She rarely looked forward to Walter's return, and when she did, it was with no definite visualizing thought of marriage. The concept of sex was vague to her--and decidedly fearsome. Not even Harry Klein, her first lover--and she always thought of him as an incident in a dim and very remote past--had really stirred her woman's nature. He had appealed to her as an instrument, a key by which to escape from her dungeon. The sentiments, which his meagre caresses had raised, had by the fright of the adventure been driven back in dismay. Sometimes, to be sure, a sort of sweet dizziness overcame her when she remembered how Walter had kissed her hand. The spot below the middle finger of her left hand which his lips had touched was a holy place. But more often she thought of his words. When in her dreams he seemed nearest, he was halfway across the room, in the big leather chair, while she was curled up on the window-seat. She was not yet twenty-one. Her girlhood had been sacrificed to the machine. Orderly, symmetrical development had been impossible. Now that she was a woman in body, in mind, in work, her imagination was still in the first flower of adolescence. On the mantelpiece of his old room, where she lived, a snapshot of the white men of the Expedition leaned against the cow-faced god of the Haktites. Like Saul of old, Walter towered head and shoulders above his mates. Khaki and a pith helmet are not exactly silver armor--but to Yetta he seemed the Shining Prince. And Isadore wanted her to live with him in an East Side flat. If falling in love with her had disturbed Isadore, his inability to put her out of his mind after her emphatic refusal troubled him a thousand times more. He got no ease from his pain except in work. The anxiety of his friends increased. But, brushing aside their protests, he sought out ever new activities. He hated to be idle, he came to fear being alone in his room. But not even the most strenuous endeavor to forget relieved him. In the beautifully illogical way life has, help came to Isadore from a source he would never have dreamed of. He came home early one night to write an article for the _Forwaertz_. To his dismay he found that he had left his notes in the office. The article would have to wait, and here he was with nothing to do, alone in his room, where of all places he found it hardest to escape from the aching hunger of his heart, the sad confusion of his thoughts. It was not much of a room--an iron cot, a big deal table, a few cheap chairs and bookcases. It was not even decently clean. In the five years he had lived there he had been quite oblivious to its sordidness. But of late it had become abhorrent to him. He was already half undressed. The bitter summer heat had driven the tenement dwellers out on the street. The perspiring humanity which crowded the sidewalks offered no comfortable escape.