"Miss Wakely," he said, "I beg your pardon like anything. What salary do you have?" I felt my face turn crimson. This had occurred to me no more than it had to him. When it was settled, he rose and came toward the corner where I worked, and stood looking down at me. For a moment I was certain that now he knew me. "Miss Wakely," he said very gently, "may I ask you one thing more? Do you wear black sateen aprons?" "I loathe all aprons," I said. "And paper sleeve-shields, too?" he inquired earnestly. "Held by big rubber bands?" "Paper sleeve-shields held by big rubber bands," I said, "I loathe even more than black sateen aprons." "Well," he said, "do you know, there was one young woman once--" and he went back to his task obliviously. At one o'clock I found a little tea-shop in the neighborhood, where food was scandalously high, after the manner of unassimilated tea-shops. I remember the clean little room, with a rose on my table and shelves of jelly over my head. "How much better that is than some books," I said to the pink waitress, because I had to speak to somebody, so that I could smile. The world is not yet adjusted with that simplicity which permits one to sit in public places alone and, very happily, to smile. And this, I realized, was what I had been doing. I was obliged to walk twice the transverse length of the blocks cut by the little studio street, before it was time to go back. As I was returning the second time, I came face to face with Mr. Ember carrying a paper sack. "Torchido," he explained, "lectures in a young ladies' seminary just at noon. It is not convenient for me. But I mind nothing so much as the fact that he will not let me have dried herrings. They--they offend Torchido. They do not offend me. So I go out and buy herrings of my own and hide them in the bookcase. But he nearly always smells them out." I wanted to say: "You can't buy anywhere such good ones as we used to have in Katytown." Instead, I said something in disparagement of Torchido's taste, and reflected on the immeasurable power of dried herrings in one human being's appeal to another. I went back to work in my corner, and he ate herrings and buns, unabashed, at his library table. When I saw Torchido coming along the garden wall, I said: "Torchido--he's coming!" and Mr. Ember swept the remains of his lunch into the sack and dropped it into one of the glorious green-blue jars. Torchido came in for orders, took them, stood for a moment plainly sniffing the air, pointedly opened a far window, and respectfully retreated. Whereat the first faint smile that I had seen met my look, when the door had closed. It was a heavenly day. It seemed to me that some heritage of my young girlhood had, after all, not quite escaped in all that sordid time, but had waited for me, let me catch it up and, now, enjoy it as I never could have enjoyed it then.