She moved away with the dignity of an emperor moth, slim and supple-hipped in a tight-wrapped gown.

The Seaside Hotel lobby leaned forward in its chairs; young men moved their feet from the veranda rail and gazed after her; pleasantries fell in her pathway as roses before a queen.

A splay-mouthed youth, his face and neck sunburnt to a beefy red, tugged at her gold-colored scarf as she passed.

"Oh, you Myra!" he sang.

"Quit your kiddin', Izzy!" she parried back. "Who was that blonde I seen you with down at the beach this mornin'?"

A voluptuous brunette in a rose-pink dress and diamonds dragged her down to the arm of her rocker.

"I got a trade-last for you, Myra."

"For me?"

"Yes."

"Give it to me, Clara."

"No, I said a trade—and a dandy, too!"

"Who from—man?"

"Yes."

"Well, I got one for you, too—Leon Eckstein says he thinks you're an awfully sweet girl and will make some man a grand wife."

Clara giggled and fingered the gold-fringe edging of Miss Sternberger's sleeve. She spoke slowly and stressed each word alike.

"Well, there's a fellow just got here from Paris yesterday—says you sure know how to dress and that you got a swell figure."

"Who said it?"

"Guess."

"I should know!"

"That fellow over there with Bella Blondheim—the one with the smooth face and grayish hair. I hear he's a swell New York fellow in the importin' business."

"How'd Bella grab him?"

"She's been holdin' on to him like a crawfish all day. She won't let anybody get near him—neither will her mother."

"Here comes Izzy over here after me! If there's one fellow I can't stand it's him."

Miss Sternberger moved away with her chin tilted at a sharp angle. At a turn in the veranda she came suddenly upon Miss Bella Blondheim and a sleek, well-dressed young man with grayish hair. Miss Blondheim's hand was hooked with a deadlock clutch to the arm of her companion.

Miss Sternberger threw herself before them like a melodrama queen flagging a train. "Hello, Bella!" she said in a voice as low as a 'cello.

Miss Blondheim, who had once sold the greatest number of aprons at a charity bazar, turned cold eyes upon the intruder.

"Hello, Myra!" she said in cool tones of dismissal.

There was a pause; the color swept up and surged over Miss Blondheim's face.

"Are you finished with Love in a Cottage, Bella? I promised it to Mrs. Weiss when you're finished with it."

"Yes," said Bella. "I'll bring it down to-night."

There was another pause; the young man with the grayish hair coughed.

"Mr. Arnheim, let me introduce you to my friend, Miss Sternberger."

Miss Sternberger extended a highly groomed hand. "Pleased to meet you," she said.

"Howdy-do, Miss Sternberger?" His arm squirmed free from the deadlock clutch. "Won't you join us?"

"Thanks," said Myra, smiling until an amazing quantity of small white teeth showed; "but I just stopped by to tell Bella that Mrs. Blondheim was askin' for her."

There was a third pause.

"Won't you come along, Mr. Arnheim? Mamma's always so worried about me; and I'd like for you to meet mamma," said Bella, anxiously.

With a heroic jerk Mr. Arnheim managed to free himself entirely. "Thanks," he said; "but I think I'll stay out and have a smoke."

Miss Blondheim's lips drooped at the corners. She entered the bright, gabbling lobby, threading her way to her mother's stronghold. The maternal glance that greeted her was cold and withering.

"I knew if I couldn't hold her she'd get him away. That's why I didn't go and play lotto with the ladies."

"Well, I couldn't help it, could I? You're always nosin' after me so—anybody could say you want me and not be lyin'."

"That's the thanks I get for tryin' to do the right thing by my children. When I was your age I had more gumption in my little finger than you got in your whole hand! I'd like to see a little piece like her get ahead of me. No wonder you ain't got no luck!"

Miss Blondheim sat down wearily beside her mother. "I wish I knew how she does it."

"Nerve! That's how. 'Ain't I been preachin' nerve to you since you could talk? You'd be married to Marcus Finberg now if you'd 'a' worked it right and listened to your mother."

"Aw, maw, lemme alone. I couldn't make him pop, could I? I don't see other girls' mothers always buttin' in."

Out in the cool of the veranda Miss Sternberger strolled over to the railing and leaned her back against a white wooden column. Her eyes, upslanting and full of languor, looked out over the toiling, moiling ocean. She was outlined as gently as a Rembrandt.

"A penny for your thoughts, Miss Sternberger."

Mr. Arnheim, the glowing end of a newly lighted cigar in one corner of his mouth, peered his head over her shoulder.

"Oh, Mr. Arnheim, how you scared me!" Miss Sternberger placed the well-groomed left hand, with a seal ring on the third finger, upon the thread-lace bosom of her gown. "How you frightened me!"

"It's a nice night, Miss Sternberger. Want to walk on the beach?"

"Don't mind if I do," she said.

They strolled the length of the veranda, down the steps to the boardwalk and the beach beyond.

Mrs. Blondheim rolled her crochet into a tight ball and stuck her needle upright. "Come on, Bella; let's go to bed."

They trailed past the desk like birds with damp feathers.

"Send up some ice-water to three-hundred-and-eighteen," said Miss Bella over the counter, her eyes straining meanwhile past the veranda to the beach below.

Without, a moon low and heavy and red came out from the horizon; it cast a copper-gold band across the water.

"Let's go down to the edge, kiddo."

Mr. Arnheim helped Miss Sternberger plow daintily through the sand.

"If I get sand in my shoes I'll blame you, Mr. Arnheim."

"Little slippers like yours can't hold much."

She giggled.

They seated themselves like small dunes on the white expanse of beach; he drew his knees up under his chin and nursed them.

In the eery light they might have been a fay and a faun in evening dress.

"Well," said Mr. Arnheim, exhaling loudly, "this is something like it."

"Ain't that a grand moon, though, Mr. Arnheim?"

"The moon 'ain't got a show when you're round, little one."

"I'll bet you say that to every girl you meet."

"Nix I do; but I know when a girl looks good to me."

"I wish I knew if you was jollyin' me or not."

He tossed his cigar into the surf that curled at their very feet, leaving a rim of foam and scum. The red end died with a fizz. Then he turned his dark eyes full upon her with a steady focus.

"If you knew me better you'd know that I ain't that sort of a fellow. When I say a thing I mean it."

His hand lay outstretched; she poured rivulets of white sand between the fingers. They watched the little mounds of sand which she patted into shape.

"I'll bet you're a New York girl."

"Why?"

"I can tell them every time—style and all."

"I'll bet you're a New York fellow, too."

"Little New York is good enough for me. I've been over in Paris four months, now, and, believe me, it looked good yesterday to see the old girlie holdin' her lamp over the harbor."

Miss Sternberger ran her hand over the smooth sheen of her dress; her gown was chaste, even stern, in its simplicity—the expensive simplicity that is artful rather than artless.

"That's a neat little model you're wearin'."

"Aw, Mr. Arnheim, what do you know about clothes?"

Mr. Arnheim threw back his head and laughed long and loud. "What do I know about clothes? I only been in the biz for eight years. What I don't know about ladies' wear ain't in the dictionary."

"Well," said Miss Sternberger, "that's so; I did hear you was in the business."

"I'm in the importin' line, I am. Why, girl, I've put through every fad that's taken hold in the last five years—brought them over myself, too, I've dressed Broadway and Fifth Avenue in everything from rainy-day to harem skirts."

"Honest?"

"Sure! I've imported more good sellers than any dealer in New York. I got a new model now passin' customs that's to be a bigger hit than the sheath was. Say, when I brought over the hobble every house on the Avenue laughed in my face; and when I finally dumped a consignment on to one of them, the firm was scared stiff and wanted to countermand; but I had 'em and they couldn't jump me."

"Just think!"

"By Jove! it wasn't two weeks before that very model was the talk of New York and Lillian Russell was wearin' one in the second act of her show; and when she wears a model it's as good as made."

"Gee!" she said. "I could just sit and listen to you talk and talk."

He hunched close. "I sold the first dozen pannier dresses for a sum that would give you the blind staggers. I was just as scared as she was, too, but all you got to do with women is to get a few good-lookin' bell-sheep to lead and the others will follow fast."

She regarded him in the wan moonlight. "If there's anything I admire," she said, "it's a smart man."

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "I've just got a little better judgment than the next fellow. Those things come natural, that's all. In my line a fellow's got to know human nature. If I'd sprung the hobble on the Avenue five years ago I'd gone broke on the gamble; but I sprung the idea on 'em at just the right time."

Her hand, long and slim, lay like a bit of carved ivory on the sand; he leaned forward and covered it with his.

"I want to see a great deal of you while I'm down here."

She did not reply, but drew her hand away with a shy diffidence.

"I'll bet I could show you some things that would warm you up all right. I'm goin' into New York with the swellest bunch of French novelties you ever seen. I've got a peach-colored Piquette model I've brought over that's goin' to be the talk of the town."

"A Piquette?"

He laughed delightedly. "Sure! You never heard of the firm? Wait till you see 'em on show at the openin'. It's got the new butterfly back; and, believe me, it wasn't no cinch to grab that pattern, neither. I laid low in Paris two months before I even got a smell at it."

"You talk just like a story-book," she said.

He stretched himself full length on the sand and looked up into her face. "I'll show you a thing or two when we get back to New York, little one."

"You ain't like most of the boys I know, Mr. Arnheim. You got something different about you."

"And you got a face like the kind you see painted on fans—on the order of a Japanese dame. I got some swell Japanese imports, too."

"Everybody says that about me. I take after paw."

"Say, little one, I want your telephone number when I get back to New York."

"I'll be pleased to have you call me up, Mr. Arnheim."

"Will I call you up? Well, rather!"

"I know some nice girls I'll introduce you to."

He looked at her insinuatingly. "I know one nice girl, and that's enough," he said.

"Aw, Mr. Arnheim, of all the jolliers I ever knew you got 'em beat." She rose to her feet like a gold-colored phoenix from a mound of white sand. "When I meet a fellow I like I don't want him to tell me nothin' but the truth."

"That's just the way with me—when I meet a girl that looks good I want to treat her white, and I want her to do the same by me."

They strolled along the edge of the beach. Once the foaming surf threatened to lap over her slippers; he caught her deftly and raised her high above the swirl.

"Oh," she cried, a little breathlessly, "ain't you strong!" Then she laughed in a high-pitched voice.

They dallied until the moon hardened from a soft, low ball to a high, yellow disk and the night damp seeped into their clothes. Miss Sternberger's yellow scarf lay like a limp rag on her shoulders.

"You're a perfect thirty-six, ain't you, little one?"

"That's what they say when I try on ready-mades," she replied, with sweet reticence.

"Gee!" he said. "Wouldn't I like you in some of my models! Maybe if you ain't no snitch I'll show you the colored plates some day."

"I ain't no snitch," she said. Her voice was like a far-away echo.

They climbed the wooden steps to their hotel like glorified children who had been caught in a silver weft of enchantment.

The lobby was semi-dark; they asked for their keys in whispers and exchanged good-nights in long-drawn undertones.

"Until to-morrow, little one."

"Until to-morrow."

She entered the elevator with a smile on her lips and in her eyes. They regarded each other through the iron framework until she shot from sight.

* * * *

At breakfast next morning Mrs. Blondheim drew up before her "small steak, French-fried potatoes, jelly omelet, buttered toast, buckwheat cakes, and coffee."

"Well, of all the nerve!" she exclaimed to her vis-a-vis, Mrs. Epstein. "If there ain't Myra Sternberger eatin' breakfast with that Mr. Arnheim!"

Mrs. Epstein opened a steaming muffin, inserted a lump of butter, and pressed the halves together. "I said to my husband last night," she remarked, 'I'm glad we 'ain't got no daughters'; till they're married off and all, it ain't no fun. With my Louie, now, it's different. When he came out of the business school my husband put him in business, and now I 'ain't got no worry."

"My Bella 'ain't never given me a day's worry, neither. I ain't in no hurry to marry her off. She always says to me, 'Mamma,' she says, 'I ain't in no hurry to marry till Mr. Right comes along.'"

"My Louie is comin' down to-day or to-morrow on his vacation if he can get away from business. Louie's a good boy—if I do say so myself."

"I don't want to talk—but I often say what my Bella gets when she marries is enough to give any young man a fine start in a good business."

"I must have my Louie meet Miss Bella. The notes and letters Louie gets from girls you wouldn't believe; he don't pay no attention to 'em. He's an awful mamma-boy, Mrs. Blondheim."

"It will be grand for them to meet," said Mrs. Blondheim. "If I do say it, my Bella's had proposals you wouldn't believe! Look at Simon Arnheim over there—he only met her yesterday, and do you think he would leave her side all day? No, siree. Honest, it makes me mad sometimes. A grand young man comes along and Bella introduces him to every one, but she won't have nothin' to do with him."

"Try some of this liver and onions, Mrs. Blondheim; it's delicious."

Mrs. Blondheim partook and nibbled between her front teeth. "I got a grand recipe for suss und sauer liver. When we're at home my Bella always says, 'Mamma, let's have some liver and gedaemftes fleisch for lunch.'"

"Do you soak your liver first?" inquired Mrs. Epstein. "My Louie won't eat nothin' suss und sauer. It makes me so mad. I got to cook different for every one in my family. Louie won't eat this and his father won't eat that!"

"I'll give you the recipe when I give you the one for the noodles. Bella says it's the best she ever ate. My husband gets so mad when I go down in the kitchen—me with two grand girls and washerwoman two days a week! But the girls can't cook to suit me."

"Excuse me, too, from American cookin'."

Mrs. Blondheim's interest and gaze wandered down the dining-hall. "I wish you'd look at that Sternberger girl actin' up! Ain't it disgusting?"

"Please pass the salt, Mrs. Blondheim. That's the trouble with hotel cooking—they don't season. At home we like plenty of it, too. I season and season, and then at the table my husband has to have more."

"She wouldn't have met him at all if it hadn't been for Bella," pursued Mrs. Blondheim.

The object of Mrs. Blondheim's solicitude, fresh as spring in crisp white linen, turned her long eyes upon Mr. Arnheim.

"You ought to feel flattered, Mr. Arnheim, that I let you come over to my table."

Mr. Arnheim regarded her through a mist of fragrant coffee steam. "You betcher life I feel flattered. I'd get up earlier than this to have breakfast with a little queen."

"Ain't you ever goin' to quit jollyin'?"

He leaned across the table. "That ain't a bad linen model you're wearin'—it's domestic goods, too. Where'd you get it?"

"At Lipman's."

"I sold them a consignment last year; but, say, if you want to see real classy white goods you ought to see some ratine cutaways I'm bringing over. I've brought a model I'm goin' to call the Phoebe Snow. It's the niftiest thing for early fall you ever saw."

"Ratine?"

"You never heard of it? That's where I get my work in—it's the new lines, the novelty stuff, that gets the money."

"Are you goin' in the surf this morning, Mr. Arnheim?"

"I'm goin' where you go, little one." He dropped two lumps of sugar into her coffee-cup. "Sweets to the sweet," he said.

"Silly!" But she giggled under her breath.

They pushed back their chairs and strolled down the aisle between the tables. She smiled brightly to her right and left.

"Good morning, Mrs. Blondheim. Is it warm enough for you?"

"Good morning," replied Mrs. Blondheim, stabbing a bit of omelet with vindictive fork.

Mrs. Epstein looked after the pair with warming eyes. "She is a stylish dresser, ain't she?"

"I wish you'd see the white linen my Bella's got. It's got sixteen yards of Cluny lace in the waist alone—and such Cluny, too! I paid a dollar and a half a yard wholesale."

"Just look at this waist I'm wearin', Mrs. Blondheim. You wouldn't think I paid three and a half for the lace, would you?"

"Oh yes; I can always tell good stuff when I see it, and I always say it pays best in the end," said Mrs. Blondheim, feeling the heavy lace edge of Mrs. Epstein's sleeve between discriminating thumb and forefinger.

Suddenly Mrs. Epstein's eyes widened; she rose to her feet, drawing a corner of the table-cloth awry. "If it ain't my Louie!"

Mr. Louis Epstein, a faithful replica of his mother, with close black hair that curled on his head like the nap of a Persian lamb, imprinted a large, moist kiss upon the maternal lips.

"Hello, maw! Didn't you expect me?"

"Not till the ten-o'clock train, Louie. How's papa?"

"He'th fine. I left him billing thom goods to Thpokane."

"How's business, Louie?"

"Not tho bad, but pa can't get away yet for a week. The fall goods ain't all out yet."

"Ain't it awful, the way that man is all for business, Mrs. Blondheim? This is my son Louie."

"Well, well, Mr. Epstein. I've heard a lot about you. I want you to meet my daughter Bella. You ought to make friends."

"Yeth'm," said Mr. Epstein.

* * * * *

Out on the clean-washed beach the sun glinted on the water and sent points of light dancing on the wavelets like bits of glass. Children in blue rompers burrowed and jangled their painted spades and pails; nursemaids planted umbrellas in the sand and watched their charges romp; parasols flashed past like gay-colored meteors.

In the white-capped surf bathers bobbed and shouted, and all along the shore-line the tide ran gently up the beach and down again, leaving a smooth, damp stretch of sand which soughed and sucked beneath the steps of the bathers.

Far out, where the waters were highest and the whitecaps maddest, Mr. Arnheim held Miss Sternberger about her slim waist and raised her high over each rushing breaker. They caught the swells and lay back against the heavy tow, letting the wavelets lap up to their chins.

Mr. Arnheim, with little rivulets running down his cheeks, shook the water out of his grayish hair and looked at her with salt-bitten, red-rimmed eyes.

"Gee!" he wheezed. "You're a spunky little devil! Excuse me from the beach-walkers; I like 'em when they're game like you."

She danced about like an Amphitrite. "Who would be afraid of the water with a dandy swimmer like you?"

"This ain't nothin'," said Mr. Arnheim. "You ought to see me in still water. At Arverne last summer I was the talk of the place."

They emerged from the water, dripping and heavy-footed. She wrung out her brief little skirts and stamped her feet on the sand. Mr. Arnheim hopped on one foot and then on the other, holding his head aslant. Then they stretched out on the white, sunbaked beach. Miss Sternberger loosened her hair and it showered about her.

"Gee! 'Ain't you got a swell bunch of hair!"

She shook and fluffed it. "You ought to seen it before I had typhoid. I could sit on it then."

"That Phoebe Snow model that I got in mind for Lillian Russell would make you look like a queen, with that hair of yourn!"

She buried his arm in the sand and patted the mound. "Now," she said, "I got you, and you can't do anything without askin' me."

"You got me, anyway," he said, with an expressive glance.

"Yes," she purred, "that's what you say now; but when you get back to New York you'll forget all about the little girl you met down at the shore."

"That's all you know about me. I don't take up with every girl."

"I'm glad you don't," she said.

"But I'll bet you got a different fellow for every day when you're in New York."

"Nothin' like that," she said; "but, anyway, there's always room for one more."

Two young men without hats passed. Miss Sternberger called out her greeting.

"Hello, Manny! Wasn't the water grand? What? Well, you tell Leo he don't know nothin'. No, we don't want to have our pictures taken! Mr. Arnheim, I want to introduce you to Mr. Landauer, a neckwear man out of Baltimore, and Mr. Manny Sinai, also neckwear, out of New York."

They posed, with the white sunlight in their eyes.

"I hope we won't break the camera," said Arnheim.

The remark was greeted with laughter. The little machine clicked, the new-comers departed, and then Miss Sternberger and Mr. Arnheim turned to each other again.

"You ain't tired, are you—Myra?"

"No—Simon"—she danced to her feet and tossed the hair back from her face—"I ain't tired."

They walked down the beach toward the bathhouse, humming softly to themselves.

"I'll be out in ten minutes," she said, pausing at the door of her locker.

"Me too," he said.

When they met again they were regroomed and full of verve. She was as cool as a rose. They laughed at their crinkly finger-tips—wrinkled by the water like parchment; and his neck, where it rose above the soft high collar, was branded by the sun a flaming red.

"Gee!" she cried. "Ain't you sunburnt!"

"I always tan red," he said.

"And me, I always tan tan."

They exchanged these pithy and inspired bits of autobiography in warm, intimate tones. At their hotel steps she sighed with a delicious weariness.

"I wish I could do everything for you, little one—even walk up-stairs."

"I ain't tired, Simon; only—only—Oh, I don't know."

"Little one," he said, softly.

In the lobby Miss Bella Blondheim leaned an elbow on the clerk's desk and talked to a stout young man with a gold-mounted elk's tooth on his watch-fob, and black hair that curled close to his head.

They made a group of four for a moment, Miss Blondheim regarding the arrivals with bright, triumphant eyes.

"My friend, Mr. Louis Epstein," she said.

The men shook hands.

"Related to the Epstein & Son Millinery Company, Broadway and Spring?"

"Thertainly am. I happen to be the thon mythelf."

"Was you in the surf this mornin', Bella? It was grand!"

"No, Myra," replied her friend. "Mr. Epstein and me took a trip to Ocean View."

"You missed the water this mornin'. It was fine and dandy!" volunteered Mr. Arnheim.

"Me and Mr. Epstein are goin' this afternoon—ain't we?"

"We thertainly are," agreed Mr. Epstein, regarding Miss Blondheim with small, admiring eyes.

Miss Sternberger edged away. "Pleased to have met you, Mr. Epstein."

Mr. Arnheim edged with her and they moved on their way toward the dining-room.

Mrs. Blondheim from her point of vantage—the wicker rocker—leaned toward her sister-in-law.

"Look, Hanna! that's Louie Epstein, of the Epstein & Son Millinery Company, with Bella. He's a grand boy. I meet his mother at Doctor Bergenthal's lecture every Saturday morning. Epstein & Son have got a grand business, and Bella could do a whole lot worse."

"Well, I wish her luck," said Mrs. Blondheim's sister-in-law.

"I smell fried smelts. Let's go in to lunch."

Mrs. Blondheim stabbed her crochet needle into her spool. "I usually dip my smelts in bread crumbs. Have you ever tried them that way, Hanna?"

"Julius don't eat smelts."

They moved toward the dining-room.

Late that afternoon Miss Sternberger and Mr. Arnheim returned from a sail. Their faces were flushed and full of shy, sweet mystery.

"I can't show you the models the way I'd like to, dearie, but I got 'em in colors just like the real thing."

"Oh, Simon, you're doin' a thing like this for me without me even askin' you!"

His hold of her arm tightened. "I wouldn't show these here to my own sister before the twenty-fifth of the month. Now you know how you stand with me, little one."

"Oh," she cried, "I'm so excited! It's just like lookin' behind the scenes in a theayter."

He left her and returned a few moments later with a flat, red-covered portfolio. They sought out an unmolested spot and snuggled in a corner of a plush divan in one of the deserted parlors. He drew back the cover and their heads bent low.

At each turn of the pages she breathed her ecstasy and gave out shrills and calls of admiration.

"Oh, Simon, ain't that pink one a beauty! Ain't that skirt the swellest thing you ever seen!"

"That's the Piquette model, girlie. You and all New York will be buyin' it in another month. Ain't it the selectest little thing ever?"

Her face was rapt. "It's the swellest thing I've ever seen!" she declared.

He turned to another plate.

"Oh-h-h-h-h!" she cried.

"Ain't that a beauty! That there is going to be the biggest hit I've had yet. Watch out for the Phoebe Snow! I've got the original model in my trunks. That cutaway effect can't be beat."

"Oh-h-h-h-h!" she repeated.

They passed slowly over the gay-colored plates.

"There's that flame-colored one I'd like to see you in."

"Gee!" she said. "There's some class to that."

After a while the book was laid aside and they talked in low, serious tones; occasionally his hand stroked hers.

The afternoon waned; the lobby thinned; the dowagers and their daughters asked for room keys and disappeared for siestas and more mysterious processes; children trailed off to rest; the hot land-breezes, dry and listless, stirred the lace curtains of the parlor—but they remained on the plush divan, rapt as might have been Paolo and Francesca in their romance-imbued arbor.

"How long will you be down here?" she asked.

"As long as you," he replied, not taking his eyes from her face.

"Honest?"

"Sure. I don't have to go in to New York for a week or ten days yet. My season ain't on yet."

She leaned her head against the back of the divan. "All nice things must end," she said, with the 'cello note in her voice.

"Oh, I don't know!" he replied, with what might have been triple significance.

They finally walked toward the elevator, loath to part for the interim of dressing.

That evening they strolled together on the beach until the last lights of the hotel were blinking out. Then they stole into the semi-dark lobby like thieves—but soft-voiced, joyous thieves. A few straggling couples like themselves came in with the same sheepish but bright-eyed hesitancy. At the elevator Miss Blondheim and Mr. Epstein were lingering over good-nights.

The quartette rode up to their respective floors together—the girls regarding each other with shy, happy eyes; the men covering up their self-consciousness with sallies.

"Ain't you ashamed to keep such late hours, Miss Blondheim?" said Mr. Arnheim.

"I don't see no early-to-bed-early-to-rise medals on none of us," she said, diffidently.

"These thummer rethorts sure ain't no plathe for a minither's thon," said Mr. Epstein.

Laughter.

"Remember, Mr. Arnheim, whoever's up first wait in the leather chair opposite the elevator."

"Sure thing, Miss Sternberger."

Her last glance, full of significance, was for Mr. Arnheim. The floor above he also left the elevator, the smile still on his lips.

Left alone, Mr. Epstein turned to Miss Blondheim.

"Good night, dearie," he whispered. "Thweet dreamth."

"Good night, Louie," she replied. "Same to you."

Mr. Arnheim awoke to a scudding rain; his ocean-ward window-sill dripping and a great patch of carpet beneath the window dark and soggy. Downstairs the lobby buzzed with restrained energies; a few venturesome ones in oils and turned-up collars paced the veranda without.

Mr. Arnheim, in his invariable soft collar and shadow-checked suit, skirted the edge of the crowd in matinal ill humor and deposited his room key at the desk. The clerk gave him in return a folded newspaper and his morning mail.

Mr. Arnheim's morning aspect was undeniable. He suggested too generous use of soap and bay rum, and his eyes had not lost the swollen heaviness that comes with too much or too little sleep. He yawned and seated himself in the heavy leather chair opposite the elevator.

His first letter was unstamped and addressed to him on hotel stationery; the handwriting was an unfamiliar backhand and the inclosure brief:

DEAR MR. ARNHEIM: I am very sorry we could not keep our date, but I got a message and I got to go in on the 7:10 train. Hope to see you when I come back.

Sincerely, MYRA STERNBERGER.

Mr. Arnheim replaced the letter slowly in the envelope. There were two remaining—a communication from a cloak-manufacturing firm and a check from a banking-house. He read them and placed them in his inside coat pocket. Then he settled the back of his neck against the rim of the chair, crossed one leg over the other, rattled his newspaper open, and turned to the stock-market reports.

One week later Mr. Simon Arnheim, a red portfolio under one arm, walked into the mahogany, green-carpeted, soft-lighted establishment of an importing house on Fifth Avenue.

Mrs. S.S. Schlimberg, senior member, greeted him in her third-floor office behind the fitting-rooms.

"Well, well! Wie geht's, Arnheim? I thought it was gettin' time for you."

Mr. Arnheim shook hands and settled himself in a chair beside the desk. "You know you can always depend upon me, madame, to look you up the minnit I get back. Don't I always give you first choice?"

Mrs. Schlimberg weighed a crystal paper-weight up and down in her pudgy, ringed hands. "None of your fancy prices for me this season, Arnheim. There's too many good things lyin' loose. That's why I got my openin' a month sooner. I got a designer came in special off her vacation with some good things."

Mr. Arnheim winked. "Schlim, I got some models here to show you that you can't beat. When you see 'em you'll pay any price."

"I can't pay your fancy prices no more. I paid you too much for that plush fad last winter, and it never was a go."

Mr. Arnheim chuckled. "When you see a couple of the designs I brought over this trip you'll be willin' to pay me twice as much as for the hobble. Come on—own up, Schlim; you can't beat my styles. Why, you can copy them for your import-room and make ninety per cent, on any one of 'em!"

"They won't pay the prices, I tell you. Some of my best customers have gone over to other houses for the cheaper goods."

"You can't put over domestic stuff on your trade, Schlim. You might as well admit it. You gotta sting your class of trade in order to have 'em appreciate you."

"Now, just to show you that I know what I'm talking about, Arnheim, I got the best lines of new models for this season I've had since I'm in business—every one of them domestics too. I'm puttin' some made-in-America models in the import-room to-day that will open your eyes."

Mr. Arnheim laughed and opened his portfolio. "I'll show you these till my trunks come up," he said.

"Just a minute, Arnheim. I want to show you some stuff—Miss Sternberger!" Mrs. Schlimberg raised her voice slightly, "Miss Sternberger!"

Almost immediately a svelte, black-gowned figure appeared in the doorway; she wore her hair oval about her face, like a Mona Lisa, and her hands were long and the dusky white of ivory.

"Mr. Arnheim, I want to introduce you to a designer we've got since you went away. Mr. Arnheim—Miss Sternberger."

The whir of sewing-machines from the workrooms cut the silence.

"How do you do?" said Miss Sternberger.

"How do you do?" said Mr. Arnheim.

"Miss Sternberger is like you, Mr. Arnheim—she's always out after novelties; and I will say for her she don't miss out! She put out a line of uncut velvets last winter that was the best sellers we had."

Mr. Arnheim bowed. Mrs. Schlimberg turned to Miss Sternberger.

"Miss Sternberger, will you bring in some of those new models that are going like hot cakes? Just on the forms will do."

"Certainly." She disappeared from the doorway.

Mrs. Schlimberg tapped her forefinger on the desk. "There's the finest little designer we've ever had! I got her off a Philadelphia house, and I 'ain't never regretted the money I'm payin' her. She's done more for the house in eight months than Miss Isaacs did in ten years!"

Miss Sternberger returned; a stock-boy wheeled in the new models on wooden figures while Mrs. Schlimberg and her new designer arranged them for display. Mrs. Schlimberg turned to Mr. Arnheim.

"How's the wife and boys, Arnheim? I 'ain't seen 'em since you brought 'em all in to see the Labor Day parade from the store windows last fall. Them's fine boys you got there, Arnheim!"

"Thanks," said Arnheim.

"Now, Arnheim, I'm here to ask you if you can beat these. Look at that there peach-bloom Piquette—look! Can you beat it? That there's the new butterfly skirt—just one year ahead of anything that's being shown this season." Mrs. Schlimberg turned to a second model. "Look at this here ratine cutaway. If the Phoebe Snow ain't the talk of New York before next week, then I don't know my own name. Ain't it so, Miss Sternberger?"

Miss Sternberger ran her smooth hand over the lace shoulder of the gown. "This is a great seller," she replied, smiling at Mr. Arnheim. "Lillian Russell is going to wear it in the second act of her new play when she opens to-morrow night."

"I guess we're slow in here," chuckled Mrs. Schlimberg, nudging Mr. Arnheim with the point of her elbow.

Miss Sternberger spread the square train of a flame-colored robe full length on the green carpet and drew back a corner of the hem to display the lacy avalanche beneath. Then she bowed slightly and turned toward the door.

Mrs. Schlimberg laid a detaining hand on her sleeve. "Just a minute, Miss Sternberger. Mr. Arnheim's brought in some models he wants us to look at."



SOB SISTER

Physics can answer whence goes the candle-flame when it vanishes into blackness and what becomes of sound when the great maw of silence digests it. But what science can know the destiny of the pins and pins and pins, and what is the oblivion which swallows that great army of street-walking women whose cheeks are too pink and who dwell outside the barbed-wire fence of respectability?

Let the pins go, unless one lies on the sidewalk point toward you, and let this be the story of Mae Munroe, herself one of the pink-cheeked grenadiers of that great army whose destiny is as vague as the destiny of pins, and who in more than one vain attempt to climb had snagged her imitation French embroidery petticoats on the outward side of that barbed-wire fence.

Then, too, in the years that lead up to this moment Mae Munroe had taken on weight—the fair, flabby flesh of lack of exercise and no lack of chocolate bonbons. And a miss is as good as a mile, or a barbed-wire fence, only so long as she keeps her figure down and her diet up. When Mae Munroe ran for a street-car she breathed through her mouth for the first six blocks after she caught it. The top button of her shoe was no longer equal to the span. But her eyes were still blue, rather like sky when you look straight up; her hair yellow to the roots; and who can gainsay that a dimple in the chin is not worth two in the cheeks?

In the florid disorder of a red velvet sitting-room cluttered with morning sunshine and unframed, unsigned photographs of stage favorites, empty bottles and dented-in cushions, Mae Munroe stirred on her high mound of red sateen sofa-pillows; placed her paper-bound book face down on the tabouret beside her; yawned; made a foray into an uncovered box of chocolate bonbons; sank her small teeth into a creamy oozing heart and dropped a particle of the sweet into the sniffling, upturned snout of a white wool dog cuddled in the curve of her arm; yawned again.

"No more tandy! Make ittsie Snookie Ookie sick! Make muvver's ittsie bittsie bow-wow sick! No! No!"

Each admonition she accompanied with a slight pat designed to intimidate further display of appetite. The small bunch in her arms raised his head and regarded her with pink, sick little eyes, his tongue darting this way and that in an aftermath of relish; then fell to licking her bare forearm with swift, dry strokes.

"Muvver's ittsie bittsie Snookie! Him love him poor muvver! Him poor, poor muvver!"

A cold tear oozed through one of Miss Munroe's closed eyes, zigzagged down her face, and she laid her cheek pat against the white wool.

"Muvver just wishes she was dead, Snookie. God! don't she just!"

An hour she lay so. The morning sunshine receded, leaving a certain grayness in the cluttered room. From the rear of the flat came the clatter of dishes and the harsh sing of water plunging from a faucet. The book slid from its incline on the pillow to the floor and lay with its leaves crumpled under. The dog fell to snoring. Another while ticked past—loudly. And as if the ticking were against her brain like drops of water, she rose to a half-sitting posture, reached for the small onyx clock on the mantelpiece and smothered it beneath one of the red sateen sofa-pillows. When she relaxed again two fresh tears waggled heavily down her cream-colored cheeks. Then for a while she slept, with her mouth ever so slightly open and revealing the white line of her teeth. The tears slid off her cheeks to the mussed frills of her negligee and dried there.

The little dog emerged from his sleep gaping and stretching backward his hind legs. Mae Munroe yawned, extending her arms at full length before her; regarded her fair ringed fingers and the four dimples across the back of each hand; reached for a cigarette and with the wry face of nausea tossed it back into its box; swung to a sitting posture on the side of the sofa, the dog springing from the curve of her arm to the floor, shaking himself.

Her blowsy hair, burned at the ends but the color of corn-silk, came unloosed of its morning plait and she braided it over one shoulder, her blue eyes fixed on space. Tears would come.

Then she rose and crossed to the golden-oak piano between the windows, her negligee open its full length and revealing her nightdress; crossed with a slight limp and the dog yapping at the soiled and lacy train; fell to manipulating the self-playing attachment, peddling out a metallic avalanche of popular music.

At its conclusion she swung around on the bench, her back drooping as if under pressure of indolence; yawned; crossed to the window and between the parted lace curtains stood regarding the street two stories beneath, and, beyond the patches of intervening roofs, a limited view of the Hudson River, a barge of coal passing leisurely up center stream, a tug suckling at its side.

From the hallway and in the act of mopping a margin of floor, a maid-of-all-work swung back from all-fours and sat upright on her heels, inserting a head of curl-papers through the open doorway.

"Play that over again, Miss Mae. That Mustard Glide' sure does tickle my soles."

Miss Munroe turned to the room with the palm of her hand placed pat against her brow. "God!" said she, "my head!"

"Aw, Miss Mae, can't you get yourself in a humor? What's the matter with you and me going to a movie this afternoon, eh?"

"Movie! The way every damn thing gets on my nerves, I'd be a hit at a movie, wouldn't I? I'd be a hit anywheres!"

"I tell you, Miss Mae, all this worry ain't going to get you nowheres. He'll come around again all right if you only give him time. And if he don't, you should worry! I tell you there ain't one of 'em breathes is worth more than his bank-book."

"God! my head!"

The figure on all-fours rose to full height, drying each forearm on her apron.

"Lay down, dearie, and just don't you worry. I've seen 'em get spells or get holy and stay away for two months on a stretch, and the checks not coming in regular as clockwork like yours, neither. Two months at a time I've seen 'em stick away. Why, when I worked on the lower West Side they used to stick away two and three months like that and then come loafing in one night just like nothing hadn't happened. You ain't got no kick coming, Miss Mae."

A layer of tears rose immediately to Miss Munroe's eyes, dimming them. She wiped them away with one of her sleeve frills.

"Max ain't like that and you know it. You've seen for yourself how he 'ain't missed his every other night in three years. You seen for yourself."

"They're all alike, I tell you, Miss Mae. The best way to handle 'em is to leave 'em alone."

"How he's been falling off. Loo, all—"

"'Sh-h-h, now, Miss Mae, don't begin getting excited—all last night while I was rubbing your head that's what you kept mumbling and mumbling even after you fell asleep. That—don't help none."

"All last month so irregular and now only once last week, and—and not at all this week. Good heavens! I just wonder, I—just wonder."

"Now, just whatta you bet he'll be up to supper to-night, Miss Mae? If I was you, dearie, I wouldn't be scared, I'd just go right to the telephone and—"

"He gets so sore, Loo. You remember that time I telephoned him about that case of wine he sent up and it came busted, and his mother—his old woman was in the office. He raises hell if I try to telephone him during business."

"Just the same, I got a hunch he'll be up to supper to-night, and when I get a hunch things happen."

"It's his old woman, I tell you. It's his old woman is sniffing things again. Say, if he'd ever let me clap eyes on that old hag, wouldn't I learn her how to keep her nose out of his business alrighty. Wouldn't I just learn her! God! my head!"

"Lay down on the sofa, dearie, and rest up your red eyes. Take my tip he'll be up to supper to-night. I'm going to order him a double sirloin and a can of them imported—"

"Ugh! For Pete's sake cut it, Loo! If anybody mentions bill of fare to me I'll yell. Take them empty bottles out of here, Loo, and choke that damn clock with another pillow. My head'll just bust if I don't get some sleep."

"There, there, dearie! Here, lemme pull down the shades. Just try to remember there ain't one of them is worth more than his bank-book. I ain't going down to the dance with Sharkey to-night; I'm going to stay right here and—"

"No, no, Loo. You go. You can have that blue silk waist I promised you and wear them red satin roses he—he brought me that time from Hot Springs. Wear 'em, but be careful of 'em."

"Aw, Miss Mae, with you here like a wet rag, and if he comes who'll fix—"

"He—he ain't coming, Loo, and if he does I'm the one he likes to fix his things, anyway. I wanna be alone, Loo. I—I just wanna be alone."

"That's just it, Miss Mae, you're too much alone; you—"

"For Pete's sake, Loo, cut it or I'll holler. Cut the conversation, dearie!"

"I'll fix the candied sweet-potatoes this morning, anyway, Miss Mae, so if he does come—"

"I tell you I'm going to yell, Loo, if you mention bill of fare to me. Cover up my feet, like a good girl, and take them bottles out and lemme sleep. My head'll bust if I don't get some sleep."

"I tell you, Miss Mae, there ain't one of 'em is worth more than his bank-book. You're always giving away everything you got, Miss Mae. Honest, you'd give your best blue silk coat off your back if—"

"If that's what you're hinting for, Loo, for pity's sake take it! I don't want it. It's too tight for me in the arms. Take it, Loo. I don't want it. I don't want anything but to be let alone."

"Aw, now, Miss Mae, I didn't mean—"

"Get out, I tell you! Get out!"

"Yes, Miss Mae." With a final pat to the rug across Mae Munroe's feet she scooped the litter of empty bottles under one arm and hurried out smiling and closing the door softly behind her and tiptoeing down the hallway to the kitchen.

On the couch Mae Munroe lay huddled with her face to the wall, her cheeks crumpled against the white wool of the dog in her arms, her lips dry, each breath puffing them outward. Easy tears would flow, enhancing her lacy disorder. Noon slipped into afternoon.

The dusk of the city which is so immediately peppered with lights came gradually to press against the drawn blinds. On the very crest of her unrest, as if her mental travail had stimulated a cocaine courage, Mae Munroe kicked aside the rug from her feet; rose and advanced to the wall telephone; unhooked the receiver; hooked it up again; unhooked it this time with a resolution that tightened and whitened her lips and sent the color high into her face; placed her mouth close to the transmitter.

"Broad three-six." And tapped with one foot as she stood.

"Zincas Importing Company? I want to speak to Mr. Max Zincas."

Wrinkles crawled about her uncertain lips.

"This is his—his mother. Yes, Mrs. Zincas."

She closed her eyes as she waited.

"Hello, Max? That you, Max?"

She grasped at the snout of the instrument, tiptoeing up to it.

"It's me, dear. But—I had to get you to the 'phone somehow. I—I—No, no, don't hang up, Max! Don't hang up, dear, I—I got to tell you something; I got to, dear."

She raised herself closer to the mouthpiece for a tighter clutch of it.

"I'm sick, dearie. I—I'm dog sick, dearie. 'Ain't been about in a week. The limp is bad and I'm sick all over. I am, dear. Come up to supper to-night, dearie. You 'ain't been near for—for a week. I got to see you about something. Just a quiet talk, dearie. I—I just got to see you, Max. I—I'm sick, dog sick."

Her voice slipped up and away for the moment, and she crammed her lacy fribble of a handkerchief tight against her lips, tiptoeing closer to the transmitter.

"No, no, Max, I swear to God I won't! Just quiet and no rough stuff. For my sake come home to supper to-night, dearie! I swear. It's my thigh, and I got a fever, dearie, that's eating me. What? Eight! No, that ain't too late. Any time you can come ain't too late. I'll wait. Sure? Good-by, dearie. At eight sharp. Good-by, dearie."

When she replaced the receiver on its hook, points of light had come out in her eyes like water-lilies opening on a lake. The ashen sheaf of anxiety folded back from her, color ran up into her face, and she flung open the door, calling down the length of hallway.

"Loo! Oh, Loo!"

"Huh?"

"Put a couple of bottles of everything on ice before you go, dearie; order a double porterhouse; open a can of them imported sausages he sent up last month, and peel some sweet-potatoes. Hurry, Loo, I wanna candy 'em myself. Hurry, dearie!"

She snatched up her furry trifle of a dog, burying her warming face in his fleece.

"M-m-muvver loves her bow-bow. Muvver loves whole world. Muvver just loves whole world. M-m-m-m, chocolate? Just one ittsie bittsie piece and muvver eat half—m-m-m! La-la! Bow-wow! La! La!"

Along that end of Riverside Drive which is so far up that rents begin to come down, night takes on the aspect of an American Venetian carnival. Steamboats outlined in electric lights pass like phosphorescent phantoms up and down the Hudson River, which reflects with the blurry infidelity of moving waters light for light, deck for deck. Running strings of incandescent bulbs draped up into festoons every so often by equidistant arc-lights follow the course of the well-oiled driveway, which in turn follows the course of the river as truly as a path made by a canal horse. A ledge of park, narrow as a terrace, slants to the water's edge, and of summer nights lovers drag their benches into the shadow of trees and turn their backs to the lampposts and to the world.

From the far side of the river, against the night sky and like an ablutionary message let slip from heaven, a soap-factory spells out its product in terms of electric bulbs, and atop that same industrial palisade rises the dim outline of stack and kiln. Street-cars, reduced by distance to miniature, bob through the blackness. At nine o'clock of October evenings the Knickerbocker River Queen, spangled with light and full of pride, moves up-stream with her bow toward Albany. And from her window and over the waves of intervening roofs Mae Munroe cupped her hands blinker fashion about her eyes and followed its gay excursional passage, even caught a drift of music from its decks.

Motionless she stood there, bare-necked and bare-armed, against the cold window-pane, inclosed from behind with lace curtains and watching with large-pupiled eyes the steamer slip along into the night; the black-topped trees swaying in the ledge of park which slanted to the water's edge; the well-oiled driveway and its darting traffic of two low-sliding lines of motor-cars with acetylene eyes.

At five minutes past eight Max Zincas fitted his key into the door and entered immediately into the front room. On that first click of the lock Mae Munroe stepped out from between the lace curtains, her face carefully powdered and bleached of all its morning inaccuracies, her lips thrust upward and forward.

"Max!"

"Whew!"

He tossed his black derby hat to the red velvet couch and dropped down beside it, his knees far apart and straining his well-pressed trousers to capacity; placed a hand on each well-spread knee, then ran five fingers through his thinning hair; thrust his head well forward, foreshortening his face, and regarded her.

"Well, girl," he said, "here I am."

"I—I—"

"Lied to me, eh? Pretty spry for a sick one, eh? Pretty slick! I knew you was lying, girl."

"I been sick as a dog, Max. Loo can tell you."

"What's got you? Thigh?"

"God! I dun'no'! I dun'no'!"

She paused in the center of the room, her lips trembling and the light from the chandelier raining full upon her. High-hipped and full-busted as Titian loved to paint them, she stood there in a black lace gown draped loosely over a tight foundation of white silk, and trying to compose her lips and her throat, which arched and flexed, revealing the heart-beats of her and the shortness of her breath.

"Is this the way to say hello to—to your Maizie, Max? Is—is this the way?" Then she crossed and leaned to him, printing a kiss on his brow between the eyes. "I been sick as a dog, Max. Ain't you going to—to kiss me?"

"Come, come, now, just cut that, Mae. Let's have supper and get down to brass tacks. What's eating you?"

"Max!"

"Come, come, now, I'm tired, girl, and got to stop off at Lenox Avenue to-night after I leave here. Where's your clock around here, anyways, so a fellow knows where he's at?"

"There it is under the pillow next to you, Max. I smothered it because it gets on my nerves all day. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, right into my head like it was saying all the time: 'Oh-Mae! Oh-Mae! Oh-Mae!' till I nearly go crazy, Max. Tick-tock—God! it—it just gets me!"

He reached for the small onyx clock, placing it upright on the mantel, and shrugged his shoulders loosely.

"Gad!" he said, "you wimmin! Crazy as loons, all of you and your kind. Come, come, get down to brass tacks, girl. I'm tired and gotta get home."

"Home, Max?"

"Yes, home!"

"Max, ain't—ain't this home no more, ain't it?"

He leaned forward, an elbow on each knee and striking his left hand solidly into his right palm. "Now if that's the line of talk you got me up here for, girl, you can cut it and cut it quick!"

"No, no, Max, it ain't my line of talk. Here, sit down, dearie, in your own chair and I'll go and dish up."

"Where's Loo?"

"Her night off, poor girl. Four nights straight she's rubbed my head and—"

"Where's my—"

"Right here, dearie, is your box of pills, underneath your napkin. There, dearie! See? Just like always."

She was full of small movements that were quick as grace notes: pinning the black lace train up and about her hips; drawing out his chair; darting with the scarcely perceptible limp down the narrow hall, back with dishes that exuded aromatic steam; placing them with deft, sure fingers. Once she paused in her haste, edged up to where he stood with one arm resting on the mantelpiece, placed an arm on each of his shoulders and let her hands dangle loose-wristed down his back.

"Tired boy, to-night! Huh? Maizie's poor tired boy!"

"Now, now!"

He removed her hands, but gently, and strolled over to where the table lay spread beside the cold, gilded radiator, a potted geranium in its center, a liberal display of showy imitation pearl-handled cutlery carefully laid out, and at each place a long-stemmed wineglass, gold-edged and the color of amber.

"Come," he said, "let's eat and get it over."

She made no sign, but with the corners of her lips propped bravely upward in her too red smile made a last hurried foray into the kitchen, returning with a covered vegetable-dish held outright from her.

"Guess!" she cried.

"Can't," he said, and seated himself.

"Gowan, guess like you used to, dearie."

He fell immediately to sampling with short, quick stabs of his fork the dish of carmine-red pickled beets beside his plate.

"Aw, gowan, Max, give a guess. What did you used to pay for with six big kisses every time I candied them for you? Guess, Max."

"Sit down," he said, and with his foot shoved a small stool before her chair.

"Lordy!" she said, drawing up en tete-a-tete, unpinning and spreading her lacy train in glory about her, "but you're some little sunbeam to have around the house."

"What these beets need is a little sugar."

She passed him the bowl; elevated her left foot in its slightly soiled white slipper to the footstool; fastened her napkin to her florid bosom with one of her numerous display of breastpins; poured some opaque wine into his glass, coming back to flood her own to the brim; smiled at him across the red head of the potted geranium, as if when the heart bleeds the heart grows light.

"Here's to you, Max!"

He raised his glass and drank in through his rather heavy mustache, then flecked it this way and that with his napkin "Ahh-h-h-h, that's the stuff!"

"S'more?"

"Yah-h-h-h-h-h!"

"Such a cotton mouth my bad boy brought home."

"Aha! Fee, fie, fum! Aha!"

"I broiled it under the single burner, Max, slow like you like. Here, you carve it, dearie. Just like always, eh?"

His fleshy, blue-shaved face took on the tenseness of concentrated effort, and he cut deep into the oozing beef, the red juice running out in quick streams.

"Ah-h-h-h-h!"

"No, no, you keep that, Max; it's your rare piece."

"Gravy?"

"Yes, dearie."

The small dog shook himself and rose from sleep and the depths of a pillow, nosing at her bare elbow.

"Was muvver's ittsie Snookie Ookie such a hungry bow-wow?"

He yapped shortly, pawing her.

"Ask big bossie sitting over there carving his din-din if him got chocolate tandy in him pocket like always for Snookie Ookie. No, no, bad red meat no good for ittsie bittsie bow-wow. Go ask big bossie what him got this time in him pocket for Snookie. Aw, look at him, Max; he remembers how you used to bring him—"

"Get down! Get down, I said! For God's sake get that little red-eyed, mangy cur out of here while we're eating, can't you? Good gad! can't a man eat a meal in this joint without having that dirty cur whining around? Get him down off your dress there, Mae. Get out, you little cur! G-e-t out!"

"Max!"

"Chocolate candy in my pocket. Chocolate arsenic, you mean! My damn-fool days are over."

"What's got you, Max? Didn't you buy him for me yourself that day at the races five whole years ago? Wasn't the first things you asked for, when you woke in the hospital with your burns, me and—and Snookie? What's soured you, Max? What? What?"

"I'm soured on seeing a strapping, healthy woman sniveling over a little sick-eyed cur. Ain't that enough to sour any man? Why don't you get up and out and exercise yourself like the right kind of wimmin do? Play tennis or get something in you besides the rotten air of this flat, and mewling over that sick-eyed cur. Get out! Scc-c-c-c-c!"

The animal bellied to the door, tail down, and into the rear darkness of the hallway.

"Max, what's got you? What do I know about tennis or—things like that? You—you never used to want—things like that."

"Aw, what's the use of wasting breath?"

He flecked at his mustache, inserting the napkin between the two top buttons of his slight bay of waistcoat; carved a second helping of meat, masticating with care and strength so that his temples, where the hair thinned and grayed, contracted and expanded with the movements of his jaws.

"What's the use?"

"Max, I—"

"Thigh bother you?"

"A—a little."

"Didn't I tell you not to spare expense on trying new doctors if—"

"That ain't my real trouble, Max; it—"

"Been out to-day?"

"No, Max, I been sick as a dog, I tell you."

"No wonder you're sick, cooped up in this flat with nobody but a servant-girl for company. Gad! ain't you ashamed to get so low that your own servant-girl is your running-mate? Ain't you?"

"Max, she—"

"I know. I know."

"I been so blue, Max. Loo can tell you how I been waiting and wondering. I—Lord, I been so blue, Max. She's good to me, Max, and—and I been so blue."

"Never knew one of you wimmin that wasn't that way half her time. You're a gang of sob sisters, every one of you—whining like you got your foot caught in a machine and can't get it out."

"How you mean, Max?"

"Aw, you're all either in the blues or nagging. Why ain't you sports enough to take the slice of life you get handed you? None of you ain't healthy enough, anyways, I tell you, indoors, eating and sleeping and mewling over poodle-dogs all the time. I'm damn sick of it all. Damn sick, if you want to know it."

"But, Max, what's put this new stuff into your head all of a sudden? You never used to care if—"

"And you got to quit writing me them long-winded letters, Mae, about what's come over me. Sometimes a fellow just comes to his senses, that's all."

"Max!"

"And you got to quit butting in my business hours on the telephone. I don't want to get ugly, but you got to cut it out. Cut it out, Mae, is what I said!"

He quaffed his wine.

"Max dear, if you'll only tell me what's hurting you I'll find a way to make good. I—I can learn lawn-tennis, if that's what you want. I can take off ten pounds in—"

"Aw, I don't want nothing. Nothing, I tell you!"

"If I only knew, Max, what's itching you. This way there's days when I just feel like I can't go on living if you don't tell me what's got you. I just feel like I can't go on living this way, Max."

Tears hot and ever ready flowed over her words and she fumbled for her handkerchief, sobs rumbling up through her.

"I just can't, I—I just can't!"

He pushed back from his half-completed meal, rising, but stooping to rap his fist sharply against the table.

"Now, lemme tell you this much right now, Mae, either you got to cut this sob stuff and get down to brass tacks and tell me what you want, or, by gad! I'll get out of here so quick it'll make your head swim. I ain't going to be let in for no tragedy-queen stuff, and the sooner you know it the better. Business! I'm a business man."

She swallowed her tears, even smiling, and with her hand pat against her bosom as if to suppress its heaving.

"I'm all right now, Max. I'm so full up with worry it—it just slipped out. I'm all right now, Max. Sit down. Sit down and finish, dearie."

But he fell to pacing the red carpet in angry staccato strides. His napkin dropped from his waistcoat to the floor and he kicked it out of his path.

"By gad! I didn't want to come, anyhow. I knew the sniveling I'd be let in for. Gimme a healthy woman with some outdoors in her. Gimme—"

"I ain't going to let out any more, Max; I swear to God I ain't. Sit down, dear, and finish your supper. Looka, your coffee's all cold. Lemme go out and heat it up for you. I—"

"I'm done. I'm done before I begin. Now, Mae, if you can behave yourself and hold in long enough, just say what you got me up here for, and for God's sake let's have it over!"

He planted himself before her, feet well apart, and she rose, pushing back her chair, paling.

"I—I 'ain't got much of anything to say, Max, except I—I thought maybe you'd tell me what's eating you, dearie."

"I—"

"After all these years we been together, Max, so—so happy, all of a sudden, dear, these last two months dropping off from every other night to—to twice a week and then to—to once, and this last week—not at all. I—I—heavens above, Max, I 'ain't got nothing to say except what's got you. Tell me, dearie, is it anything I've done? Is it—"

"You talk like a loon, Mae, honest you do. You 'ain't done nothing. It's just that the—the time's come, that's all. You know it had to. It always has to. If you don't know it, a woman like—like you ought to. Gad! I used to think you was the kind would break as clean as a whistle when the time came to break."

"Break, Max?"

"Yes, break. And don't gimme the baby-stare like that, neither. You know what I mean alrighty. You wasn't born yesterday, old girl!"

The blood ran from her face, blanching it. "You mean, Max—"

"Aw, you know what I mean alrighty, Mae, only you ain't sport enough to take things as they come. You knew all these years it had to come sooner or later. I 'ain't never quizzed into your old life, but if you didn't learn that, you—well you ought to. There never was a New Year came in, Mae, that I didn't tell you that, if you got the chance, for you to go out after better business. I never stood in your light or made no bones about nothing!"

"My God! Max, you—you're kidding!"

"All these years I been preaching to you, even before I joined Forest Park Club out there. 'Don't get soft, Mae. Keep down. Use the dumb-bells. Hustle around and do a little housework even if I do give you a servant. Walk in the park. Keep your looks, girl; you may need 'em,' I used to tell you."

"Oh you—You!—"

She clapped her hands over her mouth as if to stanch hysteria.

"Another let-out like that, Mae, and, by gad! I'll take my hat and—"

"No, no, Max, I—I didn't mean it. I'm all right. I—Only after all these years you wouldn't do it, Max. You wouldn't. You wouldn't throw me over and leave me cold, Max. What can I do after all these years? I—I 'ain't got a show in a chorus no more. You're kidding, Max. You're a white man, Max, and—you—you wouldn't do it, Max. You wouldn't. You—"

"Now, now, you can't say I 'ain't been as white as silk, girl, and I'm going to be just as white as I've been, too. Don't worry, girl. For six years there 'ain't been a better-stocked flat than this in town, has there?"

"No, Max."

"The best none too good, eh?"

"No, Max."

"Just the same stuff comes here that I send up to my mother's flat, eh? All the drinks and all the clothes you want and a servant in the house as good as my mother's own, eh? No kick coming, eh, girl?"

"You—you wouldn't, Max—you wouldn't ditch me. What could I do? Nothing—nothing. I—I can't hire out as a scrubwoman, I—"

"Come, come now, girl, you're pretty slick, but you—you don't quite slide. What about that thirty-five hundred you got down in your jeans—eh? Them thirty-five hundred in the Farmers' Savings Bank—eh? Eh?"

"Max!"

"Hah! Knocked you off your pins that time, didn't I? I found your bank-book one morning, kiddo—found it on the floor right next to the dresser—"

"Max, I—Out of my checks I—I saved—I—"

"Sure! Gad! I ain't kicking about it, girl. Glad for you! Glad you got it, girl, only don't try to tell me you can't take care of yourself in this world alrighty, girl. Any old time you can't! Gad! thirty-five hundred she snitches out of her allowance in six years, lives on the fat of the land, too, and then tries to bamboozle me that she's flat. Thirty-five hundred in six years. Gad! I got to hand it to you there, kiddo; I got to hand it to you!"

"You can have it back, Max. I—I was going to surprise you when I had five thousand. I—"

"Gad! I don't want your money, girl. It's yours. You're fixed for life on it. I'm even going to hand you over a couple of thou extra to show you that I'm no cheap sport. I won't have a woman breathing can say I ain't white as silk with her."

"Max, you—you're killing me! Killing me! Killing me!"

"Now, now, Mae, if I was you I wouldn't show my hand so. I don't want to hurt you, girl. It ain't like I got any but the finest feelings for you. You're all right, you are. You are."

"Then, Max, for God's sake—"

"But what are you going to do about it? What the hell is anybody going to do about it? You ain't no baby. You know what life is. And you know that the seams has got to show on one of the two sides and it ain't your fault you got turned on the under side. But you should worry, girl! You're fixed. And I'm here to tell you I'm going to hand you on top of the two thou this here little flat just as it stands, Mae. Just as it stands, piano and all. I just guess you got a kick coming!"

Her hands flew to her bosom as if the steel of his words had slipped deep into the flesh. "You don't mean what you're saying, Max."

"Sure, I do! Piano and all, girl."

"No, no, you don't. You're just kidding me, Max, like you used to when you wanted to tease me and throw a scare in me that your mother was wise about the flat. Quit your kidding, Max, and take me in your arms and sing me 'Maizie you're a Daisie' like you used to after—after we had a little row. Lemme hear you call me 'Maizie,' dear, so I'll know you're only kidding. I'm a bum sport, dearie. I—I never could stand for guying. Cut the comedy, dear."

She leaned to him with her lips twisted and dried in their frenzy to belie his words, but with little else to indicate that her heart lay ticking against her breast like a clock that makes its hour in half-time.

"Quit guying, Max, for God's sake! You—you got me feeling sick clear down inside of me. Cut it, dear. Too much is enough."

Her dress rustled with the faint swish of scything as she moved toward him, and he withdrew, taking hold of the back of his chair.

"Now, now, Mae; come, come! You're a sensible woman. I ain't stuck on this business any more than you are. You ought to have let me stay away and just let it die out instead of raking up things like this. Come, buck up, old girl! Don't make it any harder than it's got to be. These things happen every day. This is business. There, there! Now! Now!"

The sudden bout of tenderness brought the tears stinging to her eyes and she was for ingratiating herself into his embrace, but he withdrew, edging toward the piano with an entire flattening of tone.

"Now, now, Mae, I tell you that you got to cut it. It would have been better if you had just let the old cat die, You oughtn't to tried that gag to get me here to-night. You'll get a lot more out of me if you do it dry, girl. A crying woman can drive me out of the house quicker 'n plague, and you ought to know it by now."

She sat down suddenly, feeling queasy.

"Now, now, old girl, buck up! Be a sport!"

"Gimme a drink, Max. I—Just a swallow. I—I'm all right." And she squeezed her eyes tight shut to blink out the tears.

He handed her a tumbler from the table, keeping his head averted, and after a bit she fell to sobbing and choking and trembling.

"It's her! It's your old woman. She's been chloroforming you with a lot of dope talk about hitting the altar rail with a bunch of white satin with a good fat wad sewed in the lining. It's your old—"

"Cut that!"

"It's your old woman. She—she don't know you like I do, Max. She—"

"Now, now, Mae! You knew this had to come sooner or later, I 'ain't never lied, have I? Right here in this room 'ain't you told me a dozen times you'd let me go quietly when the time came? 'Ain't you?"

"I never thought you meant it, Max. You don't mean it now. Don't let your old woman upset you, dear. What she don't know won't hurt her. Stick around her a little more if you think she's got a hunch about me and the flat. But she 'ain't, dearie; there ain't a chance in the world she's got a hunch about me. Don't let her make a mollycoddle out of you, Max. That old woman don't know enough about life and things to—"

"You cut that and cut it quick! I'm a decent fellow, I am. For six years I been tipping you off to leave my mother's name out—out of your mouth. There's a place for everything and, by gad! your mouth ain't the place for her name! By gad! I ain't no saint, but I won't stand for that! By gad! I—I won't!"

"Oh-h-h-h-h! Oh-h-h-h! Oh-h-h!"

She struck her breast twice with the flat of her hand, her voice so tight and high that it carried with it the quality of strangulation.

"Ain't fit to mention her name, ain't I? Ain't fit to mention her name? My kind ain't fit to mention her name, eh?"

"No, if you got to know it. Not—like that! My old mother's name. Not like that!"

"Not fit, eh? What are we fit for, then, us that only get the husks of you men and nothing else?"

"I—"

"What am I fit for? Fit to run to when your decent friends won't stand for you? Fit to run to when you get mixed up in rotten customs deals? Fit to stand between you and hell when you got the law snapping at your heels for—for smuggling? Who was fit to run to then? Her whose name I ain't fit to mention? Her? Naw, you was afraid she'd turn on you. Naw, not her! Me! Me! I'm the one whose mouth is too dirty to mention your old lady's name—"

"By gad! you got to cut that or—"

"Just the same, who was it you hollered for when you woke up in the hospital with your back like raw meat? Who was it you hollered for then? Her whose name I ain't fit to mention? Naw, it wasn't! Me! Me! I was good enough then. I was good enough to smuggle you out of town overnight when you was dodging the law, and to sleep in my clothes for two weeks, ready to give the signal."

"That's right, dig up! Dig up! You might forget something."

"I been good enough to give you free all these years what you wasn't man enough to pay for. That's what we women are; we're the free lunch that you men get with a glass of beer, and what the hell do you care which garbage-pail what's left of us lands in after you're done with us!"

"Cut that barroom talk around here if—"

"Good enough for six years, wasn't I, to lay down like a door-mat for you to walk on, eh? Good enough. Good enough when it came to giving up chunks of my own flesh and blood when your burns was like hell's fire on your back and all your old woman could do to help was throw a swoon every time she looked at you. Good enough to—"

"Gad! I knew it! I knew it! Knew you'd show your yellow streak."

She fell to moaning in her hands. "No, no, Max, I—"

"Bah! you can't throw that up to me, though. I never wanted it! I could have bought it off any one of them poor devils that hang around hospitals, as many inches off any one of 'em as I wanted. I never wanted them to graft it on me off you. I told the doctor I didn't. I knew you'd be throwing it up to me some day. If I'd bought it off a stranger I—I wouldn't have that limp in front of me always to—to rub things in. I knew you'd throw it up to me. I—Gad! I knew it! I knew it!"

"No, no, Max, I didn't mean it. You—you just got me so crazy I don't know what I'm saying. Sure, I—I made you take it off me. I wanted 'em to cut it off me to graft on your burns because it—it was like finding a new way of saying how—how I love you, Max. Every drop of blood was like—like I could see for myself how—how I loved you, Max. I—"

"Oh, my God!" he said, folded his arms atop the piano, and let his head fall into them. "Oh, my God!"

"That's how I love you, Max. That's how you—you're all in the world I got, Max. That's why I—can't, just can't let you go, dear. Don't throw me over, Max. Cut the comedy and come down to earth. You 'ain't had a holy spell for two years now since the old woman sniffed me and wanted to marry you off to that cloak-and-suit buyer with ten thou in the bank and a rush of teeth to the front. You remember how we laffed, dearie, that night we seen her at the show? Don't let your old lady—"

"Cut that, I tell you!"

"You'd be a swell gink hitting the altar trail with a bunch of white satin, wouldn't you? At your time of life, forty and set in your ways, you'd have a swell time landing a young frisky one and trying to learn one of them mother's darlings how to rub in your hair-tonic and how to rub your salad-plate with garlic? Gosh-golly! I bust right out laffing when I even think about it! Come down to earth, Max! You'd be a swell hit welded for life with a gold band, now, wouldn't you?"

She was suddenly seized with immoderate laughter not untinctured with hysteria, loud and full of emptiness, as if she were shouting for echoes in a cave.

"Like hell you would! You tied to a bunch of satin and tending the kids with the whooping-cough! Whoops la, la!" She fell to rocking herself backward and forward, her rollicking laughter staining her face dark red.

"Whoops la, la! Whoops la, la!"

Suddenly Max Zincas rose to his height, regarding her sprawling uncontrolled pose with writhing lips of distaste, straightened his waistcoat, cleared his throat twice, and, standing, drank the last of his wine. But a pallor crept up, riding down the flush.

"Funny, ain't it? Laff! Laff! But I'd wait till you hear something funnier I got to tell you. Funny, ain't it? Laff! Laff!"

She looked up with her lips still sagging from merriment, but the dark red in her face darker.

"Huh?"

His bravado suddenly oozed and the clock ticked roundly into the silence between them.

"Huh?" she repeated, cocking her head.

"You got to know it, Mae, and the sooner I get it out of me the better. But, remember, if you wanna drive me out before I'm finished, if you wanna get rid of me a damn sight quicker than any other way, throw me some sob stuff and watch. You—Well—I—The sooner I get it out of me the better, Mae."

"Huh?"

"She's a—a nice little thing, Mae. Her mother's a crony with my old lady. Lives in a brownstone out on Lenox Avenue. Met her first at—at a tennis-match she was winning at—at Forest Park Club."

"Huh?"

"Not a high-stepper or a looker like you in your day, Mae, none of—that chorus pep you used to have. Neat, though. Great little kid for outdoors. Nice little shape, too. Not in your class, but—but neat. Eyes like yours, Mae, only not—not in your class. A—a little cast in one of them, but all to the good, Mae. Nice clean little—girl, fifteen thou with her, and her old man half owner in the Weeko Woolen Mills. I—I need the money, Mae. The customs is digging up dirt again. It ain't like I 'ain't been on the level with you, girl. You knew it had to come sooner or later. Now, didn't you, Mae? Now there's the girl. Didn't you?"

Reassured, he crossed to where she sat silent, and placed a large, heavy hand on her shoulder.

"There's nothing needs to worry you, old girl. Thirty-five hundred in your jeans and a couple of thou and the flat from me on top. Gad! it's a cinch for you, old girl. I've seen 'em ready for the dump at your age, and you—you're on the boom yet. Gad! you're the only one I ever knew kept her looks and took on weight at the same time. You're all right, Mae, and—and, gad! if I don't wish sometimes the world was different! Gad! if—if I don't!"

And, rather reassured, he tilted her chin and pinched her cold cheek and touched the corner of his eyes with the back of his wrist."

"Gad, if—if I don't!"

It was as if the flood of her emotion had risen to a wave and at his words frozen on its crest. She opened her lips to speak, but could only regard him with eyes as hard as ice-fields.

"Now, now, Mae, don't look thataway. You're a sensible woman and know the world's just built thataway. I always told you it don't cost us men nothing but loose change to show ourselves a good time. You girls gotta pay up in different coin. If I hadn't come along some other fellow would, so what's the use a fellow not showing himself a good time? You girls know where you get off. Come, be a sport, old girl! With thirty-five hundred in your jeans and me wanting to do the square thing—the piano and all, lemme say to you that you 'ain't got a kick coming. Just lemme say that to you—piano and all, Mae!"

Sobs trembled up, thawing the edge of ice that incased her. A thin blur of tears rose to her eyes like a premonitory ripple before the coming of the wind.

"You can't! You can't! You—you can't ditch me like that, I tell you. You—"

"By God! if you're going to begin to holler I'll get out of here so quick it'll make your head swim!"

"Oh no, you don't! Aw, no, you don't! You ain't going to quit so easy for a squint-eyed little hank that—that your old woman found for you. Max, you ain't! You wouldn't! Tell me you wouldn't, dear. Tell me! Tell me!"

"Get off your knees there and behave yourself, Mae! Looka your dress there, all torn. This ain't no barroom. Get up and behave yourself! Ain't you ashamed! Ain't you ashamed!"

She was trembling so that her knees sent little ripples down the tight white silk drop-skirt.

"You can't ditch me like this and get away with it. You and me can't—can't part peaceful. You can't throw me over after all these years for a little squint-eyed hank and get away with it! By Heaven! you can't!"

He drew tight fists to his sides, his lower jaw shot forward. "You start a row here and, by gad! if I don't—"

"I ain't! I ain't! But don't throw me over, Max, after all these years! Don't, Max! You need me. There ain't a woman on God's earth will do for you what I will. I—I 'ain't got nobody but you, Max, to do for. I tell you, Max, you—you need me. Think, dear, all them months when the customs was after you. Them hot days when you couldn't show your face, and I used to put you to bed and fan and fan you eight hours straight till you forgot to be scared and fell asleep like a baby."

"Now, now, Mae, I—"

"Them nights we used to mix a few drinks when we came home from a show or something and sit right here in this room and swill 'em off, laffing and laffing till we got a little lit up. That time when we sneaked down to Sheepshead and you lost your wad at the wheel and I won it back for you. All them times, Max! That—that Christmas Eve you sneaked away from your old woman! Remember? I tell you, Max, you can't throw me over after what we been through together, and get away with it. You can't, not by a damn sight! You can't!"

In spite of herself her voice would slip up, raucous sobs tore through her words, tears rained down her frankly distorted face, carrying their bitter taste of salt to her lips.

"You can't! You can't! I 'ain't got the strength! I 'ain't got a thing in life that ain't wrapped around you. I can't go back to hit or miss like—like I could ten years ago. I 'ain't got nothing saved out of it all but you. Don't try to ditch me, Max! Don't! I—I'll walk on my knees for you. I—"

"For God's sake, Mae, I—"

"If there's a way to raise two times fifteen thou for you, Max, I—I'll raise it. I'll find a way, Max. I tell you I will! I'm lucky at the wheel, Max. You watch and see. You just watch and see. I can work. Max, I—"

"Get up, Mae, get up. There's a good girl. Get up and—"

"I'll work my fingers down, Max, only don't try to ditch me, don't try to ditch me! I'll go out to the country where your old woman can't ever sniff me. I—I'll fix it, Max, so you—so you just can't lose. Don't ditch me, dear; take your Maizie back. Take me in your arms and call me Maizie. Take me!"

"Girl, 'ain't you—'ain't you got no shame!"

"Just try me back for a month, Max. For a month, Max, and see if—if I don't fix things so they come out right. Gimme a month, Max! Gimme, Max! Gimme! Gimme!"

And with her last remnant of restraint gone, she lay downright at his feet, abandoned to virulent grief, and in her naked agony a shapeless mass of frill and flounce, a horrible and not dramatic spectacle of abandonment; decencies gone down before desire, the heart ruptured and broken through its walls. In such a moment of soul dishabille and her own dishabille of bosom bulging above the tight lacing of her corset-line as she lay prone, her mouth sagging and wet with tears, her lips blowing outward in bubbles, a picture, in fact, to gloss over, Mae Munroe dragged herself closer, flinging her arms about the knees of Mr. Zincas, sobbing through her raw throat.

"Just a month, Max! Don't ditch me! Don't! Don't! Don't!"

He looked away from the sorry spectacle of her bubbling lips and great, swollen eyelids.

"Leggo! Leggo my knees!"

"Just a month, Max, just—"

"Leggo! Leggo my knees! Leggo, girl! Ain't you ashamed!"

"Just a month, Max, I—"

"Gad! 'ain't you got no shame, girl! Get up! Leggo! I can't stand this, I tell you. Be a sport and leggo me quiet, Mae. I—I'll send you everything, a—a check that'll surprise you, old girl! Lemme go quiet! Nothing can't change things. Quit your blubbering. It makes me sick, I tell you. Quit your blubbering, old girl, and leggo. Leggo! Leg-go! Leg-go, I say!"

Suddenly he stooped and with a backward turn of her wrist unloosed himself and, while the pain still staggered her, side-stepped the huddle of her body, grasped his hat from the divan and lunged to the door, tugging for a frantic moment with the lock.

On her knees beside the piano, in quite the attitude he had flung her, leaning forward on one palm and amid the lacy whirl of her train, Mae Munroe listened to his retreating steps; heard the slam of a lower door.

You who recede before the sight of raw emotions with every delicacy shamed, do not turn from the spectacle of Mae Munroe prone there on the floor, her bosom upheaved and her mouth too loose. When the heart is torn the heart bleeds, whether under cover of culture and a boiled shirt-front or without shame and the wound laid bare. And Mae Munroe, who lay there, simple soul, only knew or cared that her heart lay quivering like a hurt thing, and for the sobs that bubbled too frankly to her lips had no concern.

But after a while they ceased of exhaustion, and she rose to her feet, her train threatening to throw her; walked toward the cold, cloyed dinner, half-eaten and unappetizing on the table; and fell to scooping some of the cold gravy up from its dish, letting it dripple from the spoon back again. The powder had long since washed off her cheeks and her face was cold as dough. The tears had dried around her mouth.

Presently she pinned up the lacy train about her, opened a cupboard door and slid into a dark, full-length coat, pinned on a hat with a feather that dropped over one side as if limp with wet, dabbed at her face with a pink powder-chamois and, wheezing ever so slightly, went out, tweaking off two of the three electric lights after her—down two flights of stairs through a quiet foyer and out into the fluid warmth of late October. Stars were out, myriads of them.

An hour she walked—down the cross-town street and a bit along the wide, bright, lighted driveway, its traffic long since died down to an occasional night-prowling cab, a skimming motor-car; then down a flight of curving stone steps with her slightly perceptible limp, and into the ledge of parkway where shadows took her into their velvet silence; down a second flight, across a railroad track, and to the water's edge, where a great coal-station ran a jut of pier out into the river. She could walk its length, feeling it sway to the heavy tug of current.

Out at the very edge the water washed up against the piles with a thick, inarticulate lisp, as if what it had to say might only be understood from the under side.



THE NAME AND THE GAME

At Christmas-tide men and women with soiled lives breathe alcoholic sighs and dare to glance back into the dim corridors of their long agos.

Cronies, snug in an age of steam heat, turn their warm backs upon to-day, swap white-Christmas stories, and hanker with forefinger laid alongside of nose for the base-burners and cold backs of the good old days.

Not least upon the busy magnate's table is his shopping-list.

Evenings, six-dollar-a-week salesgirls sit in their five-dollar-a-week hall-bedrooms, with their aching feet in a tub of hot water and their aching fingers busy with baby-ribboned coat-hangers and silk needle-book tokens of Yuletide affection.

Even as it flowered in a manger the Christmas spirit, a perennial lily upon the sooty face of the world, blooms out of the slack heap of men's rife and strife.

In the hearts of children it is a pod filled with their first happiness.

Down from a sky the color of cold dish-water a cloak of swift snow fell upon the city, muffling its voice like a hand held against its mouth. Children who had never before beheld a white Christmas leaped with the joy of it. A sudden army of men with blue faces and no overcoats sprang full-grown and armed with shovels, from out the storm. City parks lay etched in sudden finery. Men coming up out of the canon of Wall Street remembered that it was Christmas and felt for bauble money.

At early dusk and through the white dance of the white storm the city slid its four million packs off its four million backs and turned homeward. Pedestrians with the shopper's light in their eyes bent into the flurry and darted for surface cars and subways. Commuters, laden with bundles and with tickets between their teeth, rushed for early trains.

Women with bearing-down bundles and babies wedged through the crowd, fighting for trains and place. Boys in cadet uniforms and boarding-school girls, homeward bound, thrust forward their shining faces as if into the to-morrow. A tight tangle of business men passed single file through a trellised gateway and on down to a lower level. A messenger with a tipsy spray of holly stuck upright in his cap whacked with a folded newspaper at a fellow-messenger's swift legs and darted in and around the knees of the crowd. A prodigal hesitated, then bought a second-class ticket for home. Two nuns hurried softly on missions of Christmas.

The low thunder of a thousand feet: tired feet, eager feet; flat feet; shabby feet; young feet; callous feet; arched and archless feet. Voices that rose like wind to a gale. A child dragged by the arm and whimpering. A group of shawled strangers interchanging sharp jargon.

Within the marble mausoleum of a waiting-room, its benches lined with the kaleidoscopic faces of the traveling public, a train-announcer bellowed a paean of tracks and stations.

At the onyx-and-nickel-plated periodical stand men in passing snatched their evening paper from off the stack of the counter, flopping down their pennies as they ran. In the glow of a spray of red and white electric bulbs, in a bower of the instant's pretty-girl periodical covers, and herself the most vivid of them all, Miss Marjorie Clark caught a hastily flung copper coin on the fly, her laughter mounting with it.

"Whoops, la-la!"

"Good catch, kiddo."

"Oh, you Charley-boy, who was you pitching for last season?"

"The Reds, because that's your color."

"Say, if you're going to catch that four-eighteen you've got to break somebody's speed limit between here and track ten. Run along, Charley-boy, and Merry Christmas."

But Mr. Charles Scully swung to a halt, poured his armful of packages into a wire basket of six-city-postcard-views for ten cents, swung open his overcoat with a sprinkling of snow on its slick-napped velvet collar, lifted his small black mustache in a smile.

"Black-eyes, I'd miss three trains for you."

"There's not another until the four-forty."

"I should worry. Anyway, for all I know you've changed your mind and are coming out with me to-night, little one."

The quick blood ran up into her small face, dyeing it, and she withdrew from his nearing features.

"I have not! Gee! you're about as square as a doughnut, you are."

"Jumping Juniper, can't a fellow miss his train just to wish a little beauty like you a Merry Christmas? But on the level, I want to take you out home with me to-night; honest I do, little spitfire."

"Crank up there, Charley-boy; you got about thirty seconds to make that train in."

"Gets you sore every time I ask you out, don't it, black-eyes? Talk about your little tin saints!"

"Say, if you was any slicker you'd slide."

"You can't scare me with those black eyes."

"Can't I, my brave boy! Say, you'd want to quarantine the dictionary if you found smallpox in it, that's how hard you are to scare."

"Well, of all the lines of talk, if you 'ain't got the greatest. Cute is no name for you."

"And say, the place where you clerk must be a classy clothes-parlor, Charley-boy."

"Right-o, little one. If you ever pass by the Brown Haberdashery, on Twenty-third Street, drop in, and I'll buy you a lunch."

"Tra-la! Where did you get that checked suit? And I'll bet you flag the train out at Glendale, where you live, with that tie. Oh, you Checkers!"

"Some class to me, eh, kiddo?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say that."

He leaned closer. His smile had an uplift like a crescent and a slight depression in his left cheek, too low for a dimple, twinkled when he smiled, like an adjacent star.