"These esthetic shadows will spoil your eyes. You'd better get that student lamp down," he said. Alice walked briskly to a stand in the corner and took down the light. She carried it over to his table. "You'd better move. It shines there." It hurt her to tell him what to do. "I'll sit with my back to it." Alice pushed a heap of books aside and arranged the green cord attachment over the crowded table. Blindness. Better after all. He can't see me, she thought bitterly. She sat down with her writing pad in her lap. He rubbed his forehead wearily. His shoulders sagged, big beneath his loose coat. There was passive strength in his consciousness of defeat. She was aware of it. The room closed them like a coffin. Their life was their own. It did not flow in from the street. Beyond the window the square was sprinkled with lights. The thick-leafed trees were clouds of darkness, but here and there separate leaves up against the lamps glistened like wet metal. He sighed. "I'm trying to line up my vocabulary in battle order, Miss Alice." "I'm ready. Go ahead." He did not begin at once. She watched his bowed head--thick, gray-sprinkled brown hair. There was beard on his cheek. Suddenly she had a horror of herself creeping upon his thoughts through his weakness. She shuddered, shifting her book. Dark. Flesh, aware of the world, slipping away. Flesh touched by the world without. "As regards the international polity of the----" She interrupted. "Say that again, Mr. Ridge." He had dictated several sentences and she had not heard him. "Since the----" She began to write. The wind fluttered the paper on her knee. Her hands with big knuckles moved decisively over the sheet. * * * * * "I'm wearing you out?" "Bother! You're not!" He liked her positiveness. "A half a paragraph or so and I will have reached the end of my tether." "Go ahead." When he had finished he leaned back, turning himself so that he could look at her, and she could tell by his mouth that he was happier. "I've taxed your patience." "Haven't any patience," Alice said, making a wry face. She wanted to cry. She stood up. "I'll have this all typed by tomorrow afternoon. When does the boat sail?" "Ten tomorrow night." They were silent. He still smiled, his blunt fingers tapping the arm of his chair, but the corners of his full lips sagged with fatigue under the stiff edges of his mustache and he was pale. Alice got her hat down from the shelf. "You need some one to take care of you," she said, trying to sound angry. She was afraid her words hurt him. Her heart beat very fast. "Young Harrison is going along to keep me from walking overboard in an absent moment." They were quiet again. Alice could not make up her mind to go out. The trees in the square seemed to have crowded closer against the open windows. The leaves looked like tin in the auras of light. She stared into the street that had grown still.