"That shows what nonsense stories are," he said. "That couldn't happen to
us in a thousand years. She's beautiful, and kindly, and affectionate.
She's got temperament enough to blow the cork out of any bottle you tried
to hold it down in. But I couldn't fall in love with her if I tried. It
doesn't happen on that basis. Besides which, it's my belief that she's
altogether in love with her husband. All the same, she's taken me up. She
means to push me for all she's worth and let her husband like it or lump
it as he pleases. She's got some plans, I don't know just what, for
showing me off to one or two of the 'right' people to-day. You can
imagine what it will be like, can't you?"

"I should think it would be rather good fun--that sort of game," she
commented.

"That's where the forks come in," he said. "And not having a proper
coat. That sort of social skill is the suit of armor those people wear.
I've got to go back to my room and sew up the rip Ben told me about and
trim my cuffs and try to tie my necktie so that the worn-out spots won't
show-and make them do."

It was but a few minutes later--they had been silent ones--that she
stopped her car in front of the little grocery store where the rickety
outside stair led up to his door.

"I'll come in with you and sew up the rip in your coat," she said.

She wouldn't have made that offer, indeed would hardly have driven him up
to his own door, if she had not been a young woman with steady nerves and
a level head, and an abundant confidence in both. Because that dingy
little wooden building with its outside stair to his attic, was the
nucleus of memories that had by no means lost their poignancy. It was
not, after all, so many years ago that she had mounted that stair for the
first time, and it couldn't be considered strange that her heart
quickened a little as she climbed it now.

The room startled her by being so utterly unchanged. Not only the major
articles in it; the stove, the iron bed, the deal table he wrote at, the
carpenter's bench, the half invented musical typewriter that he had once
attempted to convert an old square piano into, the hollow-backed easy
chair,--but the quite minor and casual trifles as well. On top of the set
of home-made shelves that served for his music and his books was a sort
of still-life composed of a meerschaum pipe with a broken stem and an
empty goblet of pressed glass, standing upon a yellow paper-covered copy
of Anatole France's _Th