It is now the spring and the year is beginning to smile again. I have been prospering at Visconti’s and my income is now again the same as it was before ever the children came to me—before I became a business man. But there is not a soul to whom I can confide my new dilemma. There is Minot Blackden, the glass stainer, whom I have finally discovered to be a near neighbor of Visconti’s. To be exact, his studio and living quarters are in King Street, and we sometimes have our lunch together. But Blackden is so much in the grip of his medieval art that it gets into his food, stains his tapering hands and even spatters upon his finely pointed blue-black beard. All he can see in me is the Philistine who has cast all else aside for the sizzling fleshpots. When I chanced to mention having four children in my house, he looked upon me as a bird-of-Paradise might look upon a polar bear; I was to him a visible but incredible symbol of something strange and gross. There is nothing placid or resigned about Blackden. He is intense, incandescent. "Do you realize," he said to me, "that I am restoring a lost art to the world?" "But does it give you food?" I asked him. "What does food matter?" he expostulated. "What does anything else in the world matter?" Nevertheless, he was eager to take up my suggestion concerning the writing of a booklet upon his new craft and he has been sending it out broadcast. But so intensely devotional is his attitude to the whole business that I have not the face to suggest payment for the work, nor has he referred to it again. I know little of his art, but I know that his returns are increasing. It is obvious that I cannot burden a soul, burning with that gemlike flame of Blackden’s, with any such confidence as the impending return of Pendleton. At times I think that Minot Blackden and Gertrude Bayard ought to marry each other. They are both so single-minded and so absolutely sure of themselves. But in the meantime there is no one I can talk to. No—absolutely no one. Walking to Grand Central station these brilliant afternoons is a thing I cannot resist. It is the only exercise I get. Crossing Washington Square, I strike into Fifth Avenue and by the time I reach Fourteenth Street I have a delicious sense of losing myself, of merging into the crowd, that is very soothing after a day in the office. There is nothing so stimulating as the energetic crowd in Fifth Avenue. At Brentano’s bookstore I usually pause and scrutinize the window. I am very sound in the latest novels and the newest developments in stationery. To-day, as my eyes were feasting on the cover jacket of Mr. Arnold Bennett’s latest, a lady coming down the avenue likewise paused before the window and as we glanced at each other I found I was facing Gertrude. Of course she had a perfect right to cut me. She smiled uncertainly instead and put out her hand. "Hello, Ranny," she murmured casually. "No reason why we can’t meet as friends, is there?"