She went with Elsie one night to the theatre and when they returned to Elsie’s rooms, Moira confessed that she had begun to work. They talked until three in the morning. She came away elated, and still sleepless, not the least bit tired. The mere divulging of her modest ambitions had started her blood bounding, and she swung buoyantly down the street. A block or two from her house she heard voices, and against the glow of a lamp she saw the figure of a policeman leaning over a man who lay on the pavement luxuriously supporting his head from the flagging with folded arms. “Come on, now, get up,” said the officer. “I’ve fooled long enough. If you don’t get up I’ll take you where you’ll have a long rest.” The voice that replied was unmistakably Miles Harlindew’s. “Preposterous,” he said, running his consonants together. “I am lying on m’own prop’ty. It was legally d’vised to me by God the Father. Six feet by three of solid earth. That’s my allotment. You’ve spoiled it by putting concrete on it, but I’ll be a good fellow. Won’t complain. It’s all right. Just go away.” “Get up, I tell ya.” “What! Can’t a man lie on his own pat-patrimony, you blamed ass? It’s goin’ to be mine f’r eternity, and I choose to use it now!” “We’ll see who’s a blamed ass, young feller. Come on!” Moira interrupted as the patrolman was about to grasp Harlindew’s shoulder. “Officer,” she said hurriedly, “I know this man. He lives in the same house I am in. I think I can get him to go with me, if you won’t take him.” “Sure. That’s all right. I don’t want him if he’ll get out of here. I’ve had this bird before, and it might go hard with him.” “Thank you,” she said fervently. Miles was on his feet in a second, a little unsteady but effusively polite, repeating the words “divine Madonna” in a voice that must have carried to many windows. “Officer,” he said, “meet Madonna--no, meet Ariadne. Ariadne, the night is a labyrinth--you bring me a thread.” At his door he insisted upon going up with her--“just for a second”--and she could not refuse him. He sat on the couch, pursuing a strange, disjointed tale of the day’s adventures. He told twice about a steel-worker he had met in a bootlegger’s house, who once had worked on the Woolworth, forty stories up. “Said he never went up on the steel in the morning without three whiskies--if he had he’d a fallen off,” said Miles. “That’s good--if he had he’d a fallen off.” The idea seemed to fill him with extraordinary delight. But other things were on his mind also. Some one he called “the damn buzzard at the office” came in for a large share of abuse. “If you want to see the damned buzzard to-morrow, you’d better go downstairs and sleep,” she suggested. “You won’t feel much like work.” “Work? Never mind work.... Valuable man.... Know my own value.... Not at all sleepy, anyway....” A moment later while she was out of the room he stretched full length on the couch and fell asleep.