Yes, of course. Only then she took up with Bruce, and Bruce had wanted to marry her, and she had plainly been considering it, and now Bruce was dead and Kintyre was on his way to console her. Could you walk in her door and say: "Hello, I still subscribe to the why-buy-a-cow philosophy so be careful, now you may weep on my shoulder"? He realized he was sucking on a dead cigarette. He threw it away and stopped to light another. He was almost under the building which housed his own department. "Good evening." Kintyre looked up. Jabez Owens was walking toward him. "Hello," he answered. "How are you? Excuse me, but I've got to--" Owens reached him and took his hand. "My dear old chap," he said in his most Harvard accent, "I'm awfully sorry." "Hm?" "Young Lombardi. I saw it in the papers. You know?" "Yes." Kintyre looked coldly at Owens. The writer was a tall man, the breadth of his shoulders attributable only in part to his tailor. He had straight ruddy features, dark wavy hair graying at the temples, blue eyes behind wrought-iron glasses, tweedy clothes with a scarf filling the V of the jacket, and a small calabash pipe in one pocket. "I know he was murdered," said Kintyre, watching the other's face. "Terrible. I remember once in Sumatra--but that was long ago. See here," said Owens candidly, "I know you know of my disagreements with the poor young fellow. Why, it was only--when? Thursday night we were at that party at Clayton's. You must have heard us quarreling over his silly thesis. But this! _De mortuis nil nisi bonum._" Kintyre did not like Owens. It was not so much the scholar raising his hackles at a rather lurid popularizer. What the devil, Owens' books stirred up some public interest; they passed on some information, however distorted; and that was more than you could say for the average historiographic monograph. But during the whole week he had been in Berkeley, one long theatrical performance had gone on, with Jabez Owens the plot, dialogue, director, producer, star, supporting cast, and claque. It grew monotonous. Wherefore Kintyre said maliciously: "I'll be completing that thesis for him. Doubtless I too will be forced to include a side glance at those Borgia letters of yours. But it'll take me a while, I don't have all the facts and deductions at my fingertips as he did. So I suggest you hurry to Hollywood and get that movie started." Owens laughed a well gauged laugh, neither too loud for this posthumous argument nor too small to sound genuine. "I'd love to take you on," he said. "Nothing I like better than a good verbal fight, and that's what the boy was giving me. As a matter of fact, I may be staying here a few more days. Or maybe not. But what I really stopped you for was to offer my sympathy and ask if I could help." "What with?" asked Kintyre. It stuck him as a bit of a coincidence that Owens had happened to be passing by this special building at this moment.