Little inner voices were protesting weakly. People might find out about it. Have to be pretty quiet. And keep the shades down. It wouldn't do for the folks in the parsonage, across the alley, to know that Mrs Arthur V. Henderson and her guest were in the Parmenter barn. Have to find some tactful way of suggesting that they come after dark... As if she could read his thoughts, Mrs Henderson remarked calmly: 'You come for us, Henry. Say about eight.' Still the little voices of doubt and confusion. Even of fear. He mentally shouted them down; fixing his eyes on the disturbingly radiant Corinne, then glancing for moral support at the really pretty little Mrs Henderson who gave out such a reassuring air of knowing precisely what she was about, of being altogether in the right. Funny, knowing her all these years, he hadn't realised she was so nice! He had turned defeat into victory. Single-handed. Will and Fred could go sit on the Wells Street bridge and eat bananas. He had settled _their_ hash. 5 To this lofty mood there came, promptly? an opposite and fully equal reaction. Difficulties having arisen in connection with the problem of breaking the news to Humphrey, he couldn't very well go back to the rooms. The thing would have to be put right before Humphrey. He decided to think it over. That was the idea--think it over. Humphrey would be eating his supper, if not at the rooms, then at Stanley's little restaurant on Simpson Street. So he could hardly go to Stanley's. There was another little lunch room down by the tracks, but Humphrey had been known to go there. And of course it was impossible to return for a transient meal to Mrs Wilcox. For one thing, the student waiters would be off and Mamie Wilcox on duty in the dining-room. He didn't want Mamie back in his life. Not if he could help it. He even went so far as to wonder, with a paralysing sense of helplessness in certain conceivable contingencies, if he _could_ help it... So instead of eating supper he sat on a breakwater, alone, unobserved, while the golden sunset glow faded from lake and sky and darkness claimed him for her own. Later, handkerchief over face, rushing and pawing his way through the myriads of sand-flies that swarmed about each corner light, he walked into the neighbourhood of Martha Caldwell's house. He walked backhand forth for a time on the other side of the street, and stood motionless by trees. He found the situation trying, as he didn't know why he had come, whether he wanted to see Martha or what he could say to her. He could hear voices from the porch. And he thought he could see one white dress. Then, because it seemed to be the next best thing to do, he crossed over and mounted the familiar front steps.