Neither then, nor in memory, could he be sure she said, “Would you like to try it?” in a faint whisper, or that his own mind formed the words from some projected thought. For that matter, did she ever speak at all? Of this, too, he never was quite sure. But of course, he would remind himself in afterdays, she must have spoken when she told the children stories. Or did she? Did they understand the words as, perhaps, he had, without ever hearing them? He never knew. He did know that he tried the drink. It was cool but not cold, pungent yet sweet--almost too sweet with a curious, new flavor he could not quite identify, a flavor of half-remembered fruits and flowers. Cool and sweet and strangely heady--he took a sip of it and felt a faint, delightful tingling in his fingers and toes. They sat together silently, while strangers moved and chattered all around them and paid as little attention as if neither of them was there. Then it was late, and the lights were being turned out, and the chairs stacked on the tables. He said, almost without thinking, “Will you come home with me?” It was as easy as asking for a match. She said, “Of course,” in that soft whisper that might not have been a whisper at all. Then she rose and linked his arm with hers, and they went out of the small, shadowy bar. It was as simple as that. They walked down the broad avenue together and paused at the top of the stairs that led down between the little buildings. They were steep stairs, narrow and winding and dimly lighted, and he turned to her and said, “You must let me carry you down.” He lifted her and she seemed to weigh nothing at all--exactly nothing. It wasn’t that she was remarkably small, it was simply that she didn’t weigh anything. Yet he thought hardly anything about it at the time. Down the long, steep stairs, past the paths and little flights of stairs that led off in all directions, down to the wide, gardened space halfway to the valley floor, where the children played in the daytime, from which his own little flight of wooden stairs led. Up to his door, and into the two tiny rooms that were his home in those days. He never was quite sure how long she stayed. It might have been weeks or months. It was days, certainly. He was on vacation, and there was no routine coming and going to and from his insignificant job to wind the clock of his mind. He was certain of but one thing--then and always afterwards. This was the happiest time of his entire life. It seemed never the least strange to him that she seemed to have no other home, neither friends nor mere people to inquire about her. Nor had she possessions of her own.