cted tapestries--that was after I was wounded in Padua.
The only really bad time was when a tailor named Finkelfarb found a
diary I was trying to keep and he read it aloud in the shop--it was a
bad fight." He laughed. "I got fined five dollars. But that's all gone
now. Seems as though you stand between me and the gas stoves--the long
flames with mauve edges, licking up around the irons and making that
sneering sound all day--aaaaah!"

Her fingers tightened about his thumb as she perceived the hot low room,
the pounding of pressing-irons, the reek of scorched cloth, and Erik
among giggling gnomes. His fingertip crept through the opening of her
glove and smoothed her palm. She snatched her hand away, stripped off
her glove, tucked her hand back into his.

He was saying something about a "wonderful person." In her tranquillity
she let the words blow by and heeded only the beating wings of his
voice.

She was conscious that he was fumbling for impressive speech.

"Say, uh--Carol, I've written a poem about you."

"That's nice. Let's hear it."

"Damn it, don't be so casual about it! Can't you take me seriously?"

"My dear boy, if I took you seriously----! I don't want us to be hurt
more than--more than we will be. Tell me the poem. I've never had a poem
written about me!"

"It isn't really a poem. It's just some words that I love because it
seems to me they catch what you are. Of course probably they won't seem
so to anybody else, but----Well----

Little and tender and merry and wise
With eyes that meet my eyes.

Do you get the idea the way I do?"

"Yes! I'm terribly grateful!" And she was grateful--while she
impersonally noted how bad a verse it was.

She was aware of the haggard beauty in the lowering night. Monstrous
tattered clouds sprawled round a forlorn moon; puddles and rocks
glistened with inner light. They were passing a grove of scrub poplars,
feeble by day but looming now like a menacing wall. She stopped. They
heard the branches dripping, the wet leaves sullenly plumping on the
soggy earth.

"Waiting--waiting--everything is waiting," she whispered. She drew her
hand from his, pressed her clenched fingers against her lips. She was
lost in the somberness. "I am happy--so we must go home, before we have
time to become unhappy. But can't we sit on a log for a minute and just
listen?"

"No. Too wet. But I wish we could build a fire, and you could sit on
my overcoat beside it. I'm a grand f