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said subduedly, while within he fell into small quiet pieces. He realized he had thought of her as isolated from everyone but himself. If she had had a frame in his mind, it was that of the magic casements and the red and gold lobby beyond. Now all at once she was estranged, and to learn more of her was to risk thrusting her yet farther away.
    â€œDo you have any children?”
    â€œNo.” She smiled at him. “I’m quite free. I suppose I can’t believe it yet.”
    Hildebrandt relaxed. In the moment of crisis the magic of the casements had all but left her. She had been the divorced wife of another man, the former mistress of a household in San Francisco. He might have ceased to love her, he thought, but instead, his love had metamorphosed to one that loved her as a creature of reality. He felt he had become real himself. He had risen suddenly far above the dreary gentleman-at-the-bar.
    He sat upright, solicitous, beside her. “Could I ask you—if I’ve a right—to tell me about it?”
    â€œNo, don’t ask me that!” she said with a laugh.
    Hildebrandt watched her face return to its poised, somewhat preoccupied expression. He saw, despite his love for her, the distance that separated them now unless he could span it somehow. Yet this was not the time, either, to tell her he loved her. He wondered if her husband had been cruel to her. Or unfaithful. Or if he had given her the scar on her cheek! He wanted to hunt down the monster and kill him!
    â€œIs there nothing I can do?” he asked searchingly. “I do wish you’d tell me even the least important things, if you will.”
    â€œThe least important things are the least important things—like my name. And the most important thing I think you know.”
    â€œNo, I don’t.”
    She was silent again, and Hildebrandt continued. “I just can’t bear to see you unhappy.”
    â€œBut I am not so unhappy.”
    He pondered her reply as though it had been a riddle.
    III
    S he was more than an hour late. Hildebrandt, scanning the people who walked from right and left on the sidewalk, paced once more across the long cement step. He dared not leave to call the St. Regis, for it had now reached a time at which she, arriving and not finding him, might think he had grown tired of waiting and gone away.
    â€œOf course she will come!” Hildebrandt said to himself. “She has never failed, has she?” He could look back on the one occasion, last evening, when she had kept their appointment in the Pandora Room. And because she had been later than he expected, he told himself she was probably late for all her engagements.
    â€œYou may think this is funny,” he could still hear her say. “I wanted to go to the Metropolitan while I was here.”
    And he had assured her he could take the afternoon off and go with her. He had begged her, in fact, to let him see her today, because last night while they had had eggs and toast at midnight in the sandwich shop, she had said something— He could not quite remember it. Something like, “You mustn’t think I’ve cured loneliness in you. Only someone who’s never known it can cure it.” And while he had laughed at her theory, it had hurt him, because he had realized she might be saying in this way that she knew he was inadequate to cure her own loneliness, to give her what she needed, perhaps in the way that mattered to her was inferior to the man who had been her husband.
    But these doubts had vanished before the promise of the afternoon at the Metropolitan, which last night had seemed a gay adventure. He would learn, later when they took tea in some quiet place, all the things it was absurd he did not know already, her name, when she would come back from San Francisco and why she had to go in the first place. He would tell her then that he loved her. He would begin all over again, somewhere besides the Pandora Room, as