“Idle curiosity,” he said. She puffed on her cigarette and scrutinized his face by the glow it made in the dark. “Something’s happened to you,” she said. “Right,” he answered cheerfully. “Want to tell me your troubles?” she asked indifferently. “No,” he said. “I haven’t any troubles. I’ve ceased to have them. That’s what’s happened to me.” She laughed lightly. “So that’s it. Well, I’m glad you don’t want sympathy. I was afraid you might.” “You misjudged me,” he said. “Besides, if I had wanted sympathy, would I have come to you?” “No, I guess you do know me better than that.... Well, what _do_ you want of me?” “Nothing in particular of you,” he said. “I just want somebody to bum around with tonight.” She puffed on her cigarette again. “You don’t look at all broken-hearted,” she said. “Why should I look broken-hearted?” “I hear all the theatre-gossip. I suppose it’s true?” “Well, I don’t hear the theatre-gossip, so I don’t know whether it’s true or not. Why should you care?” “I don’t care. I’m just curious. You know, you’ve been looking worried and unhappy ever since I first saw you—until now. At first I thought you were worried about the play; but when it was a success you looked more unhappy than ever. And now—well, the transformation is astonishing!” “I can explain that.... You probably have in your rooms—” “My room,” she corrected him. “A quite singular room, in every sense.” “In your room, then, you probably have five or six copies of the Rubaiyat, presented you by different youths....” “Yes, all with a pencil mark beside the ‘Book of Verses’ verse. Go on.” “Well, in that poem Omar boasts of ‘striking from the Calendar Unborn Tomorrow and Dead Yesterday.’ I’ve just performed that same astronomical feat.” “I know just what you mean,” she said. “It’s—it’s like getting over a headache, isn’t it?... I’m glad.... Well, let’s go on.” She jumped up. Out in the street he asked her, “How do you come to know so much about it? When did you perform Omar’s astronomical feat?” She laughed. “I? Oh, fully twenty years ago—at the age of five!... You see, up to that time I had been the only child—the reigning princess, in fact. And then a little brother came along. People laugh about these things—but I don’t think anything in later life can hurt worse than a childish tragedy like that. To be considered the most wonderful being in all the world, and then—pushed out of the way.... Well, I saw that my reign was ended, that human beings were fickle, and that my heart would be broken if I kept on caring. So I stopped—and I’ve never cared since. Not for a single other living thing in all the world.” “I see you are a person of great experience in—not caring. Twenty years of it! Tell me, how does it work out?” She stopped suddenly, pulling at his sleeve. “Look!” she said with apparent irrelevance.