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left the office. What I’m trying to tell you is I went over there—to tell her it was off.”
    He ran his thumbnail ruefully along the wire, like harp strings. “I don’t expect you to believe me; I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. It must sound like sour grapes at this late day. But, Angel Face, it’s true. I wasn’t going with her. That’s all I can say.”
    I leaned my forehead tenderly against the wire toward him. “Darling,” I said, “I’ve always been able to tell when you were lying. And I’ve always been able to tell when you were telling the truth. And I still am, now. So don’t be afraid. I believe you.”
    â€œThanks.” He sighed gratefully. “That’ll make it a little easier.”
    They came over to take him inside again. So this was it now, and words became just empty sounds. “You’ll be back. This isn’t good-by. Now remember that—I’m just saying so long to you for a while. Take good care of yourself, darling—until—until I see you again. Oh, wait, just let me kiss him once again——”
    â€œGet ready with some more of that bad coffee, darling, so I’ll have something to growl at when I——”
    â€œI’ll be waiting with it.”
    â€œSo long for a while, Angel Face.”
    Isn’t it pitiful how two people can kid themselves when they know they’re both lying?
    The wire stencil that had framed our kiss was empty; his lips were gone. The murmur of his voice hovered about it for a moment more, as if I were still hearing him say it, though I wasn’t any more. “So long, Angel Face.”
    I had that much back again, at least. He always called me that. That was his name for me when we were by ourselves. That was a special thing, from him to——

5
    REVERY BY MATCHLIGHT
    T HE FLAT WAS GONE NOW , AND IN ITS PLACE THERE were the four cramped walls of a furnished room. I wouldn’t have wanted the flat any more, even if there had been money enough to hang onto it; I would have run into him a thousand times a day, from every chair, from every corner of it. I would have heard him wheezing in the shower, howling for the towel that was never there; I would have heard him chuckling over there in that corner where the radio used to be; I would have heard him snoring over in the other bed, late at night——
    Life was simpler here in this place. Life was a shot of novocain. Life was carpet slippers all day long, and a bathrobe, and hair that wasn’t combed. Life was a rickety iron bed that wasn’t slept on, just was wept on. Life was a can punched open maybe once a day, not from hunger, just from a sense of duty. Life was a knock on the door and an “Are you all right in there, lady? This is the landlady; I ain’t seen you in three or four whole days now, and I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t nothing the matter.”
    â€œI’m all right. Sure, I’m great. Don’t worry if you don’t see me or hear me, even for a week at a time. I’m still here; I’ll still be sitting in here.”
    â€œDo you want me to get you a paper, help you to pass the time?”
    I screamed it, but she didn’t hear it because I screamed it inside of me. “I don’t want the time to pass! It’s going too quick already! I want it to stand still! I want it to freeze!”
    â€œNo, thanks, there isn’t anything I want to read about or know about.”
    Life was like that.
    I reached the low point of the whole thing, the bottommost dip of the graph, the night someone from the Police Property Clerk’s Office came around to return his things. They give them back to you, it seems; they give you back everything but the main thing: who was in them. That they keep; that’s theirs, to plug into the lighting system and then throw away.
    This was just routine, the usual procedure when they send