Sue was not late. She sat in the far corner at one of the few small tables in the crowded room. Two men, a poet and a painter, lounged against the table and chatted with her languidly. She had brightened a little for them. There was a touch of color in her cheeks and some life in her eyes. The Worm noted this fact as he made his way toward her. The poet and the painter wandered languidly away. The chatter of the crowded smoky room rose to its diurnal climax; passed it as by twos and threes the diners drifted out to the street or up-stairs to the dancing and reading-rooms of the Freewoman's Club; and then rapidly died to nothing. Two belated couples strolled in, settled themselves sprawlingly at the long center table and discussed with the offhand, blandly sophisticated air that is the Village manner the currently accepted psychology of sex. The Worm was smoking now--his old brier pipe--and felt a bit more like his quietly whimsical self. Sue, however, was moody over her coffee. A pasty-faced, very calm young man, with longish hair, came in and joined in the discussion at the center table. Sue followed this person with troubled eyes, “Listen, Henry!” she said then, “I'm wondering--” He waited. “--for the first time in two years--if I belong in Greenwich Village.” “I've asked myself the same question, Sue.” This remark perturbed her a little; as if it had not before occurred to her that other eyes were reading her. Then she rushed on--“Take Waters Coryell over there”--she indicated the pasty-faced one--“I used to think he was wonderful. But he's all words, Like the rest of us. He always carries that calm assumption of being above ordinary human limitations. He talks comradeship and the perfect freedom. But I've had a glimpse into his methods--Abbie Esterzell, you know--” The Worm nodded. “--and it isn't a pretty story. I've watched the women, too--the free lovers. Henry, they're tragic. When they get just a little older.” He nodded again. “But we were talking about you, Sue. You're not all words.” “Yes I am. All talk, theories, abstractions. It gets you, down here. You do it, like all the others. It's a sort of mental taint. Yet it has been every thing to me. I've believed it, heart and soul. It has been my religion.”