The offices of Dunwoodie, Bramwell, Strawbridge and Cohen were supplied with a rotunda in which Jones sat waiting, and Jones loved to sit and wait.

Since the musician's tenement had crumbled and the soul of the violinist had gone forth, gone to the unseen assessors who pityingly, with indulgent hands, weigh our stupid sins, since then a week had passed. During it, a paper signed by the dead had been admitted by the living, a prisoner had been discharged and for no other imaginable reason than because he had killed nobody, Lennox became a hero.

New York is very forgetful. Lennox sank back into the blank anonymity to which humanity in the aggregate is eternally condemned and from which, at a bound, he had leaped. The papers were to tell of him again, but casually, without scareheads, among the yesterdays and aviators in France. That though was later.

Meanwhile an enigma remained. Very heroically a young man had done nothing. Hurrah and good-bye! The calciums of curiosity turned on an obscure fiddler who, after murdering another young man, had succeeded in bilking the chair.

But why had he killed him? That was the enigma, one which would have been exciting, if the solution had not been so prompt and so tame. At the proceedings which resulted in Lennox' discharge, it was testified that Angelo Cara had been temporarily deranged.

The testimony, expertly advanced by a novelist who was not an expert, the reporters grabbed before the court could rule it out. The grabbing was natural. The decedent's declaration had been made to Jones who, though not an alienist, was the teller of tales that have been translated into every polite language, including the Japanese, which is the politest of all. Moreover, have not the mendacious been properly subdivided into liars, damned liars and expert witnesses? To Verdun with the lot! Mr. Ten Eyck Jones was certainly not an expert, but certainly too he was somebody, he was a best-seller and in the way we live now, the testimony of the best-seller is entitled to every editorial respect. The court might rule his testimony out, city editors saluted it.

Jones' little invention did wash therefore and, in the washing, poured balm by the bucket over the father of the murdered man.

Then, gradually, like everything else, except war and the taxes, both murderer and murdered were dropped in the great dust-bin of oblivion that awaits us all.

In the rotunda, meanwhile, Jones sat kicking his heels. It was in the morning, and always in the morning Jones was invisibly at work. Now, his routine upset, loathingly he kicked his heels. But Jones had ways of consoling himself that were very commonplace.

I am doing all the evil I can, he vindictively reflected, and it was with the comfort of his animosity about him that, ultimately, he was shown into an office—bright and, on this May forenoon, very airy—that gave on Broad Street.

Dunwoodie, twisting in a chair, glared at him.

"Ecce iterum Crispinus!" Jones tritely began. "What price retainers to-day?"

"I hoped to God I had seen the last of you," Dunwoodie, with elaborate, old-fashioned courtesy, replied.

Jones, disdaining to be asked, drew a chair.

Viciously Dunwoodie eyed him. "What the devil do you want?"

Jones smiled at him. "That decision."

"What decision, sir?"

"The one I cited when I brought you the paper that secured Lennox' discharge."

"Damme, sir, nothing of the kind. I would have had him discharged any way."

Jones' smile broadened. "You seem capable of anything. It is a great quality. Believe me, if I thought you lacked it, you would not now be enjoying my society."

"You flatter yourself strangely, sir. If you have nothing to say, don't keep on saying it."

"On the contrary, I am here to listen to you," Jones agreeably put in. "I want your views on that case, 'The Matter of Ziegler.'"

"Hum! Ha! Got yourself in a mess. Yaas. I remember. Been served yet? Give me the facts."

One after another, Jones produced them.

During their recital, Dunwoodie twirled his thumbs. At their conclusion, he expressed himself with entire freedom. After which, he saw Jones to the door, an act which he performed only when he felt particularly uncivil. At the moment the old bulldog's lip was lifted. But not at Jones.

Broad Street was very bright that day. Its brilliance did not extend to the market. Values were departing. The slump was on. Speculators, investors, the long and the shorts, bank-messengers, broker's-clerks, jostled Jones, who went around the corner, where a cavern gaped and swallowed him.

Crashingly the express carried him uptown. He did not know but that he might have lingered. There is always room at the top, though perhaps it is unwise to buy there. At the bottom, there is room too, much more. It is very gloomy, but it is the one safe place. Jones did not think that the market had got there yet. None the less it was inviting. On the other hand, he did think he might eat something. There was a restaurant that he wot of where, the week before, he had had a horrible bite. The restaurant was nauseating, but convenient. To that dual attraction he succumbed.

At table there, he meditated on the inscrutable possibilities of life which, he decided, is full of changes, particularly in the subway; whereupon a tale in Perrault's best manner occurred to him.

A waiter, loutish and yet infinitely dreary, intervened. Jones paid and went out on the upper reaches of Broadway. The fairy-tale that he had evoked accompanied him. It was charmful as only a fairy-tale can be. But the end, while happy, was hazy. He did not at all know whether it would do.

Abruptly he awoke.

"Will you come in?" Cassy was saying.

She had her every-day manner, her every-day clothes, her usual hat. Jones, noting these details, inwardly commended them. But at once, another detail was apparent. The entrance to the room where the Bella figlia had been succeeded by a dirge, was blocked. There was a table in it.

Cassy motioned. "I was trying to get it out when it got itself wedged there. Will you crawl under it, as I have to, or would you prefer to use it as a divan?"

"Where your ladyship crawleth, I will crawl," Jones gravely replied. "I just love going on all fours."

As he spoke he went under. With a sad little smile she followed.

"I know I ought to be in mourning," she told him as he brushed his knees.

She hesitated and sat down. She did not say that she lacked the money to buy the suits and trappings. She did not want to say that she had sold the table, which was the last relic of her early home, nor yet that she had been trying to get it out, in order to prevent the Jew purchaser from again coming in. Instead, she fingered her smock.

"I have been looking for an engagement and they don't want you in black."

Jones took a chair. "War has made mourning an anachronism in Europe. If it lasts long enough, it will do the same here and do the same with art. But you are very brave." He looked about. "I understood your father had a Cremona."

"The poor dear thought so, but a dealer to whom I took it said it was a Tyrolean copy."

Jones put down his hat. "The brutes always say something of the kind. What did it look like?"

Cassy glanced at him. "A flute, of course. What else would a violin look like?"

"You are quite right. I meant the colour."

"Oh, the colour! Madeira with a sheen in it."

"Yes!" Jones exclaimed. "That is the exact and precise description of the Amati varnish, of which the secret is lost. I hope you did not let the brute have it."

Cassy did not want to tell him that either. But when you are very forlorn it is hard to keep everything in.

"I needed a little for the funeral and he gave it to me."

"And it was worth thousands! Have you found an engagement?"

"The season is ending. Then too, either I have lost confidence or I am not up to it, not yet at least."

"I can understand that."

Cassy gestured. "It is not this empty room, it is the doors that slam. We know we should hasten to love those whom we do love, lest they leave us forever before we have loved them enough. But do we? We think we have time and to spare. I know I thought so. I was careless, forgetful, selfish. That is one of the doors. I can't close it."

"Time will."

"Perhaps. Meanwhile I am told I should change my name. At first, I felt very bitterly toward you for what you did here. It seemed inhuman of you. Since then I have realised that you could not have done otherwise. It saved Mr. Lennox. I would have done that."

"I am sure of it."

"But I won't change my name. I won't put such an affront on the poor dear who thought—yet there! I shall never know what he thought, but who, however wrongly, did it because of me. If only I had not told him! I ought never to have said a word. Never! That door slams the loudest. It wakes me. It is slamming all the time."

"That too shall pass."

Cassy doubted it. The door and the noise of it hurt. Her eyes filled. Yet, too sensitive to weep at anybody, even at an inkbeast, she stood up, went to the window and, while reabsorbing her tears, looked, or affected to look, at a lean stripe of blue sky.

Meditatively Jones considered her. "Fine day for a walk."

It was as though he had offered her a handkerchief. Tearful no longer, but annoyed, she turned and sat down.

"You seem very original."

"It is absentmindedness, I think. I meant to ask, are you ever down near the Stock Exchange?"

"That is where Mr. Lennox goes, isn't it?"

"There are others that frequent the neighbourhood. Among them is a deacon named Dunwoodie."

"Isn't he the lawyer who acted for Mr. Lennox?"

"Now you mention it, I believe he is. Anyway, I wonder if you would care to have him act for you?"

Cassy crossed her hands. "I don't understand you."

"For a moment or two, he didn't either. Then he said he would like to see you. That was an hour ago. I have just come from his office."

"But what in the world does he want of me? Everything is over now, isn't it? Or are there more doors? Really, if there are, I don't think I can stand it. I don't think I can, Mr. Jones."

"Yes, but there are doors that don't slam, doors that are closed and locked and barred. Sometimes there is romance behind them, sometimes there are santal-wood boxes crammed with rubies; sometimes there are secrets, sometimes there are landscapes of beckoning palms. One never quite knows what there is behind closed doors. He may open one or two for you. Wouldn't it interest you to let him try?"

Cassy's eyelids had been a trifle tremulous, in her under-lip there had been also a little uncertainty. But at the vistas which the novelist dangled at her, she succeeded in looking, as she could look, immeasurably remote.

"That sort of thing is chorus-girl!"

Blankly Jones stared. "What sort of thing?"

"Why, you want me to bring an action. I will do nothing of the kind. Even if he were living, I would rather be dead. Besides, it was all my fault. I ought to have known better."

"Better than what?" enquired the novelist, who now had got his bearings.

"Mr. Jones, I told you all about it."

"Forgive me, if I seem to contradict you. You did not tell all."

Cassy stiffened.

"How could you?" Jones continued. "Details are so tiresome. To-day when I was talking to Dunwoodie, I advanced a few. Dunwoodie is a very ordinary person. Details bore you, they bore me. He dotes on them. By the way, you said something about changing your name. I wish you would. Couldn't you take mine?"

"You are ridiculous."

"As you like. Any one else would call me mercenary."

He's crazy, Cassy uncomfortably reflected. What shall I do?

Modestly the novelist motioned. "Ten Eyck Jones now! It doesn't rhyme with Victor Hugo or even with Andrew Carnegie, but it has a lilt. It might be worse."

"What are you talking about?" Cassy, with increasing discomfort, put in.

"There is a little thing that turns men into flint and women into putty. That's what I am talking about. I am talking money."

"Thank you. The subject does not interest me."

"Ah, but you are evolved! Would that the butcher were! We all have to consider his incapacities and money helps us. I have an idea that your dear departed may have left you a trifle."

"Really, Mr. Jones, you are talking nonsense."

"It is a specialty of mine."

"Besides, it is impossible."

"Impossible is a word that intelligent young women never employ."

"Very good. Admitting the possibility, I won't take it."

"It might be paid into your bank."

"I haven't any bank."

"One could be found for you."

"I would tell them not to accept it."

"The bank that won't accept money does not exist."

Cassy flushed. "I rather liked you. Couldn't you be less hateful?"

"You are trying to pick a quarrel with me."

"Nothing of the kind."

"Then will you let me take you to Dunwoodie?"

"Certainly not."

"Then will you go alone?"

"But why? Why should I? What does this man with an absurd name want of me?"

Jones pulled at a cuff. "Well, look at it from this angle. Before you discovered that your marriage was a sham, you were prepared to assume a few obligations and some of them may still subsist. The man with the absurd name can tell you what they are. Surely you are not a slacker. This is war-time."

With that abandonment which is so gracious in a woman, Cassy half raised a hand. "My front line is wavering."

Jones reached for his hat. "Over the top then!"

Under the table they crawled.