She laughed; he, too, and they plunged into reminiscences of the old days. "I sometimes think," he said, "that those were the happiest months of my life." "Nonsense. There's always more and more in front." "For you." She went off into peals of laughter, for she had just remembered the encounter with the prize-fighter. Her sturdy gaiety simply swept him off his feet, and he could only follow in the train of her mood. They made so merry that they lost count of the time, and she suddenly sprang to her feet with a cry and scurried away, dinnerless, not to be late at the theater. "I ought to have told her," he said to himself. "I ought to have said: 'I know.' . . . But how fine she looked! How happy she must be!" Happy? There was something in her mood beyond happiness: a zestful strength, a windiness that seemed to blow through every cranny of her soul, whipping the blood in her veins, so that she could not pause for states and conditions of the spirit, nor check herself to avoid unhappiness in herself or others. She was like a ship in full sail, bending to the wind, skimming over tossing seas. She was gallant. She was what he had always hoped she might become. There was in her such a new flood of vitality that he felt ashamed at the thought of bidding her pause to submit to his inquisition. Impossible to check her flight, cruel suddenly to present her with the meanness of what she had done while she was still glowing with its splendor. He had caught something of her glow, and now he wrestled to break free of rules of conduct and moral codes, and he began, at last, to consider his problem in terms of flesh and blood. There were three points of view to be mastered: three lives knotted together in a tangle and the weakest strand would be broken. He felt hopeful. There would be a fight for it, and to that he thrilled. He had the exaltation of one on the brink of great discovery. He went to fetch her from the theater. The stagedoor lay at the back in an alley joining two great thoroughfares. As he entered the alley from one end he saw Matilda and Panoukian leave by the other, and he had his arm in hers. Old Mole turned, with the fluttering sense of an escape, glad not to have met them. And when he had controlled himself he was amused to think that they could not have dreaded the encounter more than he. He took a long walk to delay his return, and when he reached the chambers they were in darkness. He crept softly down the little stairs and tried her door. It was locked.