“I have nothing to say about the gentleman you've been speaking of. I will win Camilla if I can, but I've come to the point of confessing that I don't know how.” Tick, tick, the not uneloquent knitting needles. “Will you tell me, Miss Eunice? You said something about love as it comes to women, as it seems to them. I had never thought about it, about that side of it, from that side.” “I dare say not.” Tick, tick, tick. “You said it must always be strange. I suppose, that is, it's like a discovery, as if nobody ever made it before. Well, but, Miss Eunice, they never did make it before, not that one!” “Oh, indeed!” “Don't you think I'm coming on?” “You are progressing.” Miss Eunice's lips were compressed a little grimly, but there was a red spot in either cheek. “I ought to act as if I didn't see how she was possible, ought I?” “You are progressing.” “Whether I did see, or didn't?” “Of course!” Miss Eunice was almost snappish. “Well, I don't think I do see.” “You'd better not.” Hennion went away without seeing Camilla. Going up Bank Street he thought of Camilla. At the corner of Franklin Street he thought of Miss Eunice. “There's another one I was off about. I don't see how she's possible, either.” CHAPTER XIII--IN WHICH HICKS IS BUSY |ALLEN AIDEE lay on his back across the bed in his whitewashed cell, and smoked, swinging one foot swiftly, incessantly, like a pendulum, arguing with Sol Sweeney, and gesticulating with loose fingers. The bed was a wooden cot with a mattress on it. Sweeney sat at the table under the gas jet, and smoked too. He had a large friendly acquaintance with jailbirds, and his placid philosophy was composed out of his knowledge of them. “I seen folks like you, Hicks,” he said, “two or three. Trouble is you gets hold of one end of a string. Any old string 'll do. All the same to you. 'Hullo!' you says, 'this is a valyble string. Fact, there ain't any other string, not any other real string. This the only genwine. Follow it, and you gets wherever you like. It's that kind of a string,' says you. 'God A'mighty, what a string!' says you. Then you rolls yourself up in it, and there you are! Ball up! Ain't no more use! For you take a solid man like me, and he talks to you and he shows you reason, but you don't see it. Why? 'Cause you're balled up in the string, that's why.” Allen snapped out his answer. “I'll tell you the trouble with you.” “Ain't any trouble with me.” “Ain't! Well, I know this, I can stand your kind about half an hour at a stretch. Give me two hours of you--damn! I'd drink rat poison to get cooled down.” “That's the trouble with you,” said the complacent jailor. “Ain't me.” “Trouble! No! You ain't equal to that. You ain't capable of that! You've got no more consistency or organisation than a barrel of oil. You're all fat and hair. Solid! So's a brick solid. Damn! You're solid, but are you alive? You'll be dead before anybody sees the difference. Ain't any real difference!”