* * * * *
That afternoon, Bruce Visigoth again asked Lilly to marry him.
Taking advantage of the quiet of a Saturday afternoon half holiday, she had returned to the office to clear her desk of an accumulation of loose ends.
In spite of herself, an extraordinary depression, low as storm clouds, was gathering over the excitation whipped up by Trieste's acceptance of Zoe.
The tight squeeze of a lump was gathering in her throat. Finally she laid her cheek to the desk and cried a little pool of her unaccountable melancholy on to the glassed surface.
Bruce Visigoth found her so, although, at his entrance, she sprang from the mound of her misery, violently simulating affairs at a lower drawer.
"Hello!" he cried, then, eying her crumpled cheek and the lane of tears:
"Ah, I say now! Come, come; this won't do. What's up?"
She rubbed her bare hand furiously across the ravages of her sharp depression.
"Nothing. I—I guess I'm blue," she said, in a half laugh. "Something wonderful has happened to Zoe, and I—it's made me so happy, I'm blue. That's it—so—happy—I'm blue."
"What is the wonderful thing?"