He kept Pidge Musser close at hand during these trying war days. His former stenographer languished. John Higgins found a singular peace in working with Pidge and was innocent enough to discuss it. He was an old integer so far as women were concerned, never getting beyond the rare confession (when a few drinks ripened his mind) that he had had a mother once. He didn’t hate women; nothing like that. He had just merely walked around them as you walk around the shore of an ocean. He wasn’t born with a bathing suit and the idea of taking off his shoes and stockings made him hoarse with fright. Pidge, however, had crept in through the business door, and John Higgins awoke to find her at his side. Pidge found him like a somber relative of the elder generation, when she returned from her hectic walk with Melton that afternoon, but for once she could forget John Higgins easily. Twenty times in her mind, at least, Pidge went over the talk and walk with Melton, her face often turned away to the window with a sad but scornful smile. She thought it out with hard sophistication, all that he had said of receiving inspiration from her, but underneath she wanted it to be so; and deep among the secrets of herself, she felt that what he said was possibly truer than he knew. Had he known that the bank would be closed? She would soon learn about that, for he had promised to bring the check to-night. Even if he didn’t, she could never forget that _calling_ to her, back of his actor eyes--calling like a child of her own. New York whirled by below; the manuscripts were piled high in front and side. A Mecca letter came in from Richard Cobden, intimating that he might go to India. Even that did not arouse John Higgins, nor startle Pidge Musser from the painful web she was in. Melton was at the basement entrance at seven. As Pidge went down to meet him, Fanny Gallup was coming up. They met in the second hall. Fanny stood in the gaslight, her arms open wide, her dress open at the breast, her eyes laughing. “I saw him, Redhead. He’s a God-awful, that boy. Don’t you bring no little baby to this house! I won’t stand for it.” * * * * * Melton wore a black cape coat, a dinner coat beneath. Pidge felt as if she had left all her light in the second hall. She was exasperated with herself for pushing past Fanny and not taking the joke gracefully, exasperated with Melton for togging up to come to Harrow Street, to take her to that old eating house. Couldn’t he resist showing off for just one hour?