He unfolded his fresh sheet, shaking it open with one hand and still holding her in the cove of his arm.

“Guess we missed the first edition, but they’ll get us sure.”

She peered at the sheet over his shoulder, her cheek against his and still sobbing a bit in her throat.  The jerking of her breath stopped then; in fact, it was as if both their breathing had let down with the oneness of a clock stopped.

It was she who moved first, falling back from him, her mouth dropping open slightly.

He let the paper fall between his wide-spread knees, the blood flowing down from his face and seeming to leave him leaner.

“Charley—­Charley—­darling!”

“My—­poor old man!” he said in a voice that might have been his echo in a cave.

“He—­his heart must have give out on him, Charley, while he slept in the night.”

“My—­poor—­old—­man!”

She stretched out her hand timidly to his shoulder.

“Charley—­boy—­my poor boy!”

He reached up to cover her timid touch, still staring ahead, as if a mental apathy had clutched him.

“He died like—­he—­lived.  Gad—­it’s—­tough!”

“It—­it wasn’t your fault, darling.  God forgive me for speaking against the dead, but—­everybody knows he was a hard man, Charley—­the way he used to beat you up instead of showing you the right way.  Poor old man, I guess he didn’t know—­”

“My old man—­dead!”

She crept closer, encircling his neck, and her wet cheek close to his dry one.

“He’s at peace now, darling—­and all your sins are forgiven—­like you forgive—­his.”

His lips were twisting.

“There was no love lost there, girl.  God knows there wasn’t.  There was once nine months we didn’t speak.  Never could have been less between a father and son.  You see he—­he hated me from the start, because my mother died hating him—­but—­dead—­that’s another matter.  Ain’t it, girl—­ain’t it?”

She held her cheek to his so that her tears veered out of their course, zigzagging down to his waistcoat, stroked his hair, placing her rich, moist lips to his eyelids.

“My darling!  My darling boy!  My own poor darling!”

Sobs rumbled up through him, the terrific sobs that men weep.

“You—­married a rotter, Loo—­that couldn’t even live decent with his—­old man.  He—­died like a dog—­alone.”

“’Sh-h-h, Charley!  Just because he’s dead don’t mean he was any better while he lived.”

“I’ll make it up to you, girl, for the rotter I am.  I’m a rich man now, Loo.”

“’Sh-h-h!”

“I’ll show you, girl.  I can make somebody’s life worth living.  I’m going to do something for somebody to prove I’m worth the room I occupy, and that somebody’s going to be you, Loo.  I’m going to build you a house that’ll go down in the history of this town.  I’m going to wind you around with pearls to match that skin of yours.  I’m going to put the kind of clothes on you that you read of queens wearing.  I’ve seen enough of the kind of meanness money can breed.  I’m going to make those Romans back there look like pikers.  I’m—­”