CHAPTER VIII
BEFORE departing from Clark Street with Billy, Marjorie experienced a further enlightening sensation. Billy's presence had nothing to do with it; in fact, it was in opposition to his efforts that she had the experience, for Billy was doing his best to return her as rapidly as possible to her familiar environment of Michigan Avenue and the boulevard route home to Evanston, and to re-immerse her in the formal modes of thinking and feeling which had been hers. But she had no wish to reënter so immediately her world of not even so much as half the truth; and her further experience on Clark Street was suddenly to feel, by one of those flashes of perceptivity which amaze one with a demonstration of one's dull narrowness before, that Clark Street and the streets beyond—west and north and south, in their endless number—concerned her. How vitally and with what intimacy had Clearedge Street concerned her! She wanted to stand on the sidewalk and gaze about at the people passing and think of the men as men of the manner Rinderfeld knew. But Billy had kept a cab waiting for her and he helped her into it.
"Well, Marjorie," he demanded, as soon as the car started. "What did he have to tell you?" So she repeated to him Rinderfeld's analysis of the danger threatening them.
"Of course, I never thought of it that way before," she finished. "But you must have, Billy; you're a
