“Do you suppose,” asked his companion in an impersonal tone, “that it was really a hard thing for Dickie to do—­to give it up, I mean?”

“By the look of him the last few months,” snarled Sylvester, “I should say it had taken out of him what little real feller there ever was in.”

Sheila considered this.  She remembered Dickie, as he had risen behind the desk half an hour before.  She did not contradict Sylvester.  She had learned not to contradict him.  But Dickie’s face with its tight-knit look of battle stood out very clear to refute the accusation of any loss of manliness.  He was still a quaint and ruffled Dickie.  But he was vastly aged.  From twenty to twenty-seven, he seemed to have jumped in a few weeks.  A key had turned in the formerly open door of his spirit.  The indeterminate lips had shut hard, the long-lashed eyes had definitely put a guard upon their dreams.  He was shockingly thin and colorless, however.  Sheila dwelt painfully upon the sort of devastation she had wrought.  Girlie’s face, and Dickie’s, and Jim’s.  A grieving pressure squeezed her heart; she lifted her chest with an effort on a stifled breath.

“God!  Sheila,” said Sylvester harshly.  The car wobbled a little.  “Ain’t you happy, girl?”

Sheila looked up at him.  Her veil was wet against her cheeks.

“Last night,” she said unevenly, “a man was going to kiss me on my mouth and—­and he changed his mind and kissed my hand instead.  He left a smear of blood on my fingers from where those—­those other men had struck his lips.  I don’t know why it f-frightens me so to think about that.  But it does.”

She seemed to collapse before him into a little sobbing child.

“And every day when I wake up,” she wailed, “I t-taste whiskey on my tongue and I—­I smell cigarette smoke in my hair.  And I d-dream about men looking at me—­the way Jim looks.  And I can’t let myself think of Father any more.  He used to hold his chin up and walk along as if he looked above every one and everything.  I don’t believe he’d ever seen a barmaid or a drunken man—­not really seen them, Mr. Hudson.”

“Then he wasn’t a real artist after all,” Sylvester spoke slowly and carefully.  He was pale.

“He l-loved the stars,” sobbed Sheila, her broken reserve had let out a flood; “he told me to keep looking at the stars.”

“Well, ma’am,” Sylvester spoke again, “I never knowed the stars to turn their backs on anything.  Barmaids or drunks or kings—­they all look about alike to the stars, I reckon.  Say, Sheila, maybe you haven’t got the pluck for real living.  Maybe you’re the kind of doll-baby girl that craves sheltering.  I reckon I made a big mistake.”

Sheila moved slightly as though his speech had pricked her.

“It kind of didn’t occur to me,” went on Sylvester, “that you’d care a whole lot about being ig-nored by Momma and Mr. and Mrs. Greely and Girlie.  Say, Girlie’s got to take her chance same’s anybody else.  Why don’t you give Jim a jolt?”