She turned away from the wrought-iron and plate-glass portals that were so exactly what she had known the Maclew portals would be. Perhaps she would find his address at a post-office. She asked the way to the nearest one, and vainly sought for his name in the telephone book. Well, it was not likely that he would proclaim his whereabouts if what she suspected were true. But as her eye travelled down the page she caught his father’s name, and an address she remembered. Chris Fenno, though so habitually at odds with his parents, was fond of them in his easy way--especially fond of his mother. Kate had often posted letters for him to that address. She might hear of him there--if necessary she would ask for Mrs. Fenno. A trolley carried her to a Quakerish quarter of low plain-faced brick houses: streets and streets of them there seemed to be, all alike. Here and there a tree budded before one; but the house at which she rang had an unbroken view of its dispirited duplicates. Kate Clephane was not surprised at the shabbiness of the neighbourhood. She knew that the Fennos, never well-off according to Clephane standards, had of late years been greatly straitened, partly, no doubt, through their son’s own exigencies, and his cheerful inability to curtail them. Her heart contracted as she stood looking down at Mrs. Fenno’s dingy door-mat--the kind on which only tired feet seem to have wiped themselves--and remembered her radiant idle months with Mrs. Fenno’s son. She had to ring twice. Then the door was opened by an elderly negress with gray hair, who stood wiping her hands on a greasy apron, and repeating slowly: “Mr. Chris?” “Yes. I suppose you can tell me where he lives?” The woman stared. “Mr. Chris? Where’d he live? Why, right here.” Kate returned the stare. Through the half-open door came the smell of chronic cooking; a mournful waterproof hung against the wall. “Major Fenno--here?” Major Fenno; yes; the woman repeated it. Mr. Chris they always called him, she added with a toothless smile. Of course he lived there; she kinder thought he was upstairs now. His mother, she added gratuitously, had gone out--stepped round to the market, she reckoned. She’d go and look for Mr. Chris. Would the lady please walk in? Kate was shown into a small dull sitting-room. All she remembered of it afterward was that there were funny tufted armchairs, blinds half down, a rosewood “what-not,” and other relics of vanished ease. Above the fireless chimney stood a too handsome photograph of Chris in uniform.