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Adopting the Mordaunt Estate’s sardonic suggestion, Martin Dyke had settled down to van life in a private alleyway next to Number 37. Anne Leffingwell deemed this criminally extravagant since the rental of a van must be prodigious. (“Tell her not to worry; my family own the storage and moving plant,” was one of his many messages that I neglected to deliver.) On his part he worried over the loneliness and simplicity of her establishment–one small but neat maid–which he deemed incongruous with her general effect of luxury and ease of life, and wondered whether she had split with her family. (She hadn’t; “I’ve always been brought up like a–a–an artichoke,” she confided to me. “So when father went West for six months, I just moved, and I’m going to be a potato and see how I like it. Besides, I’ve got some research work to do.”)

Every morning a taxi called and took her to an uptown library, and every afternoon she came back to the harlequin-fronted house at Number 37. Dyke’s hours were such that he saw her only when she returned early, for he slept by day in his van, and worked most of the night on electrical experiments which he was conducting over on the river front, and which were to send his name resounding down the halls of fame. (The newspapers have already caught an echo or two.) On his way back from his experiments, he daily stopped at the shop of Eberling the Florist, where, besides chaste and elegant set pieces inscribed “Gates Ajar” and “Gone But Not Forgotten,” one may, if expert and insistent, obtain really fresh roses. What connection these visits had with the matutinal arrival of deep pink blossoms addressed to nobody, but delivered regularly at the door of Number 37, I shall not divulge; no, not though a base attempt was made to incriminate me in the transaction.

Between the pair who had arrived in Our Square on such friendly and promising terms, there was now no communication when they met. She was steadfastly adhering to that “Never. Never. Never!” What less, indeed, could be expected of a faithful wife insulted by ardent hopes of her husband’s early demise from a young man whom she had known but four hours? So it might have gone on to a sterile conclusion but for a manifestation of rebellious artistic tastes on her part. The Mordaunt Estate stopped at my bench to complain about them one afternoon when Martin Dyke, having just breakfasted, had strolled over to discuss his favorite topic. (She was, at that very moment, knitting her dainty brows over the fifteenth bunch of pink fragrance and deciding regretfully that this thing must come to an end even if she had to call in Terry the Cop.)

“That lady in Number 37,” said the Mordaunt Estate bitterly, “ain’t the lady I thought she was.”

Martin Dyke, under the impulse of his persistent obsession, looked up hopefully. “You mean that she isn’t really Mrs. Leffingwell?”

“I mean I’m disappointed in her; that’s what I mean. She wants the house front painted over.”

“No!” I protested with polite incredulity.

“Where’s her artistic sense? I thought she admired your work so deeply.”

“She does, too,” confirmed the Estate. “But she says it’s liable to be misunderstood. She says ladies come there and order tea, and men ask the hired girl when the barbers come on duty, and one old bird with whiskers wanted to know if Ashtaroth, the Master of Destiny, told fortunes there. So she wants I should tone it down. I guess,” pursued the Mordaunt Estate, stricken with gloom over the difficulty of finding the Perfect Tenant in an imperfect world, “I’ll have to notice her to quit.”

“No; don’t do that!” cried the young man. “Here! I’ll repaint the whole wall for you free of charge.”

“What do you know about R. Noovo art? Besides, paints cost money.”

“I’ll furnish the paint, too,” offered the reckless youth. “I’m crazy about art. It’s the only solace of my declining years. And,” he added cunningly and with evil intent to flatter and cajole, “I can tone down that design of yours without affecting its beauty and originality at all.”