“Here’s where I live,” she said.

“Where you live!” he echoed blankly.

“Ever since I went away—­to California.  I’ve been right here—­where I could almost see the smoke of your chimneys.  I’ve a queer little room—­I only pay three dollars a week for it—­but—­it’s big enough to be alone in.”

“Rose ...” he said hoarsely.

A drunken man came lurching pitiably down the street.  She shrank into the dark mouth of the passage and Rodney followed her, found her with his hands, and heard her voice, speaking breathlessly, in gasps.  He hardly knew what she was saying.

“It’s been wonderful....  I know we haven’t talked; we’ll do that some other time, somewhere where we can....  But to-night, walking along like that, just as ...  To-morrow, I shall think it was all a dream.”

“Rose ...”

“Wh-what is it?” she prompted, at last.

“Let me in,” he said.  “Don’t turn me away to-night!  I—­I can’t ...”

The only sound that came in answer was a long tremulously indrawn breath.  But presently her hand took the one of his that had been clutching her shoulder and led him toward the end of the passage, where a faint light through a transom showed a door.  She opened the door with a latch-key, and then, behind her, he made his way up two flights of narrow stairs, whose faint creak made all the sound there was.  In the black little corridor at the top she unlocked another door.

“Wait till I light the gas,” she breathed.

There was nothing furtive about their silence; it was the wonder, the magic of being together again, that made them steal forward like awed children.

Into an ugly, dingy, cramped, cold little room, with a rickety dresser and a lumpy bed and a grimy window, rattling fiercely in the gusts of wind that went whipping down the street....  Into a palace of enchantment.

She left the gas turned low, took off her hat and ulster, pulled down the blind over the window and shut the door, hung up a garment that had been left flung over her trunk and dumped a bundle of laundry that had not been put away, into a bureau drawer.  All the time he’d been watching her hungrily, without a word.

She turned and looked into his face, her eyes searching it as his were searching hers, luminously and with a swiftly kindling fire.  Her lips parted a little, trembling.  There was a sort of bloom on her skin that became more visible as the blood, wave on wave, came flushing in behind it.  His vision of her swam suddenly away in a blur as his own eyes filled up with tears.

And then, with that little sob in her throat, she came to him.  “Oh, Roddy ...  Roddy!” was all she said.  With her own lithe arms she strained his embrace the tighter.