“Possibly.”

“What kind of talk?  Nonsense?”

“Nonsense—­or wisdom.  How should I know?”

“Dominie, is there a perfume in the air?  A smell of roses?”

“Look in your hand.”

He opened his fingers slowly and closed them again, tenderly, jealously.  “I must go now,” he said vaguely.  “May I come back to see you sometimes, Dominie?”

“Perhaps you’ll bring Happiness with you,” I said.

But he only shook his head.  On the morrow his van was gone from the alley and the house at Number 37, which had once been the House of Silvery Voices, was voiceless again.

* * * * *

Something of the savor of life went with the vanners out of Our Square.  I missed their broad-ranging and casual talk of politics, art, religion, the fourth dimension, and one another.  Yet I felt sure that I should see them both again.  There is a spell woven in Our Square—­it has held me these sixty years and more, and I wonder at times whether Death himself can break it—­which draws back the hearts that have once known the place.  It was a long month, though, before the butterfly fluttered back.  More radiant than ever she looked, glowing softly in the brave November sun, as she approached my bench.  But there was something indefinably wistful about her.  She said that she had come to satisfy her awakened appetite for the high art of R. Noovo, as she faced the unaltered and violent frontage of Number 37.

“Empty,” said I.

“Then he didn’t take my advice and rent it.  The painter-man, I mean.”

“He’s gone.”

“Where?”

“I haven’t an idea.”

“Doesn’t he ever come back?”

“You must not assume,” said I with severity, “that you are the only devotee of high art.  You may perhaps compare your devotion to that of another whom I might mention when you, too, have lost ten pounds and gained ten years—­”

“Dominie!  Has he?”

“Has he what?”

“G-g-g-gained ten pounds.  I mean, lost ten years.”

“I haven’t said so.”

“Dominie, you are a cruel old man,” accused the butterfly.

“And you are a wicked woman.”

“I’m not.  I’m only twenty,” was her irrelevant but natural defense.

“Witness, on your oath, answer; were you at any time in the evening or night before you departed from this, Our Square, leaving us desolate—­were you, I say, abroad in the park?

“Y-y-yes, your Honor.”

“In the immediate vicinity of this bench?”

“Benches are very alike in the dark.”

“But occupants of them are not.  Don’t fence with the court.  Were you wearing one or more roses of the general hue and device of those now displayed in your cheeks?”

“The honorable court has nothing to do with my face,” said the witness defiantly.

“On the contrary, your face is the corpus delicti. Did you, taking advantage of the unconscious and hence defenseless condition of my client, that is, of Mr. Martin Dyke, lean over him and deliberately imprint a—­”