His car had come to a stand in the stillness of Harrow Street, but still they sat. “What you mean is--you haven’t any place for me as a lover or a husband.” “That’s like you, but that’s it.... Dicky, you mean to me something done, something found. I don’t dare to turn to you and rest. The savage undone things in me _won’t_ rest! They demand experiences, life--and no one knows better, that they mean pain ... and oh--under your lamp--it’s horrible to tell it, but you’ll forgive me later, when you see that it had to be told----” “What are you talking about, Pidge?” “Under your lamp--in there! He came about a manuscript. He was broke and needed help--all his stories refused. He asked to see me that night. Miss Claes’ basement was occupied. She sent him up. We talked. He wanted something, money, everything. Under your light--he took me to him, his coat open----” Cobden startled her, as he cleared his throat. The silence between them had been so deep. “It meant nothing to him! He was used to it. It was only his way to get something--money most, he wanted. It was just as he might take a waitress or hall maid--used to having girls ‘fall for’ him. This is what I mean--though I understand him, a theatrical mind, a liar--life meant something to me that instant, that it never meant before. Something I must do, something calling--pain, but something I haven’t done!” “You mean--you mean--it isn’t over?” “Just that, Dicky, and oh, forgive me! I may not see _him_ ever again, but _something in me_ isn’t ‘over.’ I had to tell you--to be honest, to learn to be honest. You’ll be glad some day!” XVI DICKY FEELS A SLUMP IT was nearly a week afterward when Pidge heard sounds, not of meeting only, but of mauling, from over the partitions of Richard Cobden’s office at _The Public Square_. Her desk was now in John Higgins’ room. The racket was “young”--something of the sort you expect in a college fraternity house, rather than in the editorial rooms of a magazine of dignified social protest and short story ideals. John Higgins winced and glared. Now the stranger’s voice was upraised: “You’re not seedy, Dick--you’re decayed! If Africa treats a man like that, I’m off the Sahara for life.” Pidge heard this with something of the sense of personal arraignment. The ugly part was that it was true, and it hadn’t been the truth a week before. Dicky had been changed when he arrived, but the change since their ride home from his mother’s apartment in Fiftieth Street was more definitely disturbing. She found John Higgins’ eyes upon her and started guiltily. He leaned forward to whisper: “It’s a fact. Something’s eating our Dicky. He’s losing his bounce.”