He threw out his hands. 'You think I'm hard,' she said, still with that smile. 'Don't! Please!' 'Well--good-night. Or good-morning.' She gave him her hand. He took it. It gripped his firmly, lingeringly. He returned the pressure; coloured; gripped her hand hotly; moved toward her, then sprang away and dropped her hand. 'Why--Henry!' 'I'm sorry. I don't know what's the matter with me. I was looking at that star----' 'I saw you looking at it.' 'I was thinking how white it was. And bright. And so far away. As if there wasn't any use trying to reach it. And then--oh, I don't know--Mr Henderson made me blue, the way he looked to-night. And Humphrey and Mildred--the awful fix they're in. And you and me--I just can't tell you!' 'You're telling me plainly enough,' she said wearily. 'Do you ever hate, yourself?' She didn't answer this. Or look up. 'Did you ever feel that you might turn out just--oh well, no good? Mr Henderson made me think that.' 'He isn't much good,' said she. 'As if your life wasn't worth making anything out of? Your friends ashamed of you? They talk about me here now. And I haven't been bad. Not yet. Just one or two little things.' Her lips formed the words, in the dark, 'You're not bad.' Then she said, rather sharply: 'Don't stand there looking like a whipped dog, Henry.' 'I'll go,' he said; and turned. 'You re the strangest person I ever knew,' she said. 'Maybe you _are_ a genius. Considering that Mildred completely lost her nerve, your handling of Arthur came pretty near being it. I wonder.' Humphrey and Mildred came out. She came straight to him; gave him both her hands. 'You've settled everything for us. Humphrey, I want to kiss Henry. I'm going to.' Henry received the kiss like an image. Then he and Humphrey went away together into the dawn. 'No good going to the rooms now,' Humphrey remarked. 'Let's walk the beach.' Henry nodded dismally. 7 The sky out over the lake was a luminous vault of deep rose shading off into the palest pink. The flat surface of the water, as far as they could see, was like burnished metal. Henry flung out a trembling arm. 'Look!' he said huskily. 'That star.' It was still incandescent, still radiating its little points of light. 'Hump,' he said, a choke in his voice--'I'm shaken. I'm beginning life again to-night, to-day.' 'I'm shaken too, Hen. The real thing has come. At last. It's got me. It'll be a fight, of course. But we're going through with it. I want you to come to know her better, Hen. Even you--you don't know. She's wonderful. She's going to help with my work in the shop, help me do the real things, creative work, get away from grubbing jobs.' It was a moment of flashing insight for Henry. He couldn't reply; couldn't even look at his friend. His misgivings were profound. Yet the thing was done. Humphrey's life had taken irrevocably a new course. No good even wasting regrets on it. So he fell, in a tumbling rush of emotion, to talking about himself.