d?"

"Yaas, sah!" The boy's eyes and teeth were shining.

"All right. Go to it. I'll drop in later this afternoon for your
report."

Laurie turned and walked away. Even yet the experience did not seem
real. It was probably all based on some foolish notion of the youth's;
and yet he dared not assume that it was a foolish notion. He had the
dramatist's distaste for drama anywhere except in its legitimate place,
on the stage; but he admitted that sometimes it did occur in life. This
might be one of those rare occasions.

Whatever it was, it haunted him. He lunched with Bangs that day, and was
so silent that Bangs was moved to comment.

"If you were any one else," he remarked, "I'd almost think you were
thinking!"

Laurie disclaimed the charge, but his abstraction did not lift. By this
time his imagination was hard at work. He pictured the girl in the
mirror as stretched on her virginal cot in the final exhaustion of
starvation; and the successful effort to keep away from the studio
building till four o'clock called for all his will power. Suppose the
boy blundered, or wasn't in time. Suppose the girl really had not eaten
anything since last Tuesday! These thoughts, and similar ones, obsessed
him.

At four he strolled into the studio hall, wearing what he hoped was a
detached and casual air. To his annoyance, the elevator and its operator
were lost in the dimness of the upper stories, and before they descended
several objectionable persons had joined Laurie, evidently expecting to
be taken to upper floors themselves. This meant a delay in his
tete-a-tete with the boy, and Laurie turned upon the person nearest him,
an inoffensive spinster, a look of such intense resentment that it
haunted that lady for several days.

When the elevator finally appeared, he entered it with the others who
were waiting. He looked aloofly past the elevator boy as he did so, and
that young person showed himself equal to the situation by presenting to
this new-comer a stolid ebony profile. But when the lift had reached the
top floor and discharged its passengers, the two conspirators lent
themselves to the drama of their roles.

"Well?" asked Laurie eagerly. "Did you get it?"

"Yaas, sah."

"What happened?"

The boy stopped his descending car midway between two floors. He had no
intention of having his scene spoiled. He bulged visibly under the news
he had to impart. "I got de stuff you said, and I lef' it at dat young
lady's do',"