Edie ... and, as the most recent immigrant from Russia betrayed herself into exclaiming ... "_a chalery soll im nemen_! a cholera should him take!" As silently, as swiftly as they had faded, the boys re-entered the fiery joint circle of Love and the Walton Street lamp. Edie stood picturesquely sobbing in the shadowed doorway of a shop. Over her Harry Sewelson stood proud guard, awaiting the moment when a silk-handkerchief, requisitioned from the paternal establishment, might plead for him a devotion which her tears but cemented like glue. In this direction too the heart of Philip Massel yearned sickly, albeit Ethel was murmuring seductively to him "dear little, queer little, shy lips!" For the time of the budding of Philip Massel had come; yet even in his budding Philip was fastidious. It was no use, he decided. He could not bud and burgeon towards Ethel. This very decision seemed to make Ethel ache the more intensely towards the stimulation by Philip of her own florescence. You could not avoid kissing Ethel amid the permutations and combinations of Shy Widow and Postman's Knock, particularly as she tenderly called for you to join her in the lobby's darkness much more frequently than you called for her. This was most particularly the case at her own birthday party, when out of sheer animal gratitude for the smoked salmon sandwiches you received from her hands--well, what else could you be expected to do? But, alas, when you kissed Ethel, you could not fail to notice how frequently the nose of Ethel assaulted either your left or your right cheek. But as for Edie--ah, do not speak of Edie! For her nose, by some miraculous diaphaneity or impalpability of love, seemed dimly, if at all, existent when the felicity of kissing Edie came your way--too rare felicity, for who but Harry Sewelson hulked before you on that faint, fair road to Edie?