"You must let me arrange to have your pay go on. That's what Mr. Teck would have wished."
She took his address, told a servant to call a taxicab, and went down the front steps with Parr, holding him by his bony arm as he lowered his crutches. Overwhelmed by this condescension, he stammered:
"I was afraid to come here, ma'am."
She replied:
"We need each other."
Next day she sought him out.
She found him near Stuyvesant Square, in a shabby room overlooking a back yard in which an ailanthus tree spread its limbs above some clothes lines. She leaned forward in a raveled chair, with her veil tucked up so that she could see him better, her gloved hands clasped tightly in her lap, her eyes intent. When he had recovered from her simplicity, Parr prepared to tell her what she had come to hear.
But there were so many tales about the hero to choose from!
"Anything," she exclaimed. "Make me hear what he used to say, know what he used to think. Make me see him there. Make him live!"
She meant, "Make him vivid again in my heart, where, against all my efforts, his face has faded away."