. Cellette
stared at him. She seemed so stupid about it that Lewis felt like
shaking her again, an impulse that, assisted by memory, he easily
curbed.

"But," cried Cellette at last, "it is so easy--so simple! You go to the
post, you say, 'Kindly weigh this letter,' you ask how much to put on
it, you buy the stamps, you affix them, you drop the letter in the slot.
_Voila_!" She smiled and started off.

Lewis reached out one arm and barred her way.

"Yes, yes," he stammered, "_voila_, of course." A vague recollection of
his father taming Le Brux with a dinner came to his aid. He explained to
Cellette that if she would post the letter for him, he would be pleased
to take her to dinner.

Then Cellette understood in her own way.

"Ah," she cried brightly, "you make excuses to ask me to dine, eh? That
is delicate. It is gallant. I am charmed. Let us go."

She hung on his arm. She chatted. She never waited for an answer.
Together they went to the post. People glanced at them and smiled, some
nodded; but Cellette's face was upturned toward Lewis's. She saw no one
else. It was his evening.

Gradually it dawned upon her that Lewis was really helpless and terribly
alone. In that moment she took charge of him as a duck takes charge of
an orphaned chick. On succeeding evenings she led him to the water, but
she did not try to make him swim.

Parents still comfort themselves with the illusion that they can choose
safe guardians for their young. As a matter of fact, guardians of
innocence are allotted by Fate. When Fate is kind, she allots the
extremes, a guardian who has never felt a sensation or one who has tired
of all sensations. The latter adds wisdom to innocence, subtracts it
from bliss, and--becomes an ideal.

Fate was kind to Lewis in handing him over to Cellette at the tragic
age. Nature had shown him much; Cellette showed him the rest. She took
him as a passenger through all the side-shows of life. She was tired of
payments in flesh and blood. She found her recompense in teaching him
how to talk, walk, eat, take pleasure in a penny ride on a river boat or
on top of a bus, and in spending his entire allowance to their best
joint profit.

In return Lewis received many a boon. He was no longer alone. He was
introduced as an equal to the haunts of the gay world of embryonic
art--the only world that has ever solved the problem of being gay
without money. From the first he was assumed to belong to Cellette. How
much