“Yes, go ahead,” said Elsie. “This box of china has got to be unpacked and washed. I’ll do that in the meantime.” Moira had been in and out of the building on many occasions during the past week, but her curiosity had been slight regarding her neighbours. She couldn’t afford to be particular about them, so it seemed to her pointless to be curious. As she went downstairs, however, on the way to the grocery, a name on the door to a small room caught her attention. “Miles Harlindew!” she said, and found her memory flying to years before at Thornhill, and her lips repeating some lines about: “All shining parallels of track, All brown roads leading up.” She had begun to see the man’s verses in the literary magazines when she couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen, and many of them had sung themselves into her memory. One or two had given her an experience of discovery. But for the last few years she had found no more of his work. She had imagined him for some reason, as people are likely to think of anybody at all who gets things published, as successful, comfortable, arrived. “He must be getting along in years,” she thought. “Poor fellow!” For she knew that room corresponded to her bedroom above, a mere cubby-hole, so small that she had to sit on her bed to look in the dressing table mirror. It was her first party in years, and she did not need the cocktails--which Arthur Sommers had brought in a silver flask--to give her a thrill. She fell in love with her guests and charmed them into something like wonder. So this was the unapproachable Mary Smith! “Oh, I’ve got distinguished literary neighbours,” she announced. “Miles Harlindew is on the floor below.” A ripple of amusement greeted her remark. “But I remember some stunning poems of his,” she went on. “Oh, yes,” put in Jade, “but nobody knows he’s alive these days. He doesn’t even know it himself.” “Come off,” said her husband. “I see him often, very much alive. Any man who does his duty violating the Eighteenth Amendment as regularly as Miles, has my vote. What do you say if I get him.” “If he’s sober,” put in Jade. Sommers glanced at Moira for consent, and she gave it with a brisk nod. These people knew more about the man than she and no doubt were justified in what they said; nevertheless she felt a vague resentment. What would they say if they knew all there was to be known about herself? Experience had already taught her that beneath the literal and semi-bohemian veneer of her friends there was a stern core of respectability.