She lied sweetly, serenely, and when the look of relief crept over Fairfax's face, she endured it as humble women in love endure, when their natures are sweet and honey-like and their hearts are pure gold. She took the five dollars he paid her back. He was too delicate in sentiment to offer her more, and he watched her, his hands idly on the sheets. "I reckon Joe Mead's got another fireman, Molly?" "Ah, no," she laughed, "Joe's been here every day to see when you would be working, and when Joe don't come the other felly comes to see when you'll let _him_ off!" Life, then, was going on out there in the yards. He heard the shriek of the engines, the fine voices of the whistles, and the square of his sunny window framed the outer day. People were going on journeys, people were coming home. He had come back, and little Gardiner.... "Sit down," he said brusquely to the girl who stood at his side; "sit down, for God's sake, and talk to me; tell me something, anything, or I shall go crazy again." CHAPTER X He recovered rapidly; his hard work had strengthened his constitution, and Molly Shannon modestly withdrew, and Mary Kenny, the landlady, who had disputed the place from the first, took it and gave Antony what further care he needed. He missed Molly the first day she left him, missed her shawl and hat and the music of her Irish voice. He had sent for books through Joe Mead, and read furiously, realizing how long he had been without intellectual food. But the books made him wretched. Not one of them was written for an artist who had been forced by hard luck to turn into a day labourer. All the beautiful things he read made him suffer and desire and long, and worse still, made him rebel. One phrase out of Werther lingered and fascinated him-- "The miseries of mankind would be lighter if--God knows why this is so--if they would not use all their imagination to remember their miseries and to recall to themselves the souvenirs of their unhappy past." The unhappy past! Well, was it not sad at his age to have a past so melancholy that one could not recall it without tears? Every one but Sanders came to see him, and jolly him up. Joe Mead gave him to understand that he only lived for the time when Tony should come back to feed "the Girl," as he called his engine. Tony looked at his chief out of cavernous eyes. Joe Mead had on his Sunday clothes and would not light his cigar out of deference to Tony's sick-room. "You're forty, Mead, aren't you?" "About that, I guess." "And I am only twenty-three," returned Fairfax. "Is that going to be a picture of me at forty?" he thought, and answered himself violently: "My mother's pride and mine forbid." "Sanders doesn't come to see me, Joe?" "Nope," returned the other, "you bet your life. If he ain't waiting for you at the door with a gun when you come down it's only because he is off on his job."