Wiggie had got his wish--Dandy all to himself--but he did not say anything for quite a long time. Instead, he came as if by accident to the piano, and though he played nothing coherent, he drew out funny little bunches and ripples of sound that somehow made the cool room seem cooler. Now and again he glanced at Dandy, sitting on her favourite stool with her head bent. She was changed already, he thought, and she was only too obviously not thinking of him. She had lost a little of her Halsted brilliance; she was a shade thinner, a shade dimmed, as if some new power had breathed a moment on her soul. Wiggie turned his eyes away when he thought that. His own soul was full of delicate little instincts like the dainty grace-notes tripping under his touch. Dandy was thinking of Lancaster, and wondering why she had felt pleased when he laughed. Was it because in that instant he had ceased to be aloof? Yet how alien he really found her! There was the whole network of outlook between them. More than anybody else he had made her feel “new.” Wiggie stopped playing bunches and began to whisper a desperate French appeal-- “Ma chandelle est morte, Je n’ai plus de feu: Ouvre-moi la porte, Pour l’amour de Dieu!” Dandy said “Don’t!” quite suddenly, without in the least meaning to, and, without in the least meaning to, he got up and came to her. “Are you hankering to help the tram-horse, too?” he asked, and she lifted her eyes with a laugh. “Nothing so unselfish, Wiggie dear! But that song always makes me shiver. The door is so fast and so hard. It is bolted and barred, with iron knobs as big as mushrooms, and nothing gets under it but the draught of one’s sighing.” “_My_ door isn’t like that!” Wiggie said quickly. “It’s as fine as thistledown and as thin as air, but it keeps you out all the same. You can see through it all the dearness within, but--it keeps you out! If it were hard, you could hammer the ache out of your heart, and lay your cheek against the mushroom knobs for pity. But you cannot bruise your fists on gossamer, and the web of it blows weakly pitiless against your cheek.” “But it’s not for you to hammer at doors,” he added presently. “They fly open all along your road!” She shook her head doubtfully. “I’ve a feeling I may come to it before I’m through!” she said whimsically. “I can see myself in the dust and the dark, hugging a dead candle, and begging, begging----” He stopped her with a gesture. “Don’t cheapen yourself! Don’t stand at the door like the milk. The golden drink should be kept for the golden chalice.” “Why, Wiggie, what snobbish butlerage! It is the stone jar that makes the beauty of the miracle. Watters has taught me that.” He took her hands. “But for me even Cherith’s brook is dried up,--Dandy dear?” Her lips quivered. “Don’t quote Elijah into my mouth, Cyril!” He let her fingers slip,--not abruptly, but with a lingering touch that left no sense of desolation.