“Yes, leave me!” he cried. “You are old also; the spirit withers with the skin. Have you come here only to tell me something I had best forget: that to be old and poor is perhaps more wretched than to be old and rich; to remind me that _my_ son hurls my gray failure in my face?” “Give me my book,” she commanded harshly. “Be quick, old man!” Merlin looked at her once more and then patiently obeyed. He picked up the book and handed it to her, shaking his head when she offered him a bill. “Why go through the farce of paying me? Once you made me wreck these very premises.” “I did,” she said in anger, “and I’m glad. Perhaps there had been enough done to ruin _me_.” She gave him a glance, half disdain, half ill-concealed uneasiness, and with a brisk word to her urban grandson moved toward the door. Then she was gone--out of his shop--out of his life. The door clicked. With a sigh he turned and walked brokenly back toward the glass partition that enclosed the yellowed accounts of many years as well as the mellowed, wrinkled Miss McCracken. Merlin regarded her parched, cobwebbed face with an odd sort of pity. She, at any rate, had had less from life than he. No rebellious, romantic spirit popping out unbidden had, in its memorable moments, given her life a zest and a glory. Then Miss McCracken looked up and spoke to him: “Still a spunky old piece, isn’t she?” Merlin started. “Who?” “Old Alicia Dare. Mrs. Thomas Allerdyce she is now, of course; has been, these thirty years.” “What? I don’t understand you.” Merlin sat down suddenly in his swivel chair; his eyes were wide. “Why, surely, Mr. Grainger, you can’t tell me that you’ve forgotten her, when for ten years she was the most notorious character in New York. Why, one time when she was the correspondent in the Throckmorton divorce case she attracted so much attention on Fifth Avenue that there was a traffic tie-up. Didn’t you read about it in the papers.” “I never used to read the papers.” His ancient brain was whirring. “Well, you can’t have forgotten the time she came in here and ruined the business. Let me tell you I came near asking Mr. Moonlight Quill for my salary, and clearing out.” “Do you mean, that--that you _saw_ her?” “Saw her! How could I help it with the racket that went on. Heaven knows Mr. Moonlight Quill didn’t like it either but of course _he_ didn’t say anything. He was daffy about her and she could twist him around her little finger. The second he opposed one of her whims she’d threaten to tell his wife on him. Served him right. The idea of that man falling for a pretty adventuress! Of course he was never rich enough for _her_ even though the shop paid well in those days.” “But when I saw her,” stammered Merlin, “that is, when I _thought_ saw her, she lived with her mother.”