She sat back, feeling foolish because her eyes were filling and trying to smile back the tears. He reached over to place his palms over her hand. "How rightly named you are! 'Lilly.' One of those big, milky-spathed, calla lilies. Calla Lilly." "We'll be going now," she said, feeling for her jacket. They rode down to Eleventh Street in a cab, almost silently, and as she sat looking out, unsmiling, she could feel his gaze burn her profile. He left her at the stoop, standing bareheaded. "You've saved me from an evening of horrors." "I'm glad." "You're not angry--Calla Lilly?" "Of course not." "How soon again?" "No." "Yes, yes!" "No." And somehow the word was like a plummet deep into the years ahead. CHAPTER VIII One hot Saturday afternoon, at least a twelvemonth later, as Lilly was rushing down from the children's department of one of Broadway's gigantic cut-rate department stores, she stopped so abruptly that she created a little throwback in the sidewalk jam. Her miracle was broken. Her first impulse even now was to dart back, but the tow of the crowd was strong, and, besides, she was suddenly eye to eye with an exceedingly thin youth with a very long neck rising far above a high collar, a pasty and slightly pimpled face evidently slow to beard, and a soft hat pulled down over meek light-blue eyes, himself even more inclined to push on than she. It was her first encounter since her clean cleavage from a strangely remote dream phase of her existence. For the first three years she had carried about a fear of some such meeting, a passer-by brushing her shoulders or a sense of presence at her back sending a shock through her. Once she had hurriedly left a Subway train because of a fancied likeness to Roy Kemble in a young fellow across the aisle. Even now there were days when fancied resemblances seem to people the crowds. "Why, Harry Calvert!" "Hello," he said in the tempo of no great surprise, but purpling up into his lightish hair. "I know you. You're Lilly Becker." "Harry, I cannot believe my eyes! I haven't seen you since you were in knickers. And to think we remembered each other! Come here a minute out of the crowd. I want to talk to you." He followed her with some reluctance and a great sheepishness out of Broadway into quieter Thirty-fourth Street, twirling his hat, his nervousness growing. "You look fine, Lilly." "What are you doing here, Harry? How is your grandma? St. Louis?" She could have embraced, cried over him, the loneliness of years seeming to rush to a head. "Gramaw and I live here." "Harry, not really!" "Nearly two years, now." "Where?" "'Way out near Tremont Avenue." "And you, Harry, what do you do?" "I was window dresser for a gents' furnishing store up to a few weeks ago, but it--it changed hands. I'm out of a job right now." "Harry, do you ever hear from--home?" "No, Miss Lilly, we never see anyone from there. You're the first."