'But, Hump, I didn't _want_ to take her out that night! And it's the only time I ever really talked to her except once or twice in the boarding-house.' He was speaking with less energy now. He felt the blow. Not as he would feel it a few hours later; but he felt it. Humphrey watched him. 'It has brought things home to me,' he said uncertainly. 'The sort of thing that can happen. When you're caught in a drift, you don't think, of course... Now, Hen, listen! This is real trouble. It's going to hit you about to-morrow--full force. It's got to be faced. I don't want to think that you'd run----' 'Oh, no,' Henry put in mechanically, 'I won't run.' 'I'm sure you won't. But it's got to be faced. You're hit especially.' 'But why, when I----' 'Because you lived alone there, in the boarding-house, for two years. And you were caught with her at Hoffmann's, she in bloomers, drinking beer. Just a cheap little tough. And there isn't a thing you can do but live it down. Nobody will say a direct word to you.' 'That's what I'll do,' said Henry, 'live it down.' 'It'll be hard, Hen.' Henry sighed. 'I've faced hard things, Hump.' 'Yes, you have, in a way.' 'I'll wash up. Where we going to eat? Stanley's?' 'I suppose. I don't feel like eating much.' It was not until they had started out that Henry gave signs of a deeper reaction. On the outer doorstep he stood motionless. 'Coming along?' asked Humphrey, trying to hide his anxiety. 'Why--yes. In a minute... Say, Hump, do you suppose they'll--you know, I ain't afraid'--an uprush of feeling coloured his voice, brought a shake to it--'I don't know. Perhaps I _am_ afraid. All those people--you know, at Stanley's...' Humphrey did an unusual thing; laid his hand on Henry's shoulder affectionately; then took his arm and led him along the alley, saying:-- 'We'll go down to the lunch counter. It's just as well, Hen. Better get sure of yourself first.' He wondered, as they walked rapidly on--Henry had a tendency to walk fast and faster when brooding or excited--whether the boy would ever get sure of himself. There were queer, bitter, profoundly confusing thoughts in his own mind, and an emotional tension, but back of all this, coming through it and softening him, his feeling for Henry. It was something of an elder brother's feeling, I think. Henry seemed very young. It was wicked that he had to suffer with all those cynical older men. It might mark the boy for life. Such things happened. He decided to watch him closely. Sooner or later the thing would hit him full. He would have to be protected then. Even from himself, perhaps. In a way it oughtn't to be worse for him than it had been after the Hoffmann's Garden incident.