary evil but
her contemplated invasion of Frances's room seems to me like the
desecration of a shrine. It should be locked up and penetrated only by
people soft of foot and low of voice.

CHAPTER XX

RICHETTI IS PLEASED

Goodness only knows how many pages I blackened with the experiences of
this short summer, but I have thrown them away, in small pieces. They
were too introspective; mere impressions of one week after another, when
I would take the train and join Frances again, under self-suggested and
hypocritical pleas. My wisdom was needed to see to it that Baby Paul
grew and thrived. His teething necessitated my worrying Dr. Porter half
to death as to the possibilities of such portentous happenings. It was
also indispensable that I should accurately ascertain the mother's
condition of health and listen to Eulalie's observations. In other
words, I pretended that I was a very important person.

But in the heart of me, I knew myself to be like some drug-fiend, only
permitted to indulge his destructive habit once a week. The work I
turned out of nights, I am afraid, was worth little and will have to be
subjected to plentiful alterations. In the day I wandered over the
superheated city and occasionally took a boat for a lonely excursion
over the Bay, for the sake of fresh air and unneeded rest. But from the
Monday morning to Saturday afternoon the fever was always on me to
hasten back, to drift with Frances over the little lake, to stroll with
her in the woodland roads or among the fields, to steep my