“Oh!  Oh, that was just to get rid of Carson....  His insufferable familiarity!  The penalty for my having been a naive kiddy, hungry for friendship, once.  And now, good n—.  Oh, Mouse, he says my eyes—­even with this green kimono on—­ Come here, dear. tell me what color my eyes are.”

She moved with a quick swing to the side of her bed.  Thrusting out her two arms, she laid ivory hands clutchingly on his shoulder.  He stood quaking, forgetting every one of the Wrennish rules by which he had edged a shy polite way through life.  He fearfully reached out his hands toward her shoulders in turn, but his arms were shorter than hers, and his hands rested on the sensitive warmth of her upper arms.  He peered at those dear gray-blue eyes of hers, but he could not calm himself enough to tell whether they were china-blue or basalt-black.

“Tell me,” she demanded; “aren’t they green?”

“Yes,” he quavered.

“You’re sweet,” she said.

Leaning out from the side of her bed, she kissed him.  She sprang up, and hastened to the window, laughing nervously, and deploring:  “I shouldn’t have done that!  I shouldn’t!  Forgive me!” Plaintively, like a child:  “Istra was so bad, so bad.  Now you must go.”  As she turned back to him her eyes had the peace of an old friend’s.

Because he had wished to be kind to people, because he had been pitiful toward Goaty Zapp, Mr. Wrenn was able to understand that she was trying to be a kindly big sister to him, and he said “Good night, Istra,” and smiled in a lively way and walked out.  He got out the smile by wrenching his nerves, for which he paid in agony as he knelt by his bed, acknowledging that Istra would never love him and that therefore he was not to love, would be a fool to love, never would love her—­and seeing again her white arms softly shadowed by her green kimono sleeves.

No sight of Istra, no scent of her hair, no sound of her always-changing voice for two days.  Twice, seeing a sliver of light under her door as he came up the darkened stairs, he knocked, but there was no answer, and he marched into his room with the dignity of fury.

Numbers of times he quite gave her up, decided he wanted never to see her again.  But after one of the savagest of these renunciations, while he was stamping defiantly down Tottenham Court Road, he saw in a window a walking-stick that he was sure she would like his carrying.  And it cost only two-and-six.  Hastily, before he changed his mind, he rushed in and slammed down his money.  It was a very beautiful stick indeed, and of a modesty to commend itself to Istra, just a plain straight stick with a cap of metal curiously like silver.  He was conscious that the whole world was leering at him, demanding “What’re you carrying a cane for?” but he—­the misunderstood—­was willing to wait for the reward of this martyrdom in Istra’s approval.

The third night, as he stood at the window watching two children playing in the dusk, there was a knock.  It was Istra.  She stood at his door, smart and inconspicuous in a black suit with a small toque that hid the flare of her red hair.