“I don’t rightly belong to any church,” said Dickie gravely.  “My mother is a Methodist.”

Lorrimer moved; abruptly away and moved abruptly back.

“Where were you educated, Dick?”

“I was raised in Millings”—­Dickie named the Western State—­“I didn’t get only to grammar school.  My father needed me to work in his hotel.”

“Too bad!” sighed Lorrimer.  “Well, I’ll bid you good-night.  And many thanks.  You’ve got a fine place here.”  Again he sighed.  “I dare say—­one of these days—­”

He was absent and irritable again.  Dickie accompanied him down the three long, narrow flights and climbed back to his loneliness.  He was, however, very much excited by his adventure, excited and disturbed.  He felt restless.  He walked about and whistled to himself.

Until now he had had but one companion—­the thought of Sheila.  It was extraordinary how immediate she was.  During the first dreadful weeks of his drudgery in the stifling confusions of the restaurant, when even the memory of Sylvester’s tongue-lashings faded under the acute reality of the head waiter’s sarcasms, that love of his for Sheila had fled away and left him dull and leaden and empty of his soul.  And his tiny third-story bedroom had seemed like a coffin when he laid himself down in it and tried to remember her.  It had come to him like a mountain wind, overwhelmingly, irresistibly, the desire to live where she lived:  the first wish he had had since he had learned that she was not to be found by him.  And the miracle had accomplished itself.  Mrs. Halligan had been instructed to get a lodger at almost any price for the long-vacant studio room.  She lowered the rent to the exact limit of Dickie’s wages.  She had never bargained with so bright-eyed a hungry-looking applicant for lodgings.  And that night he lay awake under Sheila’s stars.  From then on he lived always in her presence.  And here in the room that had known her he kept himself fastidious and clean.  He shut out the wolf-pack of his shrewd desires.  The room was sanctuary.  It was to rescue Sheila rather than himself that Dickie fled up to the stars.  So deeply, so intimately had she become a part of him that he seemed to carry her soul in his hands.  So had the young dreamer wedded his dream.  He lived with Sheila as truly, as loyally, as though he knew that she would welcome him with one of those downward rushes or give him Godspeed on sultry, feverish dawns with a cool kiss.  Dickie lay sometimes across his bed and drew her cheek in trembling fancy close to his until the anguish wet his pillow with mute tears.

Now to this dual loneliness Lorrimer had climbed, and Dickie felt, rather gratefully, that life had reached up to the aching unrealities of his existence.  His tight and painful life had opened like the first fold of a fan.  He built upon the promise of a friendship with this questioning, impertinent, mocking, keenly sympathetic visitor.