"No, there isn't. Honestly," she protested. She saw that he was not to be put off. Moreover, she was feeling entirely weak and helpless, no longer the masterful and self-reliant female. And she told him the story--most of it. When she finished he smiled at her. He seemed genuinely amused. "It's quite a tragedy," he admitted. "And what am I going to do?" "That's just the point," he agreed. "Has the tea room been making you money? Does it look good to you?" "Yes," she said. "Too good to let go of." And then she launched into a digressive and rather vague prospectus of its activities and profits. "How much money would it take?" he asked at length. She told him. "Well, then, forget it," he concluded. "I told you that if you got in a jam, to call on me. Well, I was not talking just to hear myself talk. I meant it." He paused and stared away at the opposite wall. "Meet me here this afternoon at three and I'll have a check for you." Mary Louise was for the moment incredulous. Then a great sense of relief flooded over her, and then a feeling of regret. "But I couldn't," she faltered. "Why couldn't you?" He rose to his feet and looked down at her. "I couldn't take money from you. You don't know what I'd do with it, don't know what sort of business woman I am, or anything." "I know enough to satisfy myself," Claybrook assured her soothingly. "And I'm not giving you the money. You can write me out a note for it. Six per cent. is better than four," he added. And then he smiled. Two days later Maida Jones moved out and Mary Louise saw her no more. CHAPTER XII Loneliness wages a Fabian warfare. It is likewise a craven. At the slightest opposition it turns tail and flees, frequently to steal back furtively and lurk slinking in the vicinity, clouding it. Only on rare occasions does it boldly come out and proclaim itself. Another week had passed. Joe was finding leisure. And in leisure there are echoes, as in all vast vaulted spaces, where slight sounds linger reverberating and faint shadows stretch away to void. There was time to see the drabness of his boarding place, so he changed it. The change cost him more money and left him more leisure. He took his meals wherever he happened to be. The town was full of people, kindly enough, but each with his own circle of interests. To some of these he sold motor cars. There would be a short period of contact, then that would pass and the customer would slip into the whirlpool of casuality and be swept away. None of the relationships seemed to last. Each one left him more alone than ever. He ran across Mrs. LeMasters. Mrs. LeMasters was an ancient lady with a penchant for lavender. The day he called on her she was wearing a flowered dress with a sash, with bits of lace about the neck and cuffs. She put on a bonnet of lavender straw before the glass in her front hall and bound it to her by yards of voluminous cream tulle, wrapped under her chin and about her neck with trembling fingers.