IT WAS RAINING that m, and still very dark. When the boy reached the streetcar café he had almost finished his route and he went in for a cup of coffee. The place was an all-night café owned by a bitter and stingy man called Leo. After the raw, empty street, the café seemed friendly and bright: along the ter there were a couple of soldiers, three spinners from the ill, and in a er a man who sat hunched over with his nose and half his face down in a beer mug. The boy wore a helmet such as aviators wear. When he went into the café he unbuckled the strap and raised the right flap up over his pink little ear; often as he drank his coffee someone would speak to him in a friendly way. But this m Leo did not look into his fad none of the mealking. He paid and was leaving the café when a voice called out to him:
"Son! Hey Son!"
He turned bad the man in the er was crooking his finger and nodding to him. He had brought his face out of the beer mug and he seemed suddenly very happy. The man was long and pale, with a big nose and faded e hair.
"Hey Son!"
The boy went toward him. He was an undersized boy of about twelve, with one shoulder drawn higher thaher because of the weight of the paper sack. His face was shallow, freckled, and his eyes were round child eyes.
"Yeah Mister?"
The man laid one hand on the paper boys shoulders, then grasped the boys and turned his face slowly from one side to the other. The boy shrank baeasily.
"Say! Whats the big idea?"
The boys voice was shrill; ihe café it was suddenly very quiet.
The man said slowly. "I love you."
All along the ter the men laughed. The boy, who had scowled and sidled away, did not know what to do. He looked over the ter at Leo, and Leo watched him with a weary, brittle jeer. The boy tried to laugh also. But the man was serious and sad.
"I did not mean to tease you, Son," he said. "Sit down and have a beer with me. There is something I have to explain."
Cautiously, out of the er of his eye, the paper boy questiohe men along the ter to see what he should do. But they had gone back to their beer or their breakfast and did not notice him. Leo put a cup of coffee on the ter and a little jug of cream.
"He is a minor," Leo said.
The paper boy slid himself up onto the stool. His ear beh the upturned flap of the helmet was very small ahe man was nodding at him soberly. "It is important," he said. Then he reached in his hip pocket and brought out something which he held up in the palm of his hand for the boy to see.
"Look very carefully," he said.
The boy stared, but there was nothing to look at very carefully. The man held in his big, grimy palm a photograph. It was the face of a woman, but blurred, so that only the hat and the dress she was wearing stood out clearly.
"See?" the man asked.
The boy nodded and the man placed another picture in his palm. The woman was standing on a bea a bathing suit. The suit made her stomach very big, and that was the main thing you noticed.
"Got a good look?" He leaned over closer and finally asked: "You ever seen her before?"
The boy sat motionless, staring slantwise at the man. "Not so I know of."
"Very well." The man blew on the photographs and put them bato his pocket. "That was my wife."
"Dead?" the boy asked.
Slowly the man shook his head. He pursed his lips as though about to whistle and answered in a long-drawn way: "Nu