The hours I spent in my window that night were I suppose the nearest I ever got to Heaven. It seemed that at last my torturing doubts were over, that I had read in the Divine Revelation, that the way, the truth and the light had been made plain to me. For the second time in my life I had the assurance of salvation. Just as the rim of the sun came up over the eastern hills, I heard her get out of bed, heard the sound of her bare feet coming towards the door. I jumped down from my seat in the window. My dream was fulfilled—she was coming to me in the dawn. The door opened barely an inch. Her voice seemed like that of a stranger. "Arnold. Please go down in the kitchen and get my clothes." I was ready to open my veins for her and she asked me to walk downstairs and bring her a skirt and blouse and shoes. "Don’t stand there like an idiot," the strange voice said. "I want my clothes." Well—somehow I found the clothes and brought them back. She took them in hastily through the door, closed it in my face—locked it. I think the grating of the bolt in the lock was the thing I first realized clearly. She was afraid I would force myself on her. We were utter strangers, she did not know me at all. Once in a strike riot I saw a man hit between the eyes with a brick. It must have knocked him senseless at once, but he finished the sentence he was shouting, stooped down to pick up a stone, stopped as though he had thought of something, sat down on the curb in a daze—it must have been a full half minute before he groaned and slumped over inert. After Suzanne drove the bolt of her door through the dream, I got dressed and sat down dumbly to wait. I heard her moving about her room, heard her putting on her shoes—I remember thinking that as they had been wet, they must be stiff this morning—then she unlocked and opened the door. "Arnold," she said in that constrained voice I did not know. "I’ve got to go away—I want to be alone. There’s a train for Paris in a few minutes." I suppose I made some movement as if to follow her. "No. Don’t you come. I’ve got to think things out by myself. I’ve got to"—the strained tone in her voice was desperate, almost hysterical—"Let me go alone. I’ll write to you—Cook’s. I’m...." She turned without a word of good-bye and I heard her footsteps on the stairs of the still quiet house. And presently, perhaps fifteen minutes, perhaps half an hour, I heard the whistle of a train. *VII*