a tolerant eye over the dusty volumes in the twirling case.  There were the usual copies of Harold MacGrath’s The Man on the Box, A Girl of the Limberlost, and The Houseboat on the Styx.  The Divine Fire, much grimed, leaned against Joe Chapple’s Heart Throbs.  Those familiar with the Tabard Inn bookcases still to be found in outlying drug-shops know that the stock has not been “turned” for many a year.  Aubrey was the more surprised, on spinning the the case round, to find wedged in between two other volumes the empty cover of a book that had been torn loose from the pages to which it belonged.  He glanced at the lettering on the back.  It ran thus: 

Carlyle
——­
Oliver Cromwell’s
letters
and
speeches

Obeying a sudden impulse, he slipped the book cover in his overcoat pocket.

Mr. Weintraub entered the shop, a solid Teutonic person with discoloured pouches under his eyes and a face that was a potent argument for prohibition.  His manner, however, was that of one anxious to please.  Aubrey indicated the brand of cigarettes he wanted.  Having himself coined the advertising catchword for them—­They’re mild—­ but they satisfy—­he felt a certain loyal compulsion always to smoke this kind.  The druggist held out the packet, and Aubrey noticed that his fingers were stained a deep saffron colour.

“I see you’re a cigarette smoker, too,” said Aubrey pleasantly, as he opened the packet and lit one of the paper tubes at a little alcohol flame burning in a globe of blue glass on the counter.

“Me?  I never smoke,” said Mr. Weintraub, with a smile which somehow did not seem to fit his surly face.  “I must have steady nerves in my profession.  Apothecaries who smoke make up bad prescriptions.”

“Well, how do you get your hands stained that way?”

Mr. Weintraub removed his hands from the counter.

“Chemicals,” he grunted.  “Prescriptions—­all that sort of thing.”

“Well,” said Aubrey, “smoking’s a bad habit.  I guess I do too much of it.”  He could not resist the impression that someone was listening to their talk.  The doorway at the back of the shop was veiled by a portiere of beads and thin bamboo sections threaded on strings.  He heard them clicking as though they had been momentarily pulled aside.  Turning, just as he opened the door to leave, he noticed the bamboo curtain swaying.

“Well, good-night,” he said, and stepped out onto the street.

As he walked down Wordsworth Avenue, under the thunder of the L, past lighted lunchrooms, oyster saloons, and pawnshops, Miss Chapman resumed her sway.  With the delightful velocity of thought his mind whirled in a narrowing spiral round the experience of the evening.  The small book-crammed sitting room of the Mifflins, the sparkling fire, the lively chirrup of the bookseller reading aloud—­and there, in the old easy chair whose horsehair stuffing