"Now, where's your diggings," asked Lorrimer, who had taken no hints about asking questions, "east or west?" He was a newspaper reporter. "Would you be carin' to walk home with me?" asked Dickie. There was a great deal of dignity in his tone, more in his carriage. "Yes. I'd be caring to! Lead on, Martian!" And Lorrimer felt, after he said that, that he was a vulgarian--a long-forgotten sensation. "In Mars," he commented to himself, "this young man was some kind of a prince." "What do you look over your shoulder that way for, Dick?" he asked aloud, a few blocks on their way. "Scared the police will take away your book?" Dickie blinked at him with a startled air. "Did I? I reckon a feller gets into queer ways when he's alone a whole lot. I get kind of feelin' like somebody was following me in this town--so many folks goin' to and fro does it to me most likely." "Yes, a fellow does get into queer ways when he's alone a whole lot," said Lorrimer slowly. His mind went back a dozen years to his own first winter in New York. He looked with keenness at Dickie's face. It was a curiously charming face, he thought, but it was tight-knit with a harried, struggling sort of look, and this in spite of its quaint detachment. "Know any one in this city?" "No, sir, not rightly. I've made acquaintance with some of the waiters. They've asked me to join a club. But I haven't got the cash." "What pay do you draw?" Dickie named a sum. "Not much, eh? But you've got your tips." "Yes, sir. I pay my board with my pay and live on the tips." "Must be uncertain kind of living! Where do you live, anyway? What? Here?" They had crossed Washington Square and were entering a tall studio building to the south and east. Dickie climbed lightly up the stairs. Lorrimer followed with a feeling of bewilderment. On the top landing, dimly lighted, Dickie unlocked a door and stood aside. "Just step in and look up," he said, "afore I light the light. You'll see something." Lorrimer obeyed. A swarm of golden bees glimmered before his eyes. "Stars," said Dickie. "Down below you wouldn't hardly know you had 'em, would you?" Lorrimer did not answer. A moment later an asthmatic gas-jet caught its breath and he saw a bare studio room almost vacant of furniture. There was a bed and a screen and a few chairs, one window facing an alley wall. The stars had vanished. "Pretty palatial quarters for a fellow on your job," Lorrimer remarked. "How did you happen to get here?" "Some--people I knowed of once lived here." Dickie's voice had taken on a certain remoteness, and even Lorrimer knew that here questions stopped. He accepted a chair, declined "the makings," proffered a cigarette. During these amenities his eyes flew about the room. "Good Lord!" he ejaculated, "is all that stuff your copying?" There was a pile of loose and scattered manuscript upon the table under the gas-jet. "Yes, sir," Dickie smiled. "I was plumb foolish to go to all that labor."