For a full week after Albert's strangely curtailed obsequies, a gray blanket of woolly humidity hung with July unseemliness over the city in a clinging fog that feathered the throat.

The morning that Lilly returned to the office electric lights were burning and electric fans were whirring into it.

The unassailed normality of the machine whose functioning depended upon its parts! How easily even the most component of those parts could be replaced! The rows of stenographers, in her but two weeks' absence, new faces among them, outlined against windows of space and East River. The hinged little mahogany gates swinging to their goings and comings. Her own office with its glazed pane of door glass and outlook over city roofs and tug-specked band of river.

It was as if the tide of life were once more licking at her feet. She hung up her hat, patting at her hair in the little square of mirror above the stationary washstand, looking back at herself out of eyes a bit dreggy with tiredness, but her skin so deep in its whiteness that it was almost as if its creamy quality had congealed of mere richness.

She rubbed her cheeks to pinken and quicken them, and rang for an office boy, turning her back on the pile of letters and her reports on the desk and her eagerness to be at them.

"Ask Mr. Bruce Visigoth if he can see me."

The message came back on the instant. He could.

She turned the knob to his office door so slowly that she saved the slightest squeak, and stood there with her silhouette against the ground glass for a long moment. When she did enter, from the center of the room where he had been watching her silhouette against the pane, Bruce advanced to meet her.

He took her hand and on the instant she felt her eyes fill, burningly.

He was in summer and office negligÉe, an unlined blue-serge coat, a white-silk shirt which lay lightly to his body flexuosity, and above the soft collar he had taken on enough outdoor tan to make his smile whiter. She could have bitten her lips for their trembling, and tried to smile with her tortured eyes.

"Lilly," he said, topping her hand with his, "why didn't you let me know sooner? Your letter an hour ago came out of a clear sky. You see, I didn't even know he—he was here."

"It was all so—so quick!"

"Jove! I don't seem to take it in yet."

"Nor I," she said, quiescently and letting him lead her to a chair.
"He—You see, he was only ill three days."

"There doesn't seem much for me to say, does there, Lilly?"

"No," she said, "that's it, there's nothing to say."

"I can't bear to think of your having been exposed to it."

"That was the least. He died—afraid. That is so terrible to me, somehow. I wouldn't mind all of the horrible rest if only he hadn't died—afraid. I wonder if you know what I mean. He lived so—so meekly to have died—that way. Afraid."

"Yes," he said, "I think I do know." He wanted to keep his gaze away from her and to keep it cool, but somehow each time their eyes met a flame leaped up out of embers, a fiery new consciousness that kept dancing.

"He and—and my parents—you see, they—Well, I told you everything in the letter."

"Are your parents returning home?"

"Yes. That's what I've come to say. You see—they—we—we've decided to remain here two months. Until September—up in my little apartment, all of us. In September Zoe is to have her audition with Auchinloss. So much depends on that. We've such hopes, her teacher and I. She's pure lyric soprano. We think grand-opera brand. And now with the war on, more and more the American girl is getting her chance. That's why my parents have finally consented to wait here with me until then. After that, Zoe is to stay with Ida Blair and we three—my parents and I—are going home—together. That is what I have come to tell you. I'll be giving up my work with you in—September. I'm going home—with them."

He regarded her, his flush going down perceptibly.

"You're fooling."

"No," she said, trying to smile. "I suppose it's about the most solemn job I have left to do in life—going home."

"Why, you—you can't go back there."

"I can," she said, her voice held calm.

"I—we can't let you go."

"Why? Zoe—my big job's done."

"Lilly, I tell you we need you here more than ever. My brother arrives this morning from Seattle. We've completed the cross-country chain. I'm free now to branch out. I'm counting on you. I'm full of an idea for that community opera scheme and I'm ready to do the play from the Russian on your say-so. Lilly—you cannot go now—"

"I can—must," she said, scraping back her chair. "You must work out your dreams—alone—with some one else. I—must—go." And then withdrawing from what she saw: "No! No! Bruce! No! No!"

But just the same they were in each other's arms with the irresistibility of tide for moon and moon for tide. Press him back with her palms as she would when his lips found hers, it was as if something etheric had flowed into her brain. She wanted to resist him and instead her hands met in a clasp about his neck. "No, no." And yet as he kissed her eyelids and down against the satinness of her hair, it seemed to her that toward this moment all the poor blind years had been directed.

"Lilly—darling."

She tried to shake off her enchantment.

"You hurt!"

"I want to."

"My—love."

"My love."

"So this—this is it?"

"What?"

"Love."

"Love. Love."

"How beautiful—sex."

"I want to kiss those stars out of your eyes. I want to wind you in moonlight."

"Bruce, I think I must be mad. Crazily—deliciously mad."

"Me too. I'm as deliciously, as crazily mad as any young Leander. I want to swim a thousand Hellesponts for you. I want—"

"No—no—no, Bruce, you don't understand—my love—"

"I do understand. That I have you now to love and adore, to marry—"

The door opened then, quite abruptly. It was Robert Visigoth. He had a straw hat in one hand and an alligator traveling bag in the other. The latter he set down rather abruptly.

So instantaneous was their springing apart and so ready the mind to believe what the heart denied, that it was almost conceivable that he had not seen. There was not even a pause, and through the perfunctory greetings of these two men of strangest relation, Lilly found herself somehow back at her desk, little prickles out all over her body and particularly against her face, like the bite of sleet, something like this running behind her lips:

"Please, God, don't let him tell. He promised! Please! God, I'll never give in again. Bruce—my darling—don't let him tell you. He promised he wouldn't. Don't tell him, Robert. Bruce, don't let him. Please, God—don't let him."

After a while, burning with the fever in her blood, she plunged, for the sedative of it, into the work before her. The first of a stack of reports on her desk was from the Adelphi Theater, Akron, Ohio.

"Three Melodious Sisters." 12 minutes. Well received. Wardrobe worn.

"Whistling Bicyclers." 14 minutes. Skillful. Comedy weak.

"Please, God—don't let him—"

"Shenck and Bent." 9 minutes. 3 laughs.

"Sylvia King & Co." 9 minutes. Weak patter but finished strong.

"Musical Gypsies." 10 minutes. Fair. Good opening number.

"Please, God, don't let him tell."

After what might have been minutes or hours, then, the door opened and without preamble Robert Visigoth walked in, and in the wide-kneed fashion forced upon him by corpulency seated himself beside her desk.

"How long has this thing been going on?" he said, looking at her from under beetling brows that had grown bushy with the years. Time had done just that to Robert Visigoth. Beetled him. His years overhung him. He carried them massively. It was not so much that he had lost his waistline, but he had settled into himself. That was it! Robert Visigoth had settled rather appallingly into himself.

For a second Lilly's eyes moved from the two fifty-cent cigars protruding from his waistcoat pocket to a lodge button at his lapel, and then, finally trapped, met his.

"How long? I said."

"You've told him?" she asked, leaning forward to hear through the buzzing in her ears.

"Whether I do or not depends upon you."

She tried not to let him see how the room was rocking around and around, how suddenly the buzzing had lifted until she felt light-headed. She could have shouted, danced, wept, or fainted her relief. Nothing mattered, not even the squatty person sitting there with little diabetic puffs beneath his eyes.

"How long has this thing been going on?" he repeated, his voice a rising gale.

"Are you your brother's keeper?"

"From your kind, yes."

"There has been nothing between us."

"That's a lie."

Through the scorch of her humiliation it was a second before she could command her lips.

"I swear to God."

"Bah!" he almost spat out, "after what I walked in on!"

"Yes," she said, biting off the words with a clip, "after what you walked in on."

He leaned forward with a thrust of face that was unpleasantly close.

"All I have to say is, hands off there."

"There has been nothing between us. I tell you it's true."

"I'm not concerned whether it is or not. What has been has been. But now, hands off. You can't land my brother. I heard the word. Marry. The cheek—you—my brother! You must be crazy."

"You're wrong. You're wrong," she managed to insist, her throat rising and falling like a sea.

"My eyes aren't wrong. They saw what I stumbled in on."

"I know. I know. It's difficult—impossible to explain away an—an occurrence like that. How well I know the futility of trying to convince your kind of man that there are more than two kinds of women in the world. Good and bad. The woman you marry and the woman you ruin. I'm bad. Have it your way. Bad. Bad. Bad. But for what was your sin as much as mine you are free in your man-made society to go your way, fulfilling your life, and then you dare to come here and sit judgment on my fulfilling mine. When are women going to venture from behind the man-made throne to sit beside, and make you men move over?"

"I'm not here to discuss the double code with you. I don't know and don't care how you have lived since. It is not my business. For sixteen years you have given this firm fine satisfaction for which we, in turn, have tried to express our appreciation. You know that. We know that. Your morals are none of my business except when they touch me! A man's a man. I don't know how you've lived. For my part, I think you've gone pretty straight, but that doesn't change matters. I know what I know, and a man's a man. What are you going to do about it? You know, too, that there is no love lost between me and my brother in the little things. We go our ways. But when it comes to the big—he's my brother. Blood. Get me? Whatever I am can't change me here inside. He's my brother. You're—you!"

"You're right. I wouldn't. I couldn't. I must have been mad—this morning. I—somehow—it got all beyond me in a moment. I swear to you for the first time! Do you think I'd muss up one hour of his life? Even if I dared? Even if you were to come to me, on your knees, begging me to—to—marry him? To begin with, I'm older—only a year in time, it's true, but he—he's just beginning. I'm beginning over. What is my life compared to his? He's on the brink of a thousand realizations. And I—oh, I'm not whining. I'd do it all over again, loathing you as you must know I loathed you—that night. But my child got her chance. You sold it to me and I paid for it in the basest coin of the realm. But I'd do it again—knowing what I know now, I'd do it again. You hear! Do you hear!"

"That's past now—"

"No. For you, yes, but I'm still paying. Paying at this moment with my—my heart's blood. But if I hadn't done it—gone with you—something would have been lost that night that was worth every cent I paid. They'd have got her back. I don't care. I've won. I've won if I've lost."

She was on her feet now, her eyes, like blue wells that were filling with ink, plunging beyond his with a Testament defiance that seemed to shout, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

"Yes, I love him. You can't take that from me. That is why he is so safe from me. I love him too much for him to know. And yet I think—I believe—I know that even if he did know, in the end it wouldn't matter—"

"You must be crazy. Once let your idealist wake up and there is no more dreaming for him."

"He mustn't ever wake up—for his sake! Promise. Promise me that you won't ever wake him!"

"Whether I do or not is up to you."

"What do you want?" she said, tiredly.

"I suppose the black and white of it is that you must quit."

"That is easy. I'm resigning anyway the fifteenth of September to go
West to live."

He took on the half-conciliatory graciousness of one who has gained his advantage with unsuspected ease.

"I'd give a great deal not to have had this happen, but, after all, a man is a man and life is life."

She let her gaze bore into his like gimlets burning for center.

"I think you've explained that before."

He began to back out before her immobility.

"I am remaining East two months. I hope your resignation will allow us that much time to attempt to fill your place."

"I leave that to you. It can be either immediate or take effect in
September."

"By all means the latter. Will you—can you believe me when I say if there is anything I can do—letters—an opening with a Western firm—"

"Please," she said, turning him a shoulder in high distaste.

"I have your word—then?"

"My word," she said, looking past his hand toward the door.

He backed out in the somewhat ludicrous crab fashion and then she sat down, swinging around on her swivel chair toward the desk. The stack of reports lay facing her. She caught up the next in order.

People's Playhouse. Tulsa, Oklahoma.

For the next half hour she must have sat there trying to co-ordinate out of chaos by staring at the heading and repeating over and over again: "People's Playhouse. Tulsa, Oklahoma. People's Playhouse. Tulsa, Oklahoma."

* * * * *

Whistles were blasting through the noonday fog when Bruce finally and without preamble burst into her office.

It struck her even on the gale of his entrance how young he was that his hair should show the nervous plowing of five fingers, and how sensitive his profile and ready to flare at the nostrils. His tie, too, burnt orange, from a soft collar and badly knotted! She wanted to jerk up his chin and putter at remaking the four-in-hand.

"Lilly—sweetheart—"

She sat regarding him over the top of People's Playhouse, Tulsa,
Oklahoma.

"Sweetheart, let us call it a day. I want to drive you out to Tarrytown to—"

"Don't," she said, frowning.

"Don't what?" Her immobility an ineffectual stop to his exuberance.

"Come now," wanting to draw her from her chair by the two hands, swinging them wide and then together; "don't let his nibs bouncing in that way throw a damper. We were too quick for him, anyway. Don't believe he saw a thing. And what if he did? He's going to know it anyhow, and pretty quick, too. I want to shout it from the housetops, I want to megaphone it up to the stars. Lilly—Lilly-mine! Sweetheart!"

She crowded back into the chair.

"How dared you!"

He fell back with his gesture still wide.

"Why—what? Dared what? Oh, come now, sweetheart, I could wager he didn't see, and suppose he did? We've nothing to conceal. I'm for telling him to-day!"

"No. No. No. You played unfair. You took me—unawares. You misunderstood me horribly—most horribly."

"You mean—"

"Why, you—you boy! What has happened cannot make any difference between you and me. It was outrageous of you—silly boy you—to—to take advantage. After all that has passed—all these years—it is unthinkable that you didn't understand. Why, you—you boy!"

She saw his jaw fall and the sense of his ridiculousness set in.

"What has merely been absurd all along you have suddenly made intolerant. You make more imperative my resignation. You must understand—Mr. Visigoth—under what conditions I will consent to remain here these few weeks."

The words were so stilted that she had the sensation of throwing metal disks on a stone floor and waiting for their tinny clatter. She could see the high red drain out of his face and then rush up again as if he had been slapped.

"Lilly, for God's sake, you—you cannot be serious!"

"No mock heroics—please."

His ears tipped with flame; he straightened back from her.

"No more mock heroics," he said, in a voice suddenly quieted down like vichy gone stale. "Forgive an old—fool—a young—fool—and forget it. Thank you for jerking me up."

He raised her limp hand, bowing over it until his lips hovered but did not touch.

"My solemn word on it this time—no more—mock—heroics." And still Lilly, on the click of the door after him, could not clear her brain of the running threnody of nonsense:

People's Playhouse. Tulsa, Oklahoma. People's Playhouse. Tulsa,
Oklahoma.