Kedzie had no sooner rejoiced in the fortunate absence of her husband than she began to worry because he was away. Where was he and with whom? She sat by the window and looked up and down the street, but she could find none among the pedestrians who looked like her possessor. She forgot him in the beauty of the town—all black velvet and diamonds.

Once more she sat with her window open toward her Jerusalem and worshiped the holy city of her desire. That night at the Biltmore she was an ignorant country-town girl who had never had anything. Now she had had a good deal, including a husband. But, strangely, there was just as much to long for as before—more, indeed, for she knew more things to want.

As the scientist finds in every new discovery a new dark continent, in each atom a universe, so Kedzie found from each acquired desire infinite new desires radiating fanwise to the horizon and beyond.

At first she had wanted to know the town—now she wanted to be known by the town. Then her father stood in her way; now, her husband. She had eloped from her parents with ease and they had never found her again. She had succeeded in being lost.

She did not want to be lost any more; but she was lost, utterly nobody to anybody that mattered. Now was her chance, but she could not run away from her husband and get famous without his finding her. If he found her he would spoil her fun and her fame. She did not know how many public favorites are married, how many matinÉe idols are managed by their wives. She had never heard of the prima donna's husband.

She fell asleep among her worries. She was awakened by the noisy entrance of her spouse. He was hardly recognizable. She thought at first that her eyes were bleary with sleep, but it was his face that was bleary. He was what a Flagg caricature of him would be, with the same merciless truth in the grotesque.

Kedzie had never seen him boozy before. She groaned, expressively, “My Gawd! you're pie-eyed.”

He sang an old song, “The girl guessed right the very first time, very firstime, verfirstime.”

He tried to take her into his arms. She slapped his hands away. He laughed and flopped into a chair, giggling. She studied him with almost more interest than repugnance. He was idiotically jovial, as sly as an idiot and as inscrutable.

Without waiting to be asked he began a recital of his chronicles. He was as evidently concealing certain things as boasting of others. Kedzie rather hoped he had done something to conceal, since that would be an atonement for her own subtleties.

“I have been in Bohemia,” he said, “zhenuine old Bohemia where hearts are true and eyes are blue and ev'body loves ev'body else. Down there a handclasp is a pledzh of loyalty. There's no hypocrisy in Bohemia—not a dambit. No, sirree. The idle rish with their shnobberies and worship of mere—mere someshing or oth' have no place in Bohemia, for in Bohemia hearsh are true and wine is blue and—”

“Oh, shut up!” said Kedzie.

“Thass way you're always repressin' me. You're a hopeless Philisterine. But I have no intentions of shuttin' up, my darlin' Anita—Anita—Shh! shh!”

He was hushing himself. He was very patently remembering something and conspicuously warning himself not to divulge it. Kedzie loathed him too much to care. Now that he was safely housed he ceased to interest her. She went to bed. He spiraled into a chair to meditate his wickedness. He felt that he was as near to being a hypocrite as was possible in Bohemia.

He had met two talented ladies at the dinner, one was a sculptress from Mr. Samuel Merwin's Washington Square and the other was a paintress from Mr. Owen Johnson's Lincoln Square. Neither lady had had any work accepted by the Academy or bought by a dealer. Both were consequently as fierce against intrenched art as Gilfoyle was against intrenched capital and literature.

They were there in the company of two writers. One of these could not get anything published at all except in the toy magazines, which paid little and late and died early. The other writer could get published, but not sold. Both were young and needed only to pound their irons on the anvil to get them hot, but they blamed the world for being cold to true art. In time they would make the sparks fly and would be in their turn assailed as mere blacksmiths by the next line of younger apprentices. They were at present in the same stage as any other new business—they were building up custom in a neighborhood of strangers.

But at present they were suppressed, all four, men and women; suppressed and smothered as next June's flowers and weeds are held back by the conspiracy of December's snows and the harsh criticisms of March.

The sculptress's first name was Marguerite and Gilfoyle longed to call her by it, after his second goblet of claret-and-water. He had a passion for first names. He had the quick enthusiasm of a lawyer or an advertising-man for a new client. Before he quite realized the enormity of his perfidy he was pretending to compose a poem to Marguerite. He wrote busily on an old bill of fare which had already been persecuted by an artist or two. And he wrote his Anita poem over again in Marguerite's honor, mutatis mutandis.

And so on to the bitter end.

He slipped the lyric to Marguerite and she read it with squeals of delight, while Gilfoyle looked as modest as such a genius could. The other girl had to read it, of course, while Gilfoyle tried to look unconscious. He was as successful as one is who tries to hold a casual expression for a photograph.

The other girl's reward was a shrug and the diluted claret of a “Very nice!” Gilfoyle said, “You're no judge or else you're jealous.” The two men read it, and said, “Mush!” and “Slushgusher!” but Marguerite's eyes belonged to Gilfoyle the rest of the evening, also her hands now and then.

Remembering this, Gilfoyle was uneasy. One ought to be careful to keep an aseptic memory at home. Yet if this was not infidelity, what would be? In a rich man Gilfoyle would have called it a typical result of the evil influence of wealth. In the absence of wealth it was a gay little Pierrot-perfidy of the vie de BohÊme. Still, poets have to be like that. An actor must make love to whatever leading lady confronts him, and so must poets, the lawyers and press agents of love.

But when he got home Gilfoyle repented as he remembered. He suffered on a rack of guilty bliss, but he managed to hold back the secret which was bubbling up in him with a bromo-seltzer effervescence. Incidentally his “pretty maid, pretty maid, Marguerite” had kept back the fact that she had a husband in the hardware business in Terre Haute. What the husband was keeping back is none of this history's business.

It was all as old and unoriginal as original sin. The important thing to Kedzie was the fact that shortly after the poem had been revamped a stranger had joined, first in song with Gilfoyle's table-load and then in conversation. He had ended by introducing his companion and bringing her over. Had it not been for the fine democracy of Bohemia they would have cut the creature dead. She was a buyer, one of Miss Ferber's Emma McChesneys on a lark.

Gilfoyle did not tell Kedzie any of this. He told what followed as he toiled at the fearfully complicated problem of his shoe-laces, a problem rendered almost insuperable by the fact that he could not hold his foot high very long and dared not hold his head low at all.

“Wonnerful thing happent t'night, Anita. Just shows you never know where your lucksh goin' to hit you. I'm down there with—er—er—couple of old frensh, you know, and who comes over to our table but big feller from out Wesh—Chicago—Chicago—Gobbless Ch'cag! His name is entitled Deshler. In coursh conv'sation I mention Breathasweeta Shewing Gum—see?—he says he knew that gum and he'd sheen the advershments, bes' ol' ad-vershments ever sheen, thass what Mr. Beshler said and I'm not lyin' to you, Anita. No, sir.

“Whereupon—whereupon I modesly remark, 'Of course they're clever—nashurally they're clever, because they were written by l'i'l Mr. ME!' He says, 'You really wrote 'em?' and I say, 'I roally wretem!' And Mr. Keshler says, 'Well, I'll be g'dam'.' Then he says, 'Who coined that name Breathasweeta?' And I says, 'I did!' and he says, 'Well, I'll be g'dam'!'

“Anyway, to make long shory stort, Mr. Nestor he says, 'What you doin' now? Writen copy for the Kaiser or the K-zar?' and I says, 'I am a gen'leman of leisure,' and he says, 'There's a good job waitin' fer lad your size out in Ch'cag! Would you come 'way out there?' and I says, 'I fear nothing!'

“So Mr. Zeisselberg wrote his name on a card, and if I haven't los' card, or he doesn't change his old mind, I am now Mr. John J. Job of Chicago. And now I got a unsolishited posish—imposishible solishion—solution—unpolusion solishible—you know what I mean. So kiss me!”

Kedzie escaped the kiss, but she asked, with a sleepy eagerness, “Did you tell him you were married?”

“Nashurly not, my dear. It was stric'ly business conv'sation. I didn' ask him how many shildren he had and he didn' ask me if I was a Benedictine or a—or a pony of brandy—thass pretty good. Hope I can rememmer it to-mor'.”

Kedzie smiled, but not at his boozy pun. She seemed more comfortable. She fell asleep. Next to being innocent, being absolved is the most soothing of sensations.