“You’re a little lost yet, Dicky, I should say--for a Cobden.... So you’re going to lead a double life? Rich young New Yorker, quarters in Fiftieth Street under the eaves of St. Patrick’s, vanishing into life down in Greenwich.” Dicky’s eyes were keen with memory. VI ENTER, FANNY GALLUP _THE Lance of the Rivernais_ had been in the editorial rooms of _The Public Square_ for almost a month, but there had been no report; not the slightest mention, in fact, though author and editor were frequently together. Richard Cobden had come to 54 Harrow Street to live for the larger part of each week. Pidge had gone to work in a tin-can factory up Lenox way, pasting labels. She was half sick from fatigue from the new work and from keeping the secret about her book. In the days that followed the finishing of the _Lance_, it was as if her whole body and brain had been a scaffold or matrix for the story, and it had been taken from her, leaving a galvanism useless as an eggshell, a sort of afterbirth that persisted in staying alive. ... There was Fanny Gallup, who sat at her right, elbow to elbow at the pasting bench--Fanny of the intermittent pungencies of scent and the dreary muck of talk about boys and boys and boys. Fanny was a child and woman all in one, about Pidge’s age and size, one whom you could fancy had been a stringy street-kid a year or two ago. But just now, Fanny was in her brief bloom, red in her lips, a lift to her scant breast, the earth driving into her and overflowing with such color and fertility as it could. For eight hours a day, Pidge dwelt in Fanny’s frequently tropical aura--hateful, yet marveling. The thing that amazed her was that Fanny loved life so, loved the feel of her own hands when she rubbed them together, loved the taste of sweets and the memory of last night’s kisses--loved fearlessly and without reserve, not a pang of dread for what was to come, nor a shudder of regret for what had happened to her mother or sisters or the other girls of Foley Street. Never a thought in Fanny’s head that she was being hoaxed by Nature; that her body was being livened and rounded, her face edged and tinted, for an inexorable purpose; not a suspicion that she was being played for, and must presently produce. Fanny lived her brief hour to the full, and Pidge Musser suffered and revolted for two. Pidge took the dreary monotone of talk into her soul, as she had taken her father’s, knowing that one day she would be full. “Oh, you Musser,” Fanny would say. “Why don’t you come over to Foley Street?... You’re dryin’ up, Redhead. What do you do nights? What do you do all the time, thinkin’ and listnin’?... Where’s your fulluh, Redhead? Ain’t got one--wot? Little liar. You’re bad, you are, because you’re so still.... Come on over to Foley Street to-night. I’ll let you have a peep at Albert, m’li’l barber--just one peep, Redhead--not too close. I ain’t sure of him yet, but I’ll let you have one look--aw come on!”