you, Debby? Couldn't you stand it any longer? Neither could I. That girl is a peach to look at, but she can't sing for sour apples; and as for brains, she's a nut, a pure pecan! I guess I'm too old or not old enough to be satisfied with staring at a pretty hide on a pretty frame. Which way you going? I'll walk along with you if you don't mind."

If she didn't mind! Would Lazarus object if Dives sat down on the floor beside him and brought along his trencher?

Debby was so bewildered that the sidewalk reeled beneath her intoxicated feet. She stumbled till Meldrum took her hand and set it in the crook of his arm, and she trotted along as meek as Tobias with the angel.

All, all too soon they reached her house. But he paused at the gate. She dared not invite him even to the porch.

If her mother heard a man's voice there she would probably open the window upstairs and shriek: "Murder! Thieves! Help!"

So Debby waited at the gate while the almost invisible Meldrum chattered on. She was so afraid that he would go every next minute that she hardly heard what he said. But he had only a hotel room ahead of him. He was used to late hours. He was in a mood for talk. The paralyzed Debby was a perfect listener, and in that intense dark she was as beautiful as Cleopatra would have been.

To her he was solely a voice, a voice of strange cynicisms, yet of strange comfort to her. He was laughing at the people she held in awe. "This town's a joke to me," he said.  "It's a side-show full of freaks."  And he mocked the great folk of the village as if they were yokels. He laughed at their customs. He ridiculed many, many things that Debby had believed and suffered from believing. He ridiculed married people and marriage from the superior heights of one who could have married many and had rejected all. It was strangely pleasant hearing to her who had observed marriage from the humble depths of one whom all had rejected. He talked till he heard the town clock whine eleven times, then he said:

"Good Lord! I didn't know it was so late. I must have talked your arm off, Debby. I don't get these moods often. It takes a mighty good listener to loosen me up. Good night! Don't let any of these fellows bunco you into marrying 'em. There's nothing in it, Debby. Take it from me. Good night."

She felt rather than saw that he lifted his hat. She felt again his big hand enveloping 

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