"Really, I like it," he protested. "I hang over a desk all day, and in the
evening I want to walk. I ramble around the park and see lovers on
benches--it's rather thrilling. They sit on the same benches evening after
evening. I know a lot of them by sight, and if they're not there I wonder
if they have quarreled, or if they have finally got married and ended the
romance. You can see how exciting it is."

Quite suddenly Sidney laughed.

"How very nice you are!" she said--"and how absurd! Why should their
getting married end the romance? And don't you know that, if you insist on
walking the streets and parks at night because Joe Drummond is here, I
shall have to tell him not to come?"

This did not follow, to K.'s mind. They had rather a heated argument over
it, and became much better acquainted.

"If I were engaged to him," Sidney ended, her cheeks very pink, "I--I might
understand. But, as I am not--"

"Ah!" said K., a trifle unsteadily. "So you are not?"

Only a week--and love was one of the things she had had to give up, with
others. Not, of course, that he was in love with Sidney then. But he had
been desperately lonely, and, for all her practical clearheadedness, she
was softly and appealingly feminine. By way of keeping his head, he talked
suddenly and earnestly of Mrs. McKee, and food, and Tillie, and of Mr.
Wagner and the pencil pad.