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 The door shot open. In the doorway stood Sharon Falconer in a black-and-gold dressing-gown.

"Both of you," said Sharon, "are discharged. Fired. Now! Don't ever let me see your faces again. You can stay tonight, but see to it that you're out of the house before breakfast."

"Oh, Miss Falconer—" Lily wailed, thrusting away Elmer's hand. But Sharon was gone, with a bang of the door. They rushed into the hall, they heard the key in her lock, and she ignored their rapping.

Lily glared at Elmer. He heard her key also, and he stood alone in the hall.

Not till one in the morning, sitting in flabby dejection, did he have his story shaped and water-tight.

It was an heroic spectacle, that of the Reverend Elmer Gantry climbing from the second-story balcony through Sharon's window, tiptoeing across the room, plumping on his knees by her bed, and giving her a large plashy kiss.

"I am not asleep," she observed, in tones level as a steel rail, while she drew the comforter about her neck. "In fact I'm awake for the first time in two years, my young friend. You can get out of here. I won't tell you all I've been thinking, but among other things you're an ungrateful dog that bit the hand that took you out of the slimy gutter, you're a liar, an ignoramus, a four-flusher, and a rotten preacher."

"By God, I'll show—"

But she giggled, and his plan of action came back to him.

He sat firmly on the edge of the bed, and calmly he remarked:

"Sharon, you're a good deal of a damn fool. You think I'm going to deny flirting with Lily. I won't take the trouble to deny it! If you don't appreciate yourself, if you don't see that a man that's ever associated with you simply couldn't be interested in any other woman, then there's nothing I can say. Why, my God, Shara, you know what you are! I could no more be untrue to you than I could to my religion! As a matter of fact— Want to know what I was saying to Lily, to Miss Anderson?"

"I do not!"