“Oh.”  She couldn’t meet the look that went with the queer smile, for it was even queerer and more pained, and was, somehow, too old a look for Dickie.  So she said, “Oh,” again, childishly, and waited, staring at her fingers.

“I went to New York because I thought I’d find you there, Sheila.  Pap’s hotel was on fire.”

“Did you really burn it down, Dickie?”

He started violently. “I burned it down?  Good Lord!  No.  What made you think such a thing?”

“Never mind.  Your father thought so.”

Dickie’s face flushed.  “I suppose he would.”  He thought it over, then shrugged his shoulders.  “I didn’t.  I don’t know how it started ...  I went to New York and to that place you used to live in—­the garret.  I had the address from the man who took Pap there.”

“The studio? Our studio?—­You there, Dickie?”

“Yes, ma’am.  I lived there.  I thought, at first, you might come ...  Well”—­Dickie hurried as though he wanted to pass quickly over this necessary history of his own experience—­“I got a job at a hotel.”  He smiled faintly.  “I was a waiter.  One night I went to look at a fire.  It was a big fire.  I was trying to think out what it was like—­you know the way I always did.  It used to drive Pap loco—­I must have been talking to myself.  Anyway, there was a fellow standing near me with a notebook and a pencil and he spoke up suddenly—­kind of sharp, and said:  ’Say that again, will you?’—­He was a newspaper reporter, Sheila ...  That’s how I got into the job.  But I’m only telling you because—­”

Sheila hit the rung of her chair with an impatient foot.  “Oh, Dickie!  How silly you are!  As if I weren’t dying to hear all about it.  How did you get ‘into the job’?  What job?”

“Reporting,” said Dickie.  He was troubled by this urgency of hers.  He began to stammer a little.  “Of course, the—­the fellow helped me a lot.  He got me on the staff.  He went round with me.  He—­he took down what I said and later he—­he kind of edited my copy before I handed it in.  He—­he was almighty good to me.  And I—­I worked awfully hard.  Like Hell.  Night classes when I wasn’t on night duty, and books.  Then, Sheila, I began to get kind of crazy over words.”  His eyes kindled.  And his face.  He straightened.  He forgot himself, whatever it was that weighed upon him.  “Aren’t they wonderful?  They’re like polished stones—­each one a different shape and color and feel.  You fit ’em this way and that and turn ’em and—­all at once, they shine and sing.  God!  I never knowed what was the matter with me till I began to work with words—­and that is work.  Sheila!  Lord!  How you hate them, and love them, and curse them, and worship them.  I used to think I wanted whiskey.”  He laughed scorn at that old desire; then came to self-consciousness again and was shamefaced—­“I guess you think I am plumb out of my head,” he apologized.  “You see, it was because I