They were headed for the Nesbitt flat. Freda had no letter from Gregory, had had none for two days and her heart felt as if it were thickening and sinking. She would not let it be so. She set to work to make herself interested. She would not mope. It was not in her to mope. But she did not know where Gregory was, for his last letter had said he was waiting advice from the bureau--one of his talks having been cancelled--and that he didn’t know where he would go now. It did not make her worried or nervous but she had been drugging her emotions with his letters and the sudden deprivation hurt her cruelly. So she was going home with Cele to forget it. They got on the street car and hung from their straps with the nonchalance of working girls who have no hopes or wishes that men will give up their seats to them, their attitude strangely different from that of some of the women, obviously middle class housewives, who commandeered seats with searching, disapproving, nagging eyes. Freda loved this time of day--the sense of being with people all going to their places of living, fraught with mystery and possibility. Her spirits rose. She was not thinking sadly of Gregory. She thought of how her intimate thought and knowledge of him reached out, over her unfamiliarity with these others, touching him wherever he was, in some place unknown to her. The thought put new vigor into her loneliness. It was an oppressively hot evening for June. They climbed the three flights to the Nesbitt flat with diminishing energy and Cele sank on one of the living-room chairs in exhaustion as she went in. “Hot as hell,” she breathed. “Let’s sit down a minute before we wash, Freda.” Freda took off her hat and brushed her hair back with her hand. “Pretty hot all right. Bad weather for dispositions.” “My idea of this kind of weather is that it’s preparation for the hereafter.” Mrs. Nesbitt opened the door to the kitchen and hot heavy smells from the cooking food came through to the girls. But Mrs. Nesbitt herself, mopping great hanging drops of sweat from her forehead, was serene enough. She shook hands with Freda with vast smiling cordiality. “You’re as cool looking as the dawn,” she said to her. “Are you tired, dear?” “Not a bit.” “There’s a little droop to your eyes, dear. I thought maybe it was bad news now.” Freda had a sudden impulse to confidence, a leap of the mind towards it. But she drew back. “No--not bad news at all.” “Your mother and father’s well?” “My mother is coming to see me for a few days, I think. She’s going to Chicago for the Convention for the clubs and she’ll come back this way to see me.” “Now, isn’t that the blessing for you,” said Mrs. Nesbitt rejoicingly.