K. had never known a married couple to take two rooms and go to the bride's mother's for meals in order to keep a car. He looked faintly dazed. Also, certain sophistries of his former world about a cheap chauffeur being costly in the end rose in his mind and were carefully suppressed. “You'll find a car a great comfort, I'm sure,” he said politely. Christine considered K. rather distinguished. She liked his graying hair and steady eyes, and insisted on considering his shabbiness a pose. She was conscious that she made a pretty picture in the French window, and preened herself like a bright bird. “You'll come out with us now and then, I hope.” “Thank you.” “Isn't it odd to think that we are going to be practically one family!” “Odd, but very pleasant.” He caught the flash of Christine's smile, and smiled back. Christine was glad she had decided to take the rooms, glad that K. lived there. This thing of marriage being the end of all things was absurd. A married woman should have men friends; they kept her up. She would take him to the Country Club. The women would be mad to know him. How clean-cut his profile was! Across the Street, the Rosenfeld boy had stopped by Dr. Wilson's car, and was eyeing it with the cool, appraising glance of the street boy whose sole knowledge of machinery has been acquired from the clothes-washer at home. Joe Drummond, eyes carefully ahead, went up the Street. Tillie, at Mrs. McKee's, stood in the doorway and fanned herself with her apron. Max Wilson came out of the house and got into his car. For a minute, perhaps, all the actors, save Carlotta and Dr. Ed, were on the stage. It was that bete noir of the playwright, an ensemble; K. Le Moyne and Sidney, Palmer Howe, Christine, Tillie, the younger Wilson, Joe, even young Rosenfeld, all within speaking distance, almost touching distance, gathered within and about the little house on a side street which K. at first grimly and now tenderly called “home.” CHAPTER X On Monday morning, shortly after the McKee prolonged breakfast was over, a small man of perhaps fifty, with iron-gray hair and a sparse goatee, made his way along the Street. He moved with the air of one having a definite destination but a by no means definite reception. As he walked along he eyed with a professional glance the ailanthus and maple trees which, with an occasional poplar, lined the Street. At the door of Mrs. McKee's boarding-house he stopped. Owing to a slight change in the grade of the street, the McKee house had no stoop, but one flat doorstep. Thus it was possible to ring the doorbell from the pavement, and this the stranger did. It gave him a curious appearance of being ready to cut and run if things were unfavorable. For a moment things were indeed unfavorable. Mrs. McKee herself opened the door. She recognized him at once, but no smile met the nervous one that formed itself on the stranger's face. “Oh, it's you, is it?” “It's me, Mrs. McKee.” “Well?”