r he lit one of his "mild but they satisfy"
cigarettes and sat in the comfortable warmth of a near-by radiator. A
large black cat lay sprawled on the next chair. Up at the service
counter there was a pleasant clank of stout crockery as occasional
customers came in and ordered their victuals. Aubrey began to feel a
relaxation swim through his veins. Gissing Street was very bright and
orderly in its Saturday evening bustle. Certainly it was grotesque to
imagine melodrama hanging about a second-hand bookshop in Brooklyn.
The revolver felt absurdly lumpy and uncomfortable in his hip pocket.
What a different aspect a little hot supper gives to affairs! The most
resolute idealist or assassin had better write his poems or plan his
atrocities before the evening meal. After the narcosis of that repast
the spirit falls into a softer mood, eager only to be amused. Even
Milton would hardly have had the inhuman fortitude to sit down to the
manuscript of Paradise Lost right after supper. Aubrey began to wonder
if his unpleasant suspicions had not been overdrawn. He thought how
delightful it would be to stop in at the bookshop and ask Titania to go
to the movies with him.

Curious magic of thought! The idea was still sparkling in his mind
when he saw Titania and Mrs. Mifflin emerge from the bookshop and pass
briskly in front of the lunchroom. They were talking and laughing
merrily. Titania's face, shining with young vitality, seemed to him
more "attention-compelling" than any ten-point Caslon type-arrangement
he had ever seen. He admired the layout of her face from the
standpoint of his cherished technique. "Just enough 'white space,'" he
thought, "to set off her eyes as the 'centre of interest.' Her features
aren't this modern bold-face stuff, set solid," he said to himself,
thinking typographically. "They're rather French old-style italic,
slightly leaded. Set on 22-point body, I guess. Old man Chapman's a
pretty good typefounder, you have to hand it to him."

He smiled at this conceit, seized hat and coat, and dashed out of the
lunchroom.

Mrs. Mifflin and Titania had halted a few yards up the street, and were
looking at some pert little bonnets in a window. Aubrey hurried across
the street, ran up to the next corner, recrossed, and walked down the
eastern pavement. In this way he would meet them as though he were
coming from the subway. He felt rather more excited than King Albert
re-entering Brussels. He