“Ah but she is making plans! I can see it. And the trouble is that she doesn’t say a word about it. She usually talks about whatever is in her head. I wondered if you mightn’t know?” Against the insistent question in his eyes I opposed truthfully a blank ignorance; but I had at once felt the need for caution. He stood in the clinging, dirty snowflakes, forlorn, looking as if he needed to be whistled home. His dejection wrung from me the delayed information that I had not seen her for some time. I had--although this I did not say--stayed away from her. He pointedly requested that I come down to see her. “You know how she is--excitable? She’s got herself tremendously worked-up over the panic; and she was already moping over Molly Underhill.” I could not resist telling him that Eva had telephoned me, some time since, of having gone to his mother for comfort on the score of her responsibility for Molly’s death. She had said to Mrs. Van Suydam that upon a certain occasion she had been so cruel to Molly about her recitation that she felt this had had a large share in breaking down her desire to live. Mrs. Van Suydam, it appeared, had remarked that the opinion of one person was never so powerful as that would come to. I did not tell him that this had only too evidently clipped Eva’s spirits; but he turned on me an eye so comprehending that I became lost in a confused speculation on how deeply he might actually understand Eva. And, as I submitted to his instantly popping me in a taxi, getting in himself and giving the driver the number of the little house in Eleventh Street, I wondered feebly if my supineness arose from the snow slipping down my own back or from a guilty knowledge of my unwillingness to go at all. I felt like saying: “I have my own troubles.” No one took their troubles to Eva. The taxi skidded, and he re-adjusted the angle of his hat. Why--I asked myself pettishly--are men fussy about their hats which look the same on any slant? His relieved face, as he contemplated me, a virtual prisoner on my way to taking over a share of his burden, produced in me a contrition in the toils of which he, and Eva, I made no doubt, would use me. “How is work?” I asked casually.