One faint faded joy had lately been left to Peter, one sorry reminder of the days when the magical words, the strangely hypnotic words, “Eric Mann,” had spoken, sung, shouted from half the bill-boards in town. Over beyond Sixth Avenue, hardly five minutes' walk through the odd tangle of wandering streets, the tenements and ancient landmarks and subway excavations and little triangular breathing places that make up the Greenwich Village of to-day, there had lingered one faded, torn twenty-four-sheet poster, advertising “The Buzzard, by Eric Mann.” When he was bluest lately, Peter had occasionally walked over there and stood for a while gazing at this lingering vestige of his name. He went over there now, in soft hat and light overcoat, and carrying his heavy cane--hurried over there, in fact--across the Square and on under the Sixth Avenue elevated into that quaint section of the great city which socialists, anarchists, feminists, Freudian psycho-analysts of self, magazine writers, Jewish intellectuals, sculptors and painters of all nationalities and grades, sex hygiene enthusiasts, theatrical press-agents and various sorts of youthful experimenters in living share with the merely poor. He stopped at a familiar spot on the curb by a familiar battered lamp-post and peered across the street. Then he started--and stared. Surprise ran into bewilderment, bewilderment into utter dejection. The faded, torn twenty-four-sheet poster had vanished. A new brand of cut plug tobacco was advertised there now. Ragged children of the merely poor, cluttering pavement and sidewalk, fell against him in their play. Irritably he brushed them aside. It was indeed the end. A young woman was crossing the street toward him, nimbly dodging behind a push cart and in front of a coal truck. Deep in self, he lowered his gaze and watched her. So intent was his stare that the girl stopped short, one foot on the curb, slowly lowered the apple she was eating, and looked straight at him. She was shaped like a boy, he decided--good shoulders, no hips, fine hands (she wore no gloves, though the March air was crisp) and trim feet in small, fiat-heeled tan boots. Her hair, he thought, was cut short. He was not certain, for her “artistic” tarn o'shanter covered it and hung low on her neck behind. He moved a step to one side and looked more closely. Yes, it was short. Not docked, in the current fashion, but cut close to her head, like a boy's. She stepped up on the curb now and confronted him. He noted that her suit was of brown stuff, loosely and comfortably cut; and that the boyish outer coat, which she wore swinging open, was of a rough plaid. Then he became aware of her eyes. They were deep green and vivid. Her skin was a clear olive, prettily tinted by air and exercise... Peter suddenly knew that he was turning red. She spoke first. “Hadn't we better say something?” was her remark. Then she took another bite of the apple, and munched it with honest relish.