"Oh yes it is. It is merely the other ox getting gored."
"Anyway, your story wasn't true? You made it up to tease me?"
"If I answer your question will you answer mine?"
"I can't Frank, I can't—not now. I haven't seen Spoof since Christmas. Perhaps he's sick. Perhaps he's dead. Something awful may have happened."
"His smoke goes up every morning just the same."
"Oh, you've been watching it, too. But something has happened. I—I can't answer you now."
At the door of Jack's house we paused again. We were in the shadow there, and as she turned on the step her form swung close to mine. For a moment I seized her, no longer able to play the semi-Platonic. . . . . .
"But there was no truth in it, was there?" she whispered.
"There was some truth in it," I confessed, as I turned toward the empty shack on Fourteen.