only
seven or eight blocks away, and it was dark when I came out, and I'd
have had to go home alone--and I preferred going home with you."

"It's pretty beautiful for me," said Bibbs, with a deep breath. "You'll
never know what it was to hear your laugh in the darkness--and then
to--to see you standing there! Oh, it was like--it was like--how can I
TELL you what it was like?" They had passed beyond the crowd now, and
a crossing-lamp shone upon them, which revealed the fact that again she
was without her furs. Here was a puzzle. Why did that adorable little
vanity of hers bring her out without them in the DARK? But of course she
had gone out long before dark. For undefinable reasons this explanation
was not quite satisfactory; however, allowing it to stand, his
solicitude for her took another turn. "I think you ought to have a car,"
he said, "especially when you want to be out after dark. You need one in
winter, anyhow. Have you ever asked your father for one?"

"No," said Mary. "I don't think I'd care for one particularly."

"I wish you would." Bibbs's tone was earnest and troubled. "I think in
winter you--"

"No, no," she interrupted, lightly. "I don't need--"

"But my mother tried to insist on sending one over here every afternoon
for me. I wouldn't let her, because I like the walk, but a girl--"

"A girl likes to walk, too," said Mary. "Let me tell you where I've been
this afternoon and how I happened to be near enough to make you take me
home. I've been to see a little old man who makes pictures of the smoke.
He has a sort of warehouse for a studio, and he lives there with his
mother and his wife and their seven children, and he's gloriously happy.
I'd seen one of his pictures at an exhibition, and I wanted to see
more of them, so he showed them to me. He has almost everthing he ever
painted; I don't suppose he's sold more than four or five pictures in
his life. He gives drawing-lessons to keep alive."

"How do you mean he paints the smoke?" Bibbs asked.

"Literally. He paints from his studio window and from the
street--anywhere. He just paints what's around him--and it's beautiful."

"The smoke?"

"Wonderful! He sees the sky through it, somehow. He does the ugly roofs
of cheap houses through a haze of smoke, and he does smoky sunsets and
smoky sunrises, and he has other things with the heavy, solid, slow
columns of smoke going far out and growing more ethereal and mixing
with the hazy light in the dista