He washed, dressed, and then went to dinner at a dairy lunch around the corner. The boarding place furnished breakfasts only. Then there was an hour and a half to kill before he could go for her. She had a room in a down-town apartment, not over three blocks away, and that would take but a very short time. He wandered over to the public square. Some old men were sitting on a row of iron benches lining the sidewalk, facing the street. They surveyed him critically as he passed by. He walked up and idly inspected the kiosk where the weather-bureau reports were posted. He noticed it predicted continued fair. Then he turned and walked in the street for about a block, gazing in shop windows. There was nothing in any of them that he particularly wanted. He stopped at a street corner and looked up and down both streets. A few desultory pedestrians went walking hither and yon, leisurely, with no apparent purpose. It was the lull of supper hour and there was an orange glow that penetrated even down to the streets which were mere canyons between sombre, artificial cliffs of masonry. To the west a small patch of open sky glowed sulphurously through a smoke pall. A city _was_ a poor place to spend time in--really live in, he thought. And Mary Louise--he wondered if she thought so, too, she who had been raised in the greenest of all green country, in the widest and cleanest of spaces. Probably not. At least, it didn't look like it. A city was a good place to work in. One could work anywhere--if the work was all right. She had seemed keen about her work. She probably had had a lot to do, getting things started. She'd probably not had much time. He might have missed her during her leisure hours. It was possible she was as desirous of some outdoors, of some clean air, some blue sky, as he was. Almost with the force of a decision he turned and walked back to the square and sat down. He looked at the clock. It said five minutes after seven. There was still an hour. He sat and deliberately waited. The time eventually passed, and before he had really gathered together his thoughts into orderly array she was meeting him at the door of her apartment, a little flushed, a little hurried, quite brisk and apparently eager to be at the business at hand. There was also an air of preoccupation as if she were revolving over in her mind some previous matters of which the threads still remained untangled. In this respect there was change. The old Mary Louise had been as open as a wild rose, as freshly and sweetly receptive to whatever wind came along. She had gathered complexity, was more serious, laughed less, frowned more.