The distance was all too short. He would have carried her across the lighted foyer, into the elevator, up to the apartment. He didn’t mind who stared at him. He would have gone on holding her thus forever. As they reached the steps she slipped from his arms. “Oh, you big, strong man!” Her gray eyes were dancing; a faint flush spread across her forehead. “I do hope nobody saw us.” He was stealing his arm into hers. She turned him back. “Forgetful! You haven’t paid the taxi.” After he had paid, he searched round for her. She had gone. It was the first time she had done it; she always waited for him. So she knew what was coming! By her flight she was lengthening by a few more minutes their long uncertainty. In the quiet of the dim-lit room, with the snow gliding past the window, each separate flake tiptoeing like a faery, he would tell her. But would he need to tell her? She would be waiting for him, her face drooping against her shoulder, looking sweet and weary. She would be like a tired child, its mischief forgotten, ready to stretch out its arms and snuggle in his breast. All that need be said would come in broken phrases--phrases which no one but themselves could understand. And then, after that---- She might cry a little. When they were married, perhaps Hal---- He waited till the elevator had descended before he tapped. Probably she was listening for him, fearing and yet hoping for the pressure of his arms and all the newness that they would begin together. He would read in her eyes the writing of surrender--the same writing that he had read on the dusty panes of childhood, “I love you. I love you.” He tapped; he tapped more loudly. The door was opened ty Mr. Dak. “Hulloa! Come in.” “Where’s Desire?” “In her room getting ready.” “Ready? For what?” They entered the dim-lit room where the most splendid moment of life should have been happening. “Didn’t you know?” Mr. Dak appeared not to notice his emotion. “Everybody else knew. There’s a supper-party to Miss Audrey. Just the six of us.” They fell to making conversation. Mr. Dak did most of the talking. Teddy found himself agreeing to the statement that Christianity was a colossal blunder, and that Mohammedanism was the only religion worth the having. He would have agreed to anything. As he listened for Desire’s footstep, he nodded his head, saying, “Yes. Of course. Obviously.” All the while he was aware of the embarrassed kindness that looked out from the eyes of the little man. Somewhere, in the silence of his brain, a voice kept questioning, “Mr. Dak, are you in love with Vashti? Does she laugh at you when you try to tell her? Do you wish the world was pagan because then you’d be her lord and master?” “In the Mohammedan faith,” Mr. Dak was saying, “a woman’s hope of immortality lies in merging her life with a man’s.” Then he set himself to criticize pedantically the breakdown of the Christian ideal of marriage.