THE VERTICAL CITY

By

FANNIE HURST

_Author of_

"GASLIGHT SONATAS"

"HUMORESQUE"

ETC. 

1922

CONTENTS

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

BACK PAY

THE VERTICAL CITY

THE SMUDGE

GUILTY

ROULETTE

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

By that same architectural gesture of grief which caused Jehan at Agrato erect the Taj Mahal in memory of a dead wife and a cold hearthstone, so the Bon Ton hotel, even to the pillars with red-freckled monolithsand peacock-backed lobby chairs, making the analogy rather absurdlycomplete, reared its fourteen stories of "elegantly furnished suites, all the comforts and none of the discomforts of home. "

A mausoleum to the hearth. And as true to form as any that ever mournedthe dynastic bones of an Augustus or a Hadrian. 

An Indiana-limestone and Vermont-marble tomb to Hestia. 

All ye who enter here, at sixty dollars a week and up, leave behind thelingo of the fireside chair, parsley bed, servant problem, cretonne shoebags, hose nozzle, striped awnings, attic trunks, bird houses, ice-creamsalt, spare-room matting, bungalow aprons, mayonnaise receipt, fruitjars, spring painting, summer covers, fall cleaning, winter apples. 

The mosaic tablet of the family hotel is nailed to the room side of eachdoor and its commandments read something like this:

 One ring: Bell Boy. 

 Two rings: Chambermaid. 

 Three rings: Valet. 

 Under no conditions are guests permitted to use electric irons in rooms. 

 Cooking in rooms not permitted. 

 No dogs allowed. 

 Management not responsible for loss or theft of jewels. Same can be deposited for safe-keeping in the safe at office. 

 * * * * *

 Note:

 Our famous two-dollar Table d'Hôte dinner is served in the Red Dining Room from six-thirty to eight. Music. 

It is doubtful if in all its hothouse garden of women the Hotel BonTon boasted a broken finger nail or that little brash place along theforefinger that tattles so of potato peeling or asparagus scraping. 

The fourteenth-story manicure, steam bath, and beauty parlors saw toall that. In spite of long bridge table, lobby divan, and table-d'hôteséances, "tea" where the coffee was served with whipped cream and thetarts built in four tiers and mortared in mocha filling, the Bon Tonhotel was scarcely more than an average of fourteen pounds overweight. 

Forty's silhouette, except for that cruel and irrefutable place wherethe throat will wattle, was almost interchangeable with eighteen's. Indeed, Bon Ton grandmothers with backs and French heels that weretwenty years younger than their throats and bunions, vied with twenty'sprofile. 

Whistler's kind of mother, full of sweet years that were richer becauseshe had dwelt in them, but whose eyelids were a little weary, had noplace there. 

Mrs. Gronauer, who occupied an outside, southern-exposure suite offive rooms and three baths, jazzed on the same cabaret floor with hergranddaughters. 

Many the Bon Ton afternoon devoted entirely to the possible lackof length of the new season's skirts or the intricacies of the newfilet-lace patterns. 

Fads for the latest personal accoutrements gripped the Bon Ton inseasonal epidemics. 

The permanent wave swept it like a tidal one. 

In one winter of afternoons enough colored-silk sweaters were knitted inthe lobby alone to supply an orphan asylum, but didn't. 

The beaded bag, cunningly contrived, needleful by needleful, from littlestrands of colored-glass caviar, glittered its hour. 

Filet lace came then, sheerly, whole yokes of it for crêpe-de-Chinenightgowns and dainty scalloped edges for camisoles. 

Mrs. Samstag made six of the nightgowns that winter--three for herselfand three for her daughter. Peach-blowy pink ones with lace yokes thatwere scarcely more to the skin than the print of a wave edge running upsand, and then little frills of pink-satin ribbon, caught up here andthere with the most delightful and unconvincing little blue-satinrosebuds. 

It was bad for her neuralgic eye, the meanderings of the filet pattern, but she liked the delicate threadiness of the handiwork, and Mr. Latzliked watching her. 

There you have it! Straight through the lacy mesh of the filet to theheart interest. 

Mr. Louis Latz, who was too short, slightly too stout, and too shyof likely length of swimming arm ever to have figured in any woman'sinevitable visualization of her ultimate Leander, liked, fascinatedly, to watch Mrs. Samstag's nicely manicured fingers at work. He liked thempassive, too. Best of all, he would have preferred to feel them betweenhis own, but that had never been. 

Nevertheless, that desire was capable of catching him unawares. Thatvery morning as he had stood, in his sumptuous bachelor's apartment, strumming on one of the windows that overlooked an expansivetree-and-lake vista of Central Park, he had wanted very suddenly andvery badly to feel those fingers in his and to kiss down on them. 

Even in his busy broker's office, this desire could cut him like a swiftlance. 

He liked their taper and their rosy pointedness, those fingers, and thedry, neat way they had of stepping in between the threads. 

Mr. Latz's nails were manicured, too, not quite so pointedly, but justas correctly as Mrs. Samstag's. But his fingers were stubby and short. Sometimes he pulled at them until they cracked. 

Secretly he yearned for length of limb, of torso, even of finger. 

On this, one of a hundred such typical evenings in the Bon Ton lobby, Mr. Latz, sighing out a satisfaction of his inner man, sat himself downon a red-velvet chair opposite Mrs. Samstag. His knees, widespread, taxed his knife-pressed gray trousers to their very last capacity, buthe sat back in none the less evident comfort, building his fingers upinto a little chapel. 

"Well, how's Mr. Latz this evening?" asked Mrs. Samstag, her smileencompassing the question. 

"If I was any better I couldn't stand it, " relishing her smile and hisreply. 

The Bon Ton had just dined, too well, from fruit flip _à la_ Bon Ton, mulligatawny soup, filet of sole _sauté_, choice of or both _pouletteemincé_ and spring lamb _grignon_, and on through to fresh strawberryice cream in fluted paper boxes, _petits fours_, and _demi-tasse_. Groups of carefully corseted women stood now beside the invitationalplush divans and peacock chairs, paying twenty minutes' after-dinnerstanding penance. Men with Wall Street eyes and blood pressure slidsurreptitious celluloid toothpicks and gathered around the cigar stand. Orchestra music flickered. Young girls, the traditions of demure sixteenhanging by one-inch shoulder straps, and who could not walk across ahardwood floor without sliding the last three steps, teetered inbare arm-in-arm groups, swapping persiflage with pimply, patent-leather-haired young men who were full of nervous excitement andeager to excel in return badinage. 

Bell hops scurried with folding tables. Bridge games formed. 

The theater group got off, so to speak. Showy women and show-off men. Mrs. Gronauer, in a full-length mink coat that enveloped her like asquaw, a titillation of diamond aigrettes in her Titianed hair, and anaftermath of scent as tangible as the trail of a wounded shark, emergedfrom the elevator with her son and daughter-in-law. 

"Foi!" said Mr. Latz, by way of somewhat unduly, perhaps, expressing hisown kind of cognizance of the scented trail. 

"_Fleur de printemps_, " said Mrs. Samstag, in quick olfactory analysis. "Eight-ninety-eight an ounce. " Her nose crawling up to what he thoughtthe cunning perfection of a sniff. 

"Used to it from home--not? She is not. Believe me, I knew Max Gronauerwhen he first started in the produce business in Jersey City and theonly perfume he had was at seventeen cents a pound and not always freshkilled at that. _Cold storage de printemps_!"

"Max Gronauer died just two months after my husband, " said Mrs. Samstag, tucking away into her beaded handbag her filet-lace handkerchief, itselfguilty of a not inexpensive attar. 

"Thu-thu!" clucked Mr. Latz for want of a fitting retort. 

"Heigh-ho! I always say we have so little in common, me and Mrs. Gronauer, she revokes so in bridge, and I think it's terrible for agrandmother to blondine so red, but we've both been widows for almosteight years. Eight years, " repeated Mrs. Samstag on a small, scentedsigh. 

He was inordinately sensitive to these allusions, reddening and wantingto seem appropriate. 

"Poor little woman, you've had your share of trouble. "

"Share, " she repeated, swallowing a gulp and pressing the line of hereyebrows as if her thoughts were sobbing. "I--It's as I tell Alma, Mr. Latz, sometimes I think I've had three times my share. My oneconsolation is that I try to make the best of it. That's my motto inlife, 'Keep a bold front. '"

For the life of him, all he could find to convey to her the bleedingquality of his sympathy was, "Poor, poor little woman!"

"Heigh-ho!" she said, and again, "Heigh-ho!"

There was quite a nape to her neck. He could see it where the carefullytrimmed brown hair left it for a rise to skillful coiffure, and whatthreatened to be a slight depth of flesh across the shoulders had beencarefully massaged of this tendency, fifteen minutes each night andmorning, by her daughter. 

In fact, through the black transparency of her waist Mr. Latz thoughther plumply adorable. 

It was about the eyes that Mrs. Samstag showed most plainly whateverinroads into her clay the years might have gained. There were littledark areas beneath them like smeared charcoal, and two unrelenting sacsthat threatened to become pouchy. 

Their effect was not so much one of years, but they gave Mrs. Samstag, in spite of the only slightly plump and really passable figure, the lookof one out of health. Women of her kind of sallowness can be found dailyin fashionable physicians' outer offices, awaiting X-ray appointments. 

What ailed Mrs. Samstag was hardly organic. She was the victim ofperiodic and raging neuralgic fires that could sweep the right side ofher head and down into her shoulder blade with a great crackling andblazing of nerves. It was not unusual for her daughter Alma to sit upthe one or two nights that it could endure, unfailing through the weehours in her chain of hot applications. 

For a week, sometimes, these attacks heralded their comings with littlejabs, like the pricks of an exploring needle. Then the under-eyes beganto look their muddiest. They were darkening now and she put up twofingers with a little pressing movement to her temple. 

"You're a great little woman, " reiterated Mr. Latz, rather riveting evenMrs. Samstag's suspicion that here was no great stickler for variety ofexpression. 

"I try to be, " she said, his tone inviting out in her a mood of sweetforbearance. 

"And a great sufferer, too, " he said, noting the pressing fingers. 

She colored under this delightful impeachment. 

"I wouldn't wish one of my neuralgia spells to my worst enemy, Mr. Latz. "

"If you were mine--I mean--if--the--say--was mine--I wouldn't stop untilI had you to every specialist in Europe. I know a thing or two aboutthose fellows over there. Some of them are wonders. "

Mrs. Samstag looked off, her profile inclined to lift and fall as if bylittle pulleys of emotion. 

"That's easier said than done, Mr. Latz, by a--widow who wants to doright by her grown daughter and living so--high since the war. "

"I--I--" said Mr. Latz, leaping impulsively forward on the chair thatwas as tightly upholstered in effect as he in his modish suit, thenclutching himself there as if he had caught the impulse on the fly, "Ijust wish I could help. "

"Oh!" she said, and threw up a swift brown look from the lace making andthen at it again. 

He laughed, but from nervousness. 

"My little mother was an ailer, too. "

"That's me, Mr. Latz. Not sick--just ailing. I always say that it'sridiculous that a woman in such perfect health as I am should be such asufferer. "

"Same with her and her joints. "

"Why, except for this old neuralgia, I can outdo Alma when it comesto dancing down in the grill with the young people of an evening, orshopping. "

"More like sisters than any mother and daughter I ever saw. "

"Mother and daughter, but which is which from the back, some of myfriends put it, " said Mrs. Samstag, not without a curve to her voice;then, hastily: "But the best child, Mr. Latz. The best that ever lived. A regular little mother to me in my spells. "

"Nice girl, Alma. "

"It snowed so the day of--my husband's funeral. Why, do you know that upto then I never had an attack of neuralgia in my life. Didn't even knowwhat a headache was. That long drive. That windy hilltop with two men tokeep me from jumping into the grave after him. Ask Alma. That's how Icare when I care. But, of course, as the saying is, 'time heals. ' Butthat's how I got my first attack. 'Intenseness' is what the doctorscalled it. I'm terribly intense. "

"I--guess when a woman like you--cares like--you--cared, it's not muchuse hoping you would ever--care again. That's about the way of it, isn'tit?"

If he had known it, there was something about his intensity ofexpression to inspire mirth. His eyebrows lifted to little Gothic archesof anxiety, a rash of tiny perspiration broke out over his blue shavedface, and as he sat on the edge of his chair it seemed that inevitablythe tight sausagelike knees must push their way through mere fabric. 

Ordinarily he presented the slightly bay-windowed, bay-rummed, spatted, and somewhat jowled well-being of the Wall Street bachelor who is amusical-comedy first-nighter, can dig the meat out of the lobster clawwhole, takes his beefsteak rare and with two or three condiments, andwears his elk's tooth dangling from his waistcoat pocket and mounted ona band of platinum and tiny diamonds. 

Mothers of debutantes were by no means unamiably disposed toward him, but the debutantes themselves slithered away like slim-flanked minnows. 

It was rumored that one summer at the Royal Palisades Hotel in AtlanticCity he had become engaged to a slim-flanked one from Akron, Ohio. Buton the evening of the first day she had seen him in a bathing suit therebellious young girl and a bitterly disappointed and remonstratingmother had departed on the Buck Eye for "points west. "

There was almost something of the nudity of arm and leg he must havepresented to eighteen's tender sensibilities in Mr. Latz's expressionnow as he sat well forward on the overstuffed chair, his overstuffedknees strained apart, his face nude of all pretense and creased withanxiety. 

"That's about the way of it, isn't it?" he said again into the growingsilence. 

Suddenly Mrs. Samstag's fingers were rigid at their task of lace making, the scraping of the orchestral violin tearing the roaring noises in herears into ribbons of alternate sound and vacuum, as if she were closingher ears and opening them, so roaringly the blood pounded. 

"I--When a woman cares for--a man like--I did--Mr. Latz, she'll neverbe happy until--she cares again--like that. I always say, once anaffectionate nature, always an affectionate nature. "

"You mean, " he said, leaning forward the imperceptible half inch thatwas left of chair--"you mean--me--?"

The smell of bay rum came out greenly then as the moisture sprang out onhis scalp. 

"I--I'm a home woman, Mr. Latz. You can put a fish in water, but youcannot make him swim. That's me and hotel life. "

At this somewhat cryptic apothegm Mr. Latz's knee touched Mrs. Samstag's, so that he sprang back full of nerves at what he had notintended. 

"Marry me, Carrie, " he said, more abruptly than he might have, withoutthe act of that knee to immediately justify. 

She spread the lace out on her lap. 

Ostensibly to the hotel lobby they were as casual as, "My mulligatawnysoup was cold to-night, " or, "Have you heard the new one that Al Jolsonpulls at the Winter Garden?" But actually the roar was higher than everin Mrs. Samstag's ears and he could feel the plethoric red rushing inflashes over his body. 

"Marry me, Carrie, " he said, as if to prove that his stiff lips couldrepeat their incredible feat. 

With a woman's talent for them, her tears sprang. 

"Mr. Latz--"

"Louis, " he interpolated, widely eloquent of eyebrow and posture. 

"You're proposing, Louis!" She explained rather than asked, and placedher hand to her heart so prettily that he wanted to crush it there withhis kisses. 

"God bless you for knowing it so easy, Carrie. A young girl would makeit so hard. It's just what has kept me from asking you weeks ago, thisgetting it said. Carrie, will you?"

"I'm a widow, Mr. Latz--Louis--"

"Loo--"

"L--loo. With a grown daughter. Not one of those merry-widows you readabout. "

"That's me! A bachelor on top, but a home man underneath. Why, up tofive years ago, Carrie, while the best little mother a man ever had wasalive, I never had eyes for a woman or--"

"It's common talk what a grand son you were to her, Mr. La--Louis--"

"Loo. "

"Loo. "

"I don't want to seem to brag, Carrie, but you saw the coat that justwalked out on Mrs. Gronauer? My little mother she was a humpback, Carrie, not a real one, but all stooped from the heavy years when shewas helping my father to get his start. Well, anyway, that littlestooped back was one of the reasons why I was so anxious to make it upto her. Y'understand?"

"Yes--Loo. "

"But you saw that mink coat. Well, my little mother, three years beforeshe died, was wearing one like that in sable. Real Russian. Set me backeighteen thousand, wholesale, and she never knew different than thatit cost eighteen hundred. Proudest moment of my life when I helped mylittle old mother into her own automobile in that sable coat. 

"I had some friends lived in the Grenoble Apartments when you did--theAdelbergs. They used to tell me how it hung right down to her heels andshe never got into the auto that she didn't pick it up so as not to siton it. 

"That there coat is packed away in cold storage now, Carrie, waiting, without me exactly knowing why, I guess, for--the one little woman inthe world besides her I would let so much as touch its hem. "

Mrs. Samstag's lips parted, her teeth showing through like light. 

"Oh, " she said, "sable! That's my fur, Loo. I've never owned any, butask Alma if I don't stop to look at it in every show window. Sable!"

"Carrie--would you--could you--I'm not what you would call a youngsterin years, I guess, but forty-four isn't--"

"I'm--forty-one, Louis. A man like you could have younger. "

"No. That's what I don't want. In my lonesomeness, after my mother'sdeath, I thought once that maybe a young girl from the West, nice girlwith her mother from Ohio--but I--funny thing, now I come to think aboutit--I never once mentioned my little mother's sable coat to her. Icouldn't have satisfied a young girl like that, or her me, Carrie, anymore than I could satisfy Alma. It was one of those mamma-made matchesthat we got into because we couldn't help it and out of it before it wastoo late. No, no, Carrie, what I want is a woman as near as possible tomy own age. "

"Loo, I--I couldn't start in with you even with the one little lie thatgives every woman a right to be a liar. I'm forty-three, Louis--nearerto forty-four. You're not mad, Loo?"

"God love it! If that ain't a little woman for you! Mad? Why, just yourdoing that little thing with me raises your stock fifty per cent. "

"I'm--that way. "

"We're a lot alike, Carrie. For five years I've been living in thishotel because it's the best I can do under the circumstances. But atheart I'm a home man, Carrie, and unless I'm pretty much off my guess, you are, too--I mean a home woman. Right?"

"Me all over, Loo. Ask Alma if--"

"I've got the means, too, Carrie, to give a woman a home to be proudof. "

"Just for fun, ask Alma, Loo, if one year since her father's death Ihaven't said, 'Alma, I wish I had the heart to go back housekeeping. '"

"I knew it!"

"But I ask you, Louis, what's been the incentive? Without a man in thehouse I wouldn't have the same interest. That first winter after myhusband died I didn't even have the heart to take the summer covers offthe furniture. Alma was a child then, too, so I kept asking myself, 'Forwhat should I take an interest?' You can believe me or not, but half thetime with just me to eat it, I wouldn't bother with more than a coldsnack for supper, and everyone knew what a table we used to set. Butwith no one to come home evenings expecting a hot meal--"

"You poor little woman! I know how it is. Why, if I so much as used totelephone that I couldn't get home for supper, right away I knew thelittle mother would turn out the gas under what was cooking and not eatenough herself to keep a bird alive. "

"Housekeeping is no life for a woman alone. On the other hand, Mr. Latz--Louis--Loo, on my income, and with a daughter growing up, andnaturally anxious to give her the best, it hasn't been so easy. Peoplethink I'm a rich widow, and with her father's memory to consider anda young lady daughter, naturally I let them think it, but on myseventy-four hundred a year it has been hard to keep up appearances in ahotel like this. Not that I think you think I'm a rich widow, but justthe same, that's me every time. Right out with the truth from thestart. "

"It shows you're a clever little manager to be able to do it. "

"We lived big and spent big while my husband lived. He was as shrewd ajobber in knit underwear as the business ever saw, but--well, youknow how it is. Pneumonia. I always say he wore himself out withconscientiousness. "

"Maybe you don't believe it, Carrie, but it makes me happy what you justsaid about money. It means I can give you things you couldn't afford foryourself. I don't say this for publication, Carrie, but in Wall Streetalone, outside of my brokerage business, I cleared eighty-six thousandlast year. I can give you the best. You deserve it, Carrie. Will you sayyes?"

"My daughter, Loo. She's only eighteen, but she's my shadow--I lean onher so. "

"A sweet, dutiful girl like Alma would be the last to stand in hermother's light. "

"But remember, Louis, you're marrying a little family. "

"That don't scare me. "

"She's my only. We're different natured. Alma's a Samstag through andthrough. Quiet, reserved. But she's my all, Louis. I love my baby toomuch to--to marry where she wouldn't be as welcome as the day itself. She's precious to me, Louis. "

"Why, of course! You wouldn't be you if she wasn't. You think I wouldwant you to feel different?"

"I mean--Louis--no matter where I go, more than with most children, she's part of me, Loo. I--Why, that child won't so much as go to spendthe night with a girl friend away from me. Her quiet ways don't show it, but Alma has character! You wouldn't believe it, Louis, how she takescare of me. "

"Why, Carrie, the first thing we pick out in our new home will be a roomfor her. "

"Loo!"

"Not that she will want it long, the way I see that young rascalFriedlander sits up to her. A better young fellow and a better businesshead you couldn't pick for her. Didn't that youngster go out to Daytonthe other day and land a contract for the surgical fittings for a bignew clinic out there before the local firms even rubbed the sleep out oftheir eyes? I have it from good authority Friedlander Clinical SupplyCompany doubled their excess-profit tax last year. "

A white flash of something that was almost fear seemed to strike Mrs. Samstag into a rigid pallor. 

"No! No! I'm not like most mothers, Louis, for marrying their daughtersoff. I want her with me. If marrying her off is your idea, it's best youknow it now in the beginning. I want my little girl with me--I have tohave my little girl with me!"

He was so deeply moved that his eyes were embarrassingly moist. 

"Why, Carrie, every time you open your mouth you only prove to mefurther what a grand little woman you are!"

"You'll like Alma, when you get to know her, Louis. "

"Why, I do now! Always have said she's a sweet little thing. "

"She is quiet and hard to get acquainted with at first, but that isreserve. She's not forward like most young girls nowadays. She's thekind of a child that would rather go upstairs evenings with a book orher sewing than sit down here in the lobby. That's where she is now. "

"Give me that kind every time in preference to all these gay youngchickens that know more they oughtn't to know about life before theystart than my little mother did when she finished. "

"But do you think that girl will go to bed before I come up? Not a bitof it. She's been my comforter and my salvation in my troubles. Morelike the mother, I sometimes tell her, and me the child. If you want me, Louis, it's got to be with her, too. I couldn't give up my baby--not mybaby. "

"Why, Carrie, have your baby to your heart's content! She's got to be afine girl to have you for a mother, and now it will be my duty to pleaseher as a father. Carrie, will you have me?"

"Oh, Louis--Loo!"

"Carrie, my dear!"

And so it was that Carrie Samstag and Louis Latz came into theirbetrothal. 

 * * * * *

None the less, it was with some misgivings and red lights burning highon her cheek bones that Mrs. Samstag at just after ten that eveningturned the knob of the door that entered into her little sitting room. 

The usual horrific hotel room of tight green-plush upholstery, ornamental portières on brass rings that grated, and the equidistantFrench engravings of lavish scrollwork and scroll frames. 

But in this case a room redeemed by an upright piano with agreen-silk-and-gold-lace-shaded floor lamp glowing by. Two gilt-framedphotographs and a cluster of ivory knickknacks on the white mantel. A heap of handmade cushions. Art editions of the gift poets and somecirculating-library novels. A fireside chair, privately owned and drawnup, ironically enough, beside the gilded radiator, its headrest wornfrom kindly service to Mrs. Samstag's neuralgic brow. 

From the nest of cushions in the circle of lamp glow Alma sprang up ather mother's entrance. Sure enough, she had been reading, and her cheekwas a little flushed and crumpled from where it had been resting in thepalm of her hand. 

"Mamma, " she said, coming out of the circle of light and switching onthe ceiling bulbs, "you stayed down so late. "

There was a slow prettiness to Alma. It came upon you like a littledawn, palely at first and then pinkening to a pleasant consciousnessthat her small face was heart-shaped and clear as an almond, that thepupils of her gray eyes were deep and dark, like cisterns, and to youngLeo Friedlander (rather apt the comparison, too) her mouth was exactlythe shape of a small bow that had shot its quiverful of arrows into hisheart. 

And instead of her eighteen she looked sixteen, there was that kind oftimid adolescence about her, and yet when she said, "Mamma, you stayeddown so late, " the bang of a little pistol shot was back somewhere inher voice. 

"Why--Mr. Latz--and--I--sat and talked. "

An almost imperceptible nerve was dancing against Mrs. Samstag's righttemple. Alma could sense, rather than see, the ridge of pain. 

"You're all right, mamma?"

"Yes, " said Mrs. Samstag, and sat down on a divan, its naked greennessrelieved by a thrown scarf of black velvet stenciled in gold. 

"You shouldn't have remained down so long if your head is hurting, " saidher daughter, and quite casually took up her mother's beaded hand bagwhere it had fallen in her lap, but her fingers feeling lightly andfurtively as if for the shape of its contents. 

"Stop that, " said Mrs. Samstag, jerking it back, a dull anger in hervoice. 

"Come to bed, mamma. If you're in for neuralgia, I'll fix the electricpad. "

Suddenly Mrs. Samstag shot out her arm, rather slim-looking in theinvariable long sleeve she affected, drawing Alma back toward her by theribbon sash of her pretty chiffon frock. 

"Alma, be good to mamma to-night! Sweetheart--be good to her. "

The quick suspecting fear that had motivated Miss Samstag's gropingalong the beaded hand bag shot out again in her manner. 

"Mamma--you haven't--?"

"No, no! Don't nag me. It's something else, Alma. Something mamma isvery happy about. "

"Mamma, you've broken your promise again. "

"No! No! No! Alma, I've been a good mother to you, haven't I?"

"Yes, mamma, yes, but what--"

"Whatever else I've been hasn't been my fault--you've always blamedHeyman. "

"Mamma, I don't understand. "

"I've caused you worry, Alma--terrible worry. I know that. Buteverything is changed now. Mamma's going to turn over such a new leafthat everything is going to be happiness in this family. "

"Dearest, if you knew how happy it makes me to hear you say that. "

"Alma, look at me. "

"Mamma, you--you frighten me. "

"You like Louis Latz, don't you, Alma?"

"Why, yes, mamma. Very much. "

"We can't all be young and handsome like Leo, can we?"

"You mean--?"

"I mean that finer and better men than Louis Latz aren't lying aroundloose. A man who treated his mother like a queen and who worked himselfup from selling newspapers on the street to a millionaire. "

"Mamma?"

"Yes, baby. He asked me to-night. Come to me, Alma; stay with me close. He asked me to-night. "

"What?"

"You know. Haven't you seen it coming for weeks? I have. "

"Seen what?"

"Don't make mamma come out and say it. For eight years I've been asgrieving a widow to a man as a woman could be. But I'm human, Alma, andhe--asked me to-night. "

There was a curious pallor came over Miss Samstag's face, as if smearedthere by a hand. 

"Asked you what?"

"Alma, it don't mean I'm not true to your father as I was the day Iburied him in that blizzard back there, but could you ask for a finer, steadier man than Louis Latz? It looks out of his face. "

"Mamma, you--What--are you saying?"

"Alma?"

There lay a silence between them that took on the roar of a simoon andMiss Samstag jumped then from her mother's embrace, her little facestiff with the clench of her mouth. 

"Mamma--you--No--no! Oh, mamma--oh--!"

A quick spout of hysteria seemed to half strangle Mrs. Samstag so thatshe slanted backward, holding her throat. 

"I knew it. My own child against me. O God! Why was I born? My own childagainst me!"

"Mamma--you can't marry him. You can't marry--anybody. "

"Why can't I marry anybody? Must I be afraid to tell my own child whena good man wants to marry me and give us both a good home? That's mythanks for making my child my first consideration--before I acceptedhim. "

"Mamma, you didn't accept him. Darling, you wouldn't do a--thing likethat!"

Miss Samstag's voice thickened up then quite frantically into a littlescream that knotted in her throat, and she was suddenly so small andstricken that, with a gasp for fear she might crumple up where shestood, Mrs. Samstag leaned forward, catching her again by the sash. 

"Alma!"

It was only for an instant, however. Suddenly Miss Samstag was hercoolly firm little self, the bang of authority back in her voice. 

"You can't marry Louis Latz. "

"Can't I? Watch me. "

"You can't do that to a nice, deserving fellow like him!"

"Do what?"

"That!"

Then Mrs. Samstag threw up both her hands to her face, rocking in anagony of self-abandon that was rather horrid to behold. 

"O God! why don't you put me out of it all? My misery! I'm a leper to myown child!"

"Oh--mamma--!"

"Yes, a leper. Hold my misfortune against me. Let my neuralgia andDoctor Heyman's prescription to cure it ruin my life. Rob me of whathappiness with a good man there is left in it for me. I don't wanthappiness. Don't expect it. I'm here just to suffer. My daughter willsee to that. Oh, I know what is on your mind. You want to make me outsomething--terrible--because Doctor Heyman once taught me how to helpmyself a little when I'm nearly wild with neuralgia. Those were doctor'sorders. I'll kill myself before I let you make me out somethingterrible. I never even knew what it was before the doctor gave hisprescription. I'll kill--you hear?--kill myself. "

She was hoarse. She was tear splotched so that her lips were slipperywith them, and while the ague of her passion shook her, Alma, her ownface swept white and her voice guttered with restraint, took her motherinto the cradle of her arms and rocked and hushed her there. 

"Mamma, mamma, what are you saying? I'm not blaming you, sweetheart. Iblame him--Doctor Heyman--for prescribing it in the beginning. I knowyour fight. How brave it is. Even when I'm crossest with you, I realize. Alma's fighting with you dearest every inch of the way until--you'recured! And then--maybe--some day--anything you want! But not now. Mamma, you wouldn't marry Louis Latz now!"

"I would. He's my cure. A good home with a good man and money enoughto travel and forget myself. Alma, mamma knows she's not an angel. Sometimes when she thinks what she's put her little girl through thislast year she just wants to go out on the hilltop where she caught theneuralgia and lie down beside that grave out there and--"

"Mamma, don't talk like that!"

"But now's my chance, Alma, to get well. I've too much worry in this bighotel trying to keep up big expenses on little money and--"

"I know it, mamma. That's why I'm so in favor of finding ourselves asweet, tiny little apartment with kitch--"

"No! Your father died with the world thinking him a rich man and theywill never find out from me that he wasn't. I won't be the one tohumiliate his memory--a man who enjoyed keeping up appearances the wayhe did. Oh, Alma, Alma, I'm going to get well now! I promise. So help meGod if I ever give in to--it again. "

"Mamma, please! For God's sake, you've said the same thing so often, only to break your promise. "

"I've been weak, Alma; I don't deny it. But nobody who hasn't beentortured as I have can realize what it means to get relief just by--"

"Mamma, you're not playing fair this minute. That's the frighteningpart. It isn't only the neuralgia any more. It's just desire. That'swhat's so terrible to me, mamma. The way you have been taking it theselast months. Just from--desire. "

Mrs. Samstag buried her face, shuddering, down into her hands. 

"O God! My own child against me!"

"No, mamma. Why, sweetheart, nobody knows better than I do how sweet andgood you are when you are away from--it. We'll fight it together andwin! I'm not afraid. It's been worse this last month because you'vebeen nervous, dear. I understand now. You see, I--didn't dream of youand--Louis Latz. We'll forget--we'll take a little two-room apartment ofour own, darling, and get your mind on housekeeping, and I'll take upstenography or social ser--"

"What good am I, anyway? No good. In my own way. In my child's way. Ayoung man like Leo Friedlander crazy to propose and my child can't lethim come to the point because she is afraid to leave her mother. Oh, Iknow--I know more than you think I do. Ruining your life! That's what Iam, and mine, too!"

Tears now ran in hot cascades down Alma's cheeks. 

"Why, mamma, as if I cared about anything--just so you--get well. "

"I know. I know the way you tremble when he telephones, and color upwhen he--"

"Mamma, how can you?"

"I know what I've done. Ruined my baby's life, and now--"

"No!"

"Then help me, Alma. Louis wants me for his happiness. I want him formine. Nothing will cure me like having a good man to live up to. Theminute I find myself getting the craving for--it--don't you see, baby, fear that a good husband like Louis could find out such a thing about mewould hold me back? See, Alma?"

"That's a wrong basis to start married life on--"

"I'm a woman who needs a man to baby her, Alma. That's the cure for me. Not to let me would be the same as to kill me. I've been a bad, weakwoman, Alma, to be so afraid that maybe Leo Friedlander would steal youaway from me. We'll make it a double wedding, baby!"

"Mamma! Mamma! I'll never leave you. "

"All right, then, so you won't think your new father and me want to getrid of you, the first thing we'll pick out in our new home, he said ithimself to-night, 'is Alma's room. '"

"I tell you it's wrong. It's wrong!"

"The rest with Leo can come later, after I've proved to you for a littlewhile that I'm cured. Alma, don't cry! It's my cure. Just think, a goodman! A beautiful home to take my mind off--worry. He said to-night hewants to spend a fortune, if necessary, to cure--my neuralgia. "

"Oh, mamma! Mamma! if it were only--that!"

"Alma, if I promise on my--my life! I never felt the craving so littleas I do--now. "

"You've said that before--and before. "

"But never with such a wonderful reason. It's the beginning of a newlife. I know it. I'm cured!"

"Mamma, if I thought you meant it. "

"I do. Alma, look at me. This very minute I've a real jumping case ofneuralgia. But I wouldn't have anything for it except the electric pad. I feel fine. Strong. Alma, the bad times with me are over. "

"Oh, mamma! Mamma, how I pray you're right. "

"You'll thank God for the day that Louis Latz proposed to me. Why, I'drather cut off my right hand than marry a man who could ever live tolearn such a--thing about me. "

"But it's not fair. We'll have to explain to him, dear, that we hopeyou're cured now, but--"

"If you do--if you do--I'll kill myself! I won't live to bear that! Youdon't want me cured. You want to get rid of me, to degrade me until Ikill myself! If I was ever anything else than what I am now--to LouisLatz--anything but his ideal--Alma, you won't tell! Kill me, but don'ttell--don't tell!"

"Why, you know I wouldn't, sweetheart, if it is so terrible to you. Never. "

"Say it again. "

"Never. "

"As if it hasn't been terrible enough that you should have to know. Butit's over, Alma. Your bad times with me are finished. I'm cured. "

There were no words that Miss Samstag could force through the choke ofher tears, so she sat cheek to her mother's cheek, the trembling shecould no longer control racing through her like a chill. 

"Oh--how--I hope so!"

"I know so. "

"But wait a little while, mamma--just a year. "

"No! No!"

"A few months. "

"No, he wants it soon. The sooner the better at our age. Alma, mamma'scured! What happiness! Kiss me, darling. So help me God to keep mypromises to you! Cured, Alma, cured. "

And so in the end, with a smile on her lips that belied almost toherself the little run of fear through her heart, Alma's last kiss toher mother that night was the long one of felicitation. 

And because love, even the talk of it, is so gamy on the lips of womanto woman, they lay in bed, heartbeat to heartbeat, the electric padunder her pillow warm to the hurt of Mrs. Samstag's brow, and talked, these two, deep into the stilliness of the hotel night. 

"I'm going to be the best wife to him, Alma. You see, the woman thatmarries Louis has to measure up to the grand ideas of her he got fromhis mother. "

"You were a good wife once, mamma. You'll be it again. "

"That's another reason, Alma; it means my--cure. Living up to the ideasof a good man. "

"Mamma! Mamma! you can't backslide now--ever. "

"My little baby, who's helped me through such bad times, it's your turnnow, Alma, to be care free like other girls. "

"I'll never leave you, mamma, even if--he--Latz--shouldn't want me. "

"He will, darling, and does! Those were his words. 'A room for Alma. '"

"I'll never leave you!"

"You will! Much as Louis and I want you with us every minute, we won'tstand in your way! That's another reason I'm so happy, Alma. I'm notalone any more now. Leo's so crazy over you, just waiting for the chanceto--pop--"

"Shh--sh--h--h!"

"Don't tremble so, darling. Mamma knows. He told Mrs. Gronauer lastnight when she was joking him to buy a ten-dollar carnation for theConvalescent Home Bazaar, that he would only take one if it was white, because little white flowers reminded him of Alma Samstag. "

"Oh, mamma!"

"Say, it is as plain as the nose on your face. He can't keep his eyesoff you. He sells goods to Doctor Gronauer's clinic and he says the samething about him. It makes me so happy, Alma, to think you won't have tohold him off any more. "

"I'll never leave you. Never!"

Nevertheless, she was the first to drop off to sleep, pink there in thedark with the secret of her blushes. 

Then for Mrs. Samstag the travail set in. Lying there with her raginghead tossing this way and that on the heated pillow, she heard withcruel awareness the minutiae, all the faint but clarified noises thatcan make a night seem so long. The distant click of the elevatordepositing a nighthawk. A plong of the bedspring. Somebody's cough. Atrain's shriek. The jerk of plumbing. A window being raised. That creakwhich lies hidden in every darkness, like a mysterious knee joint. Bythree o'clock she was a quivering victim to these petty concepts, andher pillow so explored that not a spot but was rumpled to the aching layof he cheek. 

Once Alma, as a rule supersensitive to her mother's slightest unrest, floated up for the moment out of her young sleep, but she was verydrowsy and very tired, and dream tides were almost carrying her back asshe said:

"Mamma, you all right?"

Simulating sleep, Mrs. Samstag lay tense until her daughter's breathingresumed its light cadence. 

Then at four o'clock the kind of nervousness that Mrs. Samstag hadlearned to fear began to roll over her in waves, locking her throat andcurling her toes and fingers and her tongue up dry against the roof ofher mouth. 

She must concentrate now--must steer her mind away from the craving!

Now then: West End Avenue. Louis liked the apartments there. Luxurious. Quiet. Residential. Circassian walnut or mahogany dining room? Almashould decide. A baby-grand piano. Later to be Alma's engagement giftfrom "mamma and--papa. " No, "mamma and Louis. " Better so. 

How her neck and her shoulder blade and now her elbow were flaming withthe pain. She cried a little, quite silently, and tried a poor, futilescheme for easing her head in the crotch of her elbow. 

Now then: She must knit Louis some neckties. The silk-sweater stitchwould do. Married in a traveling suit. One of those smart dark-bluetwills like Mrs. Gronauer, junior's. Topcoat--sable. Louis' hairthinning. Tonic. O God! let me sleep! Please, God! The wheeze rising inher closed throat. That little threatening desire that must not shapeitself! It darted with the hither and thither of a bee bumbling againsta garden wall. No! No! Ugh! the vast chills of nervousness. The flaming, the craving chills of desire!

Just this last giving-in. This one. To be rested and fresh for himto-morrow. Then never again. The little beaded hand bag. O God! help me!That burning ache to rest and to uncurl of nervousness. All the thousandthousand little pores of her body, screaming each one to be placated. They hurt the entire surface of her. That great storm at sea in herhead; the crackle of lightning down that arm--

"Let me see--Circassian walnut--baby grand--" The pores demanding, crying--shrieking--

It was then that Carrie Samstag, even in her lovely pink nightdress acrone with pain, and the cables out dreadfully in her neck, began byinfinitesimal processes to swing herself gently to the side of the bed, unrelaxed inch by unrelaxed inch, softly and with the cunning born oftravail. 

It was actually a matter of fifteen minutes, that breathless swingtoward the floor, the mattress rising after her with scarcely a whisperand her two bare feet landing patly into the pale-blue room slippers, there beside the bed. 

Then her bag, the beaded one on the end of the divan. The slow, tautfeeling for it and the floor that creaked twice, starting the sweat outover her. 

It was finally after more tortuous saving of floor creaks and theinterminable opening and closing of a door that Carrie Samstag, thebeaded bag in her hand, found herself face to face with herself in themirror of the bathroom medicine chest. 

She was shuddering with one of the hot chills. The needle and littleglass piston out of the hand bag and with a dry little insuck of breath, pinching up little areas of flesh from her arm, bent on a good firmperch, as it were. 

There were undeniable pockmarks on Mrs. Samstag's right forearm. Invariably it sickened her to see them. Little graves. Oh! oh! littlegraves! For Alma. Herself. And now Louis. Just once. Just one morelittle grave--

And Alma, answering her somewhere down in her heartbeats: "No, mamma. No, mamma! No! No! No!"

But all the little pores gaping. Mouths! The pinching up of the skin. Here, this little clean and white area. 

"No, mamma! No, mamma! No! No! No!"

"Just once, darling?" Oh--oh--little graves for Alma and Louis. No! No!No!

Somehow, some way, with all the little mouths still parched and gapingand the clean and quite white area unblemished, Mrs. Samstag found herback to bed. She was in a drench of sweat when she got there and theconflagration of neuralgia, curiously enough, was now roaring in herears so that it seemed to her she could hear her pain. 

Her daughter lay asleep, with her face to the wall, her flowing hairspread in a fan against the pillow and her body curled up cozily. Theremaining hours of the night, in a kind of waking faint she could neverfind the words to describe, Mrs. Samstag, with that dreadful dew of hersweat constantly out over her, lay with her twisted lips to the faintperfume of that fan of Alma's flowing hair, her toes curling in and out. Out and in. Toward morning she slept. Actually, sweetly, and deeply, asif she could never have done with deep draughts of it. 

She awoke to the brief patch of sunlight that smiled into theirapartment for about eight minutes of each forenoon. 

Alma was at the pretty chore of lifting the trays from a hamper ofroses. She placed a shower of them on her mother's coverlet with a kiss, a deeper and dearer one, somehow, this morning. 

There was a card, and Mrs. Samstag read it and laughed:

 Good morning, Carrie. Louis. 

They seemed to her, poor dear, these roses, to be pink with the glory ofthe coming of the dawn. 

 * * * * *

On the spur of the moment and because the same precipitate decision thatdetermined Louis Latz's successes in Wall Street determined him here, they were married the following Thursday in Lakewood, New Jersey, without even allowing Carrie time for the blue-twill traveling suit. Shewore her brown-velvet, instead, looking quite modish, a sable wrap, giftof the groom, lending genuine magnificence. 

Alma was there, of course, in a beautiful fox scarf, also gift of thegroom, and locked in a pale kind of tensity that made her seem morethan ever like a little white flower to Leo Friedlander, the sole otherattendant, and who during the ceremony yearned at her with his gaze. Buther eyes were squeezed tight against his, as if to forbid herself theconsciousness that life seemed suddenly so richly sweet to her--oh, sorichly sweet!

 * * * * *

There was a time during the first months of the married life of Louisand Carrie Latz when it seemed to Alma, who in the sanctity of herlovely little ivory bedroom all appointed in rose enamel toilet trifles, could be prayerful with the peace of it, that the old Carrie, who couldcome pale and terrible out of her drugged nights, belonged to somegrimacing and chimeric past. A dead past that had buried its dead andits hatchet. 

There had been a month at a Hot Springs in the wintergreen heart ofVirginia, and whatever Louis may have felt in his heart of his right tothe privacy of these honeymoon days was carefully belied on his lips, and at Alma's depriving him now and then of his wife's company, packingher off to rest when he wanted a climb with her up a mountain slope or adrive over piny roads, he could still smile and pinch her cheek. 

"You're stingy to me with my wife, Alma, " he said to her upon one ofthese provocations. "I don't believe she's got a daughter at all, but alittle policeman instead. "

And Alma smiled back, out of the agony of her constant consciousnessthat she was insinuating her presence upon him, and resolutely, so thather fear for him should always subordinate her fear of him, she bit downher sensitiveness in proportion to the rising tide of his growing, butstill politely held in check, bewilderment. 

Once, these first weeks of their marriage, because she saw the dreadedsignal of the muddy pools under her mother's eyes and the littlequivering nerve beneath the temple, she shut him out of her presence fora day and a night, and when he came fuming up every few minutes from thehotel veranda, miserable and fretting, met him at the closed door of hermother's darkened room and was adamant. 

"It won't hurt if I tiptoe in and sit with her, " he pleaded. 

"No, Louis. No one knows how to get her through these spells like I do. The least excitement will only prolong her pain. "

He trotted off, then, down the hotel corridor, with a strut to hisresentment that was bantam and just a little fighty. 

That night as Alma lay beside her mother, holding off sleep andwatching, Carrie rolled her eyes side-wise with the plea of a strickendog in them. 

"Alma, " she whispered, "for God's sake! Just this once. To tide me over. One shot--darling. Alma, if you love me?"

Later there was a struggle between them that hardly bears relating. Alamp was overturned. But toward morning, when Carrie lay exhausted, butat rest in her daughter's arms, she kept muttering in her sleep:

"Thank you, baby. You saved me. Never leave me, Alma. Never--never--never. You saved me, Alma. "

And then the miracle of those next months. The return to New York. Thehappily busy weeks of furnishing and the unlimited gratifications of thewell-filled purse. The selection of the limousine with the special bodythat was fearfully and wonderfully made in mulberry upholstery withmother-of-pearl caparisons. The fourteen-room apartment on West EndAvenue with four baths, drawing-room of pink-brocaded walls, andCarrie's Roman bathroom that was precisely as large as her old hotelsitting room, with two full-length wall mirrors, a dressing tablecanopied in white lace over white satin, and the marble bath itself, twosteps down and with rubber curtains that swished after. 

There were evenings when Carrie, who loved the tyranny of things withwhat must have been a survival within her of the bazaar instinct, wouldfall asleep almost directly after dinner, her head back against herhusband's shoulder, roundly tired out after a day all cluttered up withmatching the blue upholstery of their bedroom with taffeta bed hangings. Shopping for a strip of pantry linoleum that was just the desired slatecolor. Calculating with electricians over the plugs for floor lamps. Herself edging pantry shelves in cotton lace. 

Latz liked her so, with her fragrantly coiffured head, scarcely gray, back against his shoulder, and with his newspapers, Wall Street journalsand the comic weeklies which he liked to read, would sit an entireevening thus, moving only when his joints rebelled, his pipe smokecarefully directed away from her face. 

Weeks and weeks of this, and already Louis Latz's trousers were a littleout of crease, and Mrs. Latz, after eight o'clock and under cover of avery fluffy and very expensive negligée, would unhook her stays. 

Sometimes friends came in for a game of small-stake poker, but after thesecond month they countermanded the standing order for Saturday nightmusical-comedy seats. So often they discovered it was pleasanter toremain at home. Indeed, during these days of household adjustment, asmany as four evenings a week Mrs. Latz dozed there against her husband'sshoulder, until about ten, when he kissed her awake to forage with himin the great white porcelain refrigerator and then to bed. 

And Alma. Almost she tiptoed through these months. Not that herscorching awareness of what must have lain low in Louis' mind everdiminished. Sometimes, although still never by word, she could see thedispleasure mount in his face. 

If she entered in on a tête-à-tête, as she did once, when by chance shehad sniffed the curative smell of spirits of camphor on the air of aroom through which her mother had passed, and came to drag her off thatnight to share her own lace-covered-and-ivory bed. 

Again, upon the occasion of an impulsively planned motor trip andweek-end to Long Beach, her intrusion had been so obvious. 

"Want to join us, Alma?"

"Oh--yes--thank you, Louis. "

"But I thought you and Leo were--"

"No, no. I'd rather go with you and mamma, Louis. "

Even her mother had smiled rather strainedly. Louis' invitation, politely uttered, had said so plainly, "Are we two never to be alone, your mother and I?"

Oh, there was no doubt that Louis Latz was in love and with all thedelayed fervor of first youth. 

There was something rather throat-catching about his treatment of hermother that made Alma want to cry. 

He would never tire of marveling, not alone at the wonder of her, but atthe wonder that she was his. 

"No man has ever been as lucky in women as I have, Carrie, " he told heronce in Alma's hearing. "It seemed to me that after--my little motherthere couldn't ever be another--and now you!"

At the business of sewing some beads on a lamp shade Carrie looked up, her eyes dewy. 

"And I felt that way about one good husband, " she said, "and now I seethere could be two. "

Alma tiptoed out. 

The third month of this she was allowing Leo Friedlander his twoevenings a week. Once to the theater in a modish little sedan carwhich Leo drove himself. One evening at home in the rose-and-mauvedrawing-room. It delighted Louis and Carrie slyly to have in theirfriends for poker over the dining-room table these evenings, leaving theyoung people somewhat indirectly chaperoned until as late as midnight. Louis' attitude with Leo was one of winks, quirks, slaps on the back, and the curving voice of innuendo. 

"Come on in, Leo; the water's fine!"

"Louis!" This from Alma, stung to crimson and not arch enough to feignthat she did not understand. 

"Loo, don't tease, " said Carrie, smiling, but then closing her eyes asif to invoke help to want this thing to come to pass. 

But Leo was frankly the lover, kept not without difficulty on theedge of his ardor. A city youth with gymnasium-bred shoulders, fine, pole-vaulter's length of limb, and a clean tan skin that bespoke colddrubbings with Turkish towels. 

And despite herself, Alma, who was not without a young girl's feelingsfor nice detail, could thrill to this sartorial svelteness and to thepatent-leather lay of his black hair which caught the light like apolished floor. 

In the lingo of Louis Latz, he was "a rattling good business man, too. " He shared with his father partnership in a manufacturingbusiness--"Friedlander Clinical Supply Company"--which, since his adventfrom high school into the already enormously rich firm, had almostdoubled its volume of business. 

The kind of sweetness he found in Alma he could never articulate even tohimself. In some ways she seemed hardly to have the pressure of vitalityto match his, but, on the other hand, just that slower beat to her mayhave heightened his sense of prowess. 

His greatest delight seemed to lie in her pallid loveliness. "Whitehoneysuckle, " he called her, and the names of all the beautiful whiteflowers he knew. And then one night, to the rattle of poker chips fromthe remote dining room, he jerked her to him without preamble, kissingher mouth down tightly against her teeth. 

"My sweetheart! My little white carnation sweetheart! I won't be heldoff any longer. I'm going to carry you away for my little moonflowerwife. "

She sprang back prettier than he had ever seen her in the dishevelmentfrom where his embrace had dragged at her hair. 

"You mustn't, " she cried, but there was enough of the conquering male inhim to read easily into this a mere plating over her desire. 

"You can't hold me at arm's length any longer. You've maddened me formonths. I love you. You love me. You do. You do, " and crushed her tohim, but this time his pain and his surprise genuine as she sprang back, quivering. 

"No, I tell you. No! No! No!" and sat down trembling. 

"Why, Alma!" And he sat down, too, rather palely, at the remote end ofthe divan. 

"You--I--mustn't!" she said, frantic to keep her lips from twisting, herlittle lacy fribble of a handkerchief a mere string from winding. 

"Mustn't what?"

"Mustn't, " was all she could repeat and not weep her words. 

"Won't--I--do?"

"It's--mamma. "

"What?"

"Her. "

"Her what, my little white buttonhole carnation?"

"You see--I--She's all alone. "

"You adorable, she's got a brand-new husky husband. "

"No--you don't--understand. "

Then, on a thunderclap of inspiration, hitting his knee:

"I have it. Mamma-baby! That's it. My girlie is a cry-baby, mamma-baby!"And made to slide along the divan toward her, but up flew her two smallhands, like fans. 

"No, " she said, with the little bang back in her voice which steadiedhim again. "I mustn't! You see, we're so close. Sometimes it's more asif I were the mother and she my little girl. "

"Alma, that's beautiful, but it's silly, too. But tell me first of all, mamma-baby, that you do care. Tell me that first, dearest, and then wecan talk. "

The kerchief was all screwed up now, so tightly that it could stifflyunwind of itself. 

"She's not well, Leo. That terrible neuralgia--that's why she needs meso. "

"Nonsense! She hasn't had a spell for weeks. That's Louis' great brag, that he's curing her. Oh, Alma, Alma, that's not a reason; that's anexcuse!"

"Leo--you don't understand. "

"I'm afraid I--don't, " he said, looking at her with a sudden intensitythat startled her with a quick suspicion of his suspicions, but then hesmiled. 

"Alma!" he said, "Alma!"

Misery made her dumb. 

"Why, don't you know, dear, that your mother is better able to take careof herself than you are? She's bigger and stronger. You--you're a littlewhite flower, that I want to wear on my heart. "

"Leo--give me time. Let me think. "

"A thousand thinks, Alma, but I love you. I love you and want soterribly for you to love me back. "

"I--do. "

"Then tell me with kisses. "

Again she pressed him to arm's length. 

"Please, Leo! Not yet. Let me think. Just one day. To-morrow. "

"No, no! Now!"

"To-morrow. "

"When?"

"Evening. "

"No, morning. "

"All right, Leo--to-morrow morning--"

"I'll sit up all night and count every second in every minute and everyminute in every hour. "

She put up her soft little fingers to his lips. 

"Dear boy, " she said. 

And then they kissed, and after a little swoon to his nearness shestruggled like a caught bird and a guilty one. 

"Please go, Leo, " she said. "Leave me alone--"

"Little mamma-baby sweetheart, " he said. "I'll build you a nest rightnext to hers. Good night, little white flower. I'll be waiting, andremember, counting every second of every minute and every minute ofevery hour. "

For a long time she remained where he had left her, forward on the pinkdivan, her head with a listening look to it, as if waiting an answer forthe prayers that she sent up. 

 * * * * *

At two o'clock that morning, by what intuition she would never know, andwith such leverage that she landed out of bed plump on her two feet, Alma, with all her faculties into trace like fire horses, sprang out ofsleep. 

It was a matter of twenty steps across the hall. In the white-tiledRoman bathroom, the muddy circles suddenly out and angry beneathher eyes, her mother was standing before one of the full-lengthmirrors--snickering. 

There was a fresh little grave on the inside of her right forearm. 

 * * * * *

Sometimes in the weeks that followed a sense of the miracle of what washappening would clutch at Alma's throat like a fear. 

Louis did not know. 

That the old neuralgic recurrences were more frequent again, yes. Already plans for a summer trip abroad, on a curative mission bent, were taking shape. There was a famous nerve specialist, the one whohad worked such wonders on his mother's cruelly rheumatic limbs, reassuringly foremost in his mind. 

But except that there were not infrequent and sometimes twenty-four-hoursieges when he was denied the sight of his wife, he had learned, with amale's acquiescence to the frailties of the other sex, to submit, and, with no great understanding of pain, to condone. 

And as if to atone for these more or less frequent lapses, there wassomething pathetic, even a little heartbreaking, in Carrie's zeal forhis well-being. No duty too small. One night she wanted to unlace hisshoes and even shine them--would have, in fact, except for his fiercecatching of her into his arms and for some reason his tonsils aching ashe kissed her. 

Once after a "spell" she took out every garment from his wardrobe and, kissing them piece by piece, put them back again, and he found her so, and they cried together, he of happiness. 

In his utter beatitude, even his resentment of Alma continued to growbut slowly. Once, when after forty-eight hours she forbade him ratherfiercely an entrance into his wife's room, he shoved her aside almostrudely, but, at Carrie's little shriek of remonstrance from thedarkened room, backed out shamefacedly, and apologized next day in theconciliatory language of a tiny wrist watch. 

But a break came, as she knew and feared it must. 

One evening during one of these attacks, when for two days Carrie hadnot appeared at the dinner table, Alma, entering when the meal wasalmost over, seated herself rather exhaustedly at her mother's placeopposite her stepfather. 

He had reached the stage when that little unconscious usurpation initself could annoy him. 

"How's your mother?" he asked, dourly for him. 

"She's asleep. "

"Funny. This is the third attack this month, and each time it lastslonger. Confound that neuralgia!"

"She's easier now. "

He pushed back his plate. 

"Then I'll go in and sit with her while she sleeps. "

She, who was so fastidiously dainty of manner, half rose, spilling hersoup. 

"No, " she said, "you mustn't! Not now!" And sat down again hurriedly, wanting not to appear perturbed. 

A curious thing happened then to Louis. His lower lip came pursingout like a little shelf and a hitherto unsuspected look of pigginessfattened over his rather plump face. 

"You quit butting into me and my wife's affairs, you, or get the hellout of here, " he said, without raising his voice or his manner. 

She placed her hand to the almost unbearable flutter of her heart. 

"Louis! You mustn't talk like that to--me!"

"Don't make me say something I'll regret. You! Only take this tip, you!There's one of two things you better do. Quit trying to come between meand her or--get out. "

"I--She's sick. "

"Naw, she ain't. Not as sick as you make out. You're trying, God knowswhy, to keep us apart. I've watched you. I know your sneaking kind. Still water runs deep. You've never missed a chance since we're marriedto keep us apart. Shame!"

"I--She--"

"Now mark my word, if it wasn't to spare her I'd have invited you outlong ago. Haven't you got any pride?"

"I have. I have, " she almost moaned, and could have crumpled up thereand swooned her humiliation. 

"You're not a regular girl. You're a she-devil. That's what you are!Trying to come between your mother and me. Ain't you ashamed? What is ityou want?"

"Louis--I don't--"

"First you turn down a fine fellow like Leo Friedlander, so he don'tcome to the house any more, and then you take out on us whatever iseating you, by trying to come between me and the finest woman that everlived. Shame! Shame!"

"Louis!" she said, "Louis!" wringing her hands in a dry wash of agony, "can't you understand? She'd rather have me. It makes her nervous tryingto pretend to you that she's not suffering when she is. That'sall, Louis. You see, she's not ashamed to suffer before me. Why, Louis--that's all! Why should I want to come between you and her? Isn'tshe dearer to me than anything in the world, and haven't you been thebest friend to me a girl could have? That's all--Louis. "

He was placated and a little sorry and did not insist further upon goinginto the room. 

"Funny, " he said. "Funny, " and, adjusting his spectacles, snapped openhis newspaper for a lonely evening. 

The one thing that perturbed Alma almost more than anything else, as thedreaded cravings grew, with each siege her mother becoming more brutishand more given to profanity, was where she obtained the soluble tablets. 

The well-thumbed old doctor's prescription she had purloined even backin the hotel days, and embargo and legislation were daily making moreand more furtive and prohibitive the traffic in drugs. 

Once Alma, mistakenly, too, she thought later, had suspected a chauffeurof collusion with her mother and abruptly dismissed him, to Louis' rage. 

"What's the idea?" he said, out of Carrie's hearing, of course. "Who'srunning this shebang, anyway?"

Again, after Alma had guarded her well for days, scarcely leaving herside, Carrie laughed sardonically up into her daughter's face, her eyesas glassy and without swimming fluid as a doll's. 

"I get it! But wouldn't you like to know where? Yah!" And to Alma'shorror slapped her quite roundly across the cheek so that for an hourthe sting, the shape of the red print of fingers, lay on her face. 

One night in what had become the horrible sanctity of thatbedchamber--But let this sum it up. When Alma was nineteen years old alittle colony of gray hairs was creeping in on each temple. 

And then one day, after a long period of quiet, when Carrie had lavishedher really great wealth of contrite love upon her daughter and husband, spending on Alma and loading her with gifts of jewelry and finery, somehow to express her grateful adoration of her, paying her husband thesecret penance of twofold fidelity to his well-being and every whim, Alma, returning from a trip taken reluctantly and at her mother'sbidding down to the basement trunk room, found her gone, a modishblack-lace hat and the sable coat missing from the closet. 

It was early afternoon, sunlit and pleasantly cold. 

The first rush of panic and the impulse to dash after stayed, she forcedherself down into a chair, striving with the utmost difficulty forcoherence of procedure. 

Where in the half hour of her absence had her mother gone? Matinée?Impossible! Walking? Hardly possible. Upon inquiry in the kitchen, neither of the maids had seen nor heard her depart. Motoring? With ahand that trembled in spite of itself Alma telephoned the garage. Carand chauffeur were there. Incredible as it seemed, Alma, upon more thanone occasion, had lately been obliged to remind her mother that shewas becoming careless of the old pointedly rosy hands. Manicurist? Shetelephoned the Bon Ton Beauty Parlors. No. Where? O God! Where? Whichway to begin? That was what troubled her most. To start right so as notto lose a precious second. 

Suddenly, and for no particular reason, Alma began a hurried searchthrough her mother's dresser drawers of lovely personal appointments. Turning over whole mounds of fresh white gloves, delving into nests ofsheer handkerchiefs and stacks of webby lingerie. Then for a while shestood quite helplessly, looking into the mirror, her hands closed abouther throat. 

"Please, God, where?"

A one-inch square of newspaper clipping, apparently gouged from thesheet with a hairpin, caught her eye from the top of one of thegold-backed hairbrushes. Dawningly, Alma read. 

It described in brief detail the innovation of a newly equippednarcotic clinic on the Bowery below Canal Street, provided to medicallyadminister to the pathological cravings of addicts. 

Fifteen minutes later Alma emerged from the Subway at Canal Street, and, with three blocks toward her destination ahead, started to run. 

At the end of the first block she saw her mother, in the sable coat andthe black-lace hat, coming toward her. 

Her first impulse was to run faster and yoo-hoo, but she thought betterof it and, by biting her lips and digging her finger nails, was able toslow down to a casual walk. 

Carrie's fur coat was flaring open and, because of the quality of herattire down there where the bilge waters of the city tide flow and eddy, stares followed her. 

Once, to the stoppage of Alma's heart, she saw Carrie halt and say abrief word to a truckman as he crossed the sidewalk with a bill oflading. He hesitated, laughed, and went on. 

Then she quickened her pace and went on, but as if with a sense of beingfollowed, because constantly as she walked she jerked a step, to lookback, and then again, over her shoulder. 

A second time she stopped, this time to address a little nub of awoman without a hat and lugging one-sidedly a stack of men's bastedwaistcoats, evidently for home work in some tenement. She looked andmuttered her un-understanding at whatever Carrie had to say, andshambled on. 

Then Mrs. Latz spied her daughter, greeting her without surprise or anyparticular recognition. 

"Thought you could fool me! Heh, Louis? I mean Alma. "

"Mamma, it's Alma. It's all right. Don't you remember, we had thisappointment? Come, dear. "

"No, you don't! That's a man following. Shh-h-h-h, Louis! I was fooling. I went up to him in the clinic" (snicker) "and I said to him, 'Give youfive dollars for a doctor's certificate. ' That's all I said to him, or any of them. He's in a white carnation, Louis. You can find him bythe--it on his coat lapel. He's coming! Quick--"

"Mamma, there's no one following. Wait, I'll call a taxi!"

"No, you don't! He tried to put me in a taxi, too. No, you don't!"

"Then the Subway, dearest. You'll sit quietly beside Alma in the Subway, won't you, Carrie? Alma's so tired. "

Suddenly Carrie began to whimper. 

"My baby! Don't let her see me. My baby! What am I good for? I've ruinedher life. My precious sweetheart's life. I hit her once--Louis--in themouth. It bled. God won't forgive me for that. "

"Yes, He will, dear, if you come. "

"It bled. Alma, tell him in the white carnation that mamma losther doctor's certificate. That's all I said to him. Saw him in theclinic--new clinic--'give you five dollars for a doctor's certificate. 'He had a white carnation--right lapel. Stingy. Quick!--following!"

"Sweetheart, please, there's no one coming. "

"Don't tell! Oh, Alma darling--mamma's ruined your life! Her sweetheartbaby's life. "

"No, darling, you haven't. She loves you if you'll come home with her, dear, to bed, before Louis gets home and--"

"No. No. He mustn't see. Never this bad--was I, darling? Oh! Oh!"

"No, mamma--never--this bad. That's why we must hurry. "

"Best man that ever lived. Best baby. Ruin. Ruin. "

"Mamma, you--you're making Alma tremble so that she can scarcely walk ifyou drag her so. There's no one following, dear. I won't let anyone harmyou. Please, sweetheart--a taxicab. "

"No. I tell you he's following. He tried to put me into a taxicab. Followed me. Said he knew me. "

"Then, mamma, listen. Do you hear? Alma wants you to listen. If youdon't--she'll faint. People are looking. Now I want you to turn squarearound and look. No, look again. You see now, there's no one following. Now I want you to cross the street over there to the Subway. Just withAlma who loves you. There's nobody following. Just with Alma who lovesyou. "

And then Carrie, whose lace hat was quite on the back of her head, relaxed enough so that through the enormous maze of the traffic oftrucks and the heavier drags of the lower city, her daughter could windtheir way. 

"My baby! My poor Louis!" she kept saying. "The worst I've ever been. Oh--Alma--Louis--waiting--before we get there--Louis!"

It was in the tightest tangle of the crossing and apparently on thisconjuring of her husband that Carrie jerked suddenly free of Alma'sfrailer hold. 

"No--no--not home--now. Him. Alma!" And darted back against the breastof the down side of the traffic. 

There was scarcely more than the quick rotation of her arm around withthe spoke of a truck wheel, so quickly she went down. 

It was almost a miracle, her kind of death, because out of all that jamof tonnage she carried only one bruise, a faint one, near the brow. 

And the wonder was that Louis Latz, in his grief, was so proud. 

"To think, " he kept saying over and over again and unabashed at the wayhis face twisted--"to think they should have happened to me. Two suchwomen in one lifetime as my little mother--and her. Fat little old Louisto have had those two. Why, just the memory of my Carrie--is almostenough. To think old me should have a memory like that--it is almostenough--isn't it, Alma?"

She kissed his hand. 

That very same, that dreadful night, almost without her knowing it, her throat-tearing sobs broke loose, her face to the waistcoat of LeoFriedlander. 

He held her close--very, very close. "Why, sweetheart, " he said, "Icould cut out my heart to help you! Why, sweetheart! Shh-h-h! Rememberwhat Louis says. Just the beautiful memory--of--her--is--wonderful--"

"Just--the b-beautiful--memory--you'll always have it, too--of her--mymamma--won't you, Leo? Won't you?"

"Always, " he said when the tight grip in his throat had eased enough. 

"Say--it again--Leo. "

"Always. "

She could not know how dear she became to him then, because not tenminutes before, from the very lapel against which her cheek lay pressed, he had unpinned a white carnation. 

BACK PAY

I set out to write a love story, and for the purpose sharpened abright-pink pencil with a glass ruby frivolously at the eraser end. 

Something sweet. Something dainty. A candied rose leaf after all thebitter war lozenges. A miss. A kiss. A golf stick. A motor car. Or, ifneed be, a bit of khaki, but without one single spot of blood or mud, and nicely pressed as to those fetching peg-top trouser effects wherethey wing out just below the skirt-coat. The oldest story in the worldtold newly. No wear out to it. Editors know. It's as staple as eggsor printed lawn or ipecac. The good old-fashioned love story with theabove-mentioned miss, kiss, and, if need be for the sake of timeliness, the bit of khaki, pressed. 

Just my luck that, with one of these modish tales at the tip of my pinkpencil, Hester Bevins should come pounding and clamoring at the door ofmy mental reservation, quite drowning out the rather high, the lipsy, and, if I do say it myself, distinctly musical patter of Arline. Thatwas to have been her name. Arline Kildane. Sweet, don't you think, andwith just a bit of wild Irish rose in it?

But Hester Bevins would not let herself be gainsaid, sobbing a little, elbowing her way through the group of mental unborns, and leaving me toblow my pitch pipe for a minor key. 

Not that Hester's isn't one of the oldest stories in the world, too. Nomatter how newly told, she is as old as sin, and sin is but a few weeksyounger than love--and how often the two are interchangeable!

If it be a fact that the true lady is, in theory, either a virgin ora lawful wife, then Hester Bevins stands immediately convicted on twocharges. 

She was neither. The most that can be said for her is that she washonestly what she was. 

"If the wages of sin is death, " she said to a roadhouse party ofroysterers one dawn, "then I've quite a bit of back pay coming to me. "And joined in the shout that rose off the table. 

I can sketch her in for you rather simply because of the hackneyedlines of her very, very old story. Whose pasts so quickly mold anddisintegrate as those of women of Hester's stripe? Their yesterdays areentirely soluble in the easy waters of their to-days. 

For the first seventeen years of her life she lived in what we mightcall Any American Town of, say, fifteen or twenty thousand inhabitants. Her particular one was in Ohio. Demopolis, I think. One of thosechange-engine-and-take-on-water stops with a stucco art-nouveau station, a roof drooping all round it, as if it needed to be shaved off likeedges of a pie, and the name of the town writ in conch shells on agreen slant of terrace. You know--the kind that first establishes aten-o'clock curfew for its young, its dance halls and motion-picturetheaters, and then sends in a hurry call for a social-service expertfrom one of the large Eastern cities to come and diagnose its malignantvice undergrowth. 

Hester Bevins, of a mother who died bearing her and one of thosedisappearing fathers who can speed away after the accident without evenstopping to pick up the child or leave a license number, was reared--no, grew up, is better--in the home of an aunt. A blond aunt with many goldteeth and many pink and blue wrappers. 

Whatever Hester knew of the kind of home that fostered her, it leftapparently no welt across her sensibilities. It was a rather poor house, an unpainted frame in a poor street, but there was never a lack ofgayety or, for that matter, any pinching lack of funds. It was an actualfact that, at thirteen, cotton or lisle stockings brought out alittle irritated rash on Hester's slim young legs, and she wore silk. Abominations, it is true, at three pair for a dollar, that sprang runsand would not hold a darn, but, just the same, they were silk. There wasan air of easy _camaraderie_ and easy money about that house. It wasnot unusual for her to come home from school at high noon and find afront-room group of one, two, three, or four guests, almost invariablymen. Frequently these guests handed her out as much as half a dollarfor candy money, and not another child in school reckoned in more thanpennies. 

Once a guest, for reasons of odd change, I suppose, handed her outthirteen cents. Outraged, at the meanness of the sum, and with an earlyand deep-dyed superstition of thirteen, she dashed the coins out of hishand and to the four corners of the room, escaping in the guffaw oflaughter that went up. 

Often her childish sleep in a small top room with slanting sides wouldbe broken upon by loud ribaldry that lasted into dawn, but never byword, and certainly not by deed, was she to know from her aunt any ofits sordid significance. 

Literally, Hester Bevins was left to feather her own nest. There wereno demands made upon her. Once, in the little atrocious front parlor ofhorsehair and chromo, one of the guests, the town baggage-master, tobe exact, made to embrace her, receiving from the left rear a soundingsmack across cheek and ear from the aunt. 

"Cut that! Hester, go out and play! Whatever she's got to learn fromlife, she can't say she learned it in my house. "

There were even two years of high school, and at sixteen, when she went, at her own volition, to clerk in Finley's two-story department store onHigh Street, she was still innocent, although she and Gerald Fishbackwere openly sweethearts. 

Gerald was a Thor. Of course, you are not to take that literally; but ifever there was a carnification of the great god himself, then Gerald wasin his image. A wide streak of the Scandinavian ran through his make-up, although he had been born in Middletown, and from there had comerecently to the Finley Dry Goods Company as an accountant. 

He was so the viking in his bigness that once, on a picnic, he hadcarried two girls, screaming their fun, across twenty feet of stream. Hester was one of them. 

It was at this picnic, the Finley annual, that he asked Hester, thenseventeen, to marry him. She was darkly, wildly pretty, as a ramblerrose tugging at its stem is restlessly pretty, as a pointed littlegazelle smelling up at the moon is whimsically pretty, as a runawaystream from off the flank of a river is naughtily pretty, and she worea crisp percale shirt waist with a saucy bow at the collar, fifty-centsilk stockings, and already she had almond incarnadine nails with pointsto them. 

They were in the very heart of Wallach's Grove, under a naturalcathedral of trees, the noises of the revelers and the small explosionsof soda-water and beer bottles almost remote enough for perfect quiet. He was stretched his full and splendid length at the picknickers'immemorial business of plucking and sucking grass blades, and she seatedvery trimly, her little blue-serge skirt crawling up ever so slightly toreveal the silken ankle, on a rock beside him. 

"Tickle-tickle!" she cried, with some of that irrepressible animalspirit of hers, and leaning to brush his ear with a twig. 

He caught at her hand. 

"Hester, " he said, "marry me. "

She felt a foaming through her until her finger tips sang. 

"Well, I like that!" was what she said, though, and flung up a pointedprofile that was like that same gazelle's smelling the moon. 

He was very darkly red, and rose to his knees to clasp her about thewaist. She felt like relaxing back against his blondness and feeling herfingers plow through the great double wave of his hair. But she did not. 

"You're too poor, " she said. 

He sat back without speaking for a long minute. 

"Money isn't everything, " he said, finally, and with something gone fromhis voice. 

"I know, " she said, looking off; "but it's a great deal if you happen towant it more than anything else in the world. "

"Then, if that's how you feel about it, Hester, next to wanting you, Iwant it, too, more than anything else in the world. "

"There's no future in bookkeeping. "

"I know a fellow in Cincinnati who's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar man. Hester? Dear?"

"A week?"

"Why, of course not, dear--a month!"

"Faugh!" she said, still looking off. 

He felt out for her hand, at the touch of her reddening up again. 

"Hester, " he said, "you're the most beautiful, the most exciting, themost maddening, the most--the most everything girl in the world!You're not going to have an easy time of it, Hester, with your--yourenvironment and your dangerousness, if you don't settle down--quick, with some strong fellow to take care of you. A fellow who loves you. That's me, Hester. I want to make a little home for you and protect you. I can't promise you the money--right off, but I can promise you thebigger something from the very start, Hester. Dear?"

She would not let her hand relax to his. 

"I hate this town, " she said. 

"There's Cincinnati. Maybe my friend could find an opening there. "

"Faugh!"

"Cincinnati, dear, is a metropolis. "

"No, no! You don't understand. I hate littleness. Even littlemetropolises. Cheapness. I hate little towns and little spendersand mercerized stockings and cotton lisle next to my skin, andmachine-stitched nightgowns. Ugh! it scratches!"

"And I--I just love you in those starchy white shirt waists, Hester. You're beautiful. "

"That's just the trouble. It satisfies you, but it suffocates me. I'vegot a pink-crêpe-de-Chine soul. Pink crêpe de Chine--you hear?"

He sat back on his heels. 

"It--Is it true, then, Hester that--that you're making up with thatsalesman from New York?"

"Why, " she said, coloring--"why, I've only met him twice walking up HighStreet, evenings!"

"But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester?"

"Say, who was answering your questions this time last year?"

"But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester? Isn't it?"

"Well, of all the nerve!"

But it was. 

 * * * * *

The rest tells glibly. The salesman, who wore blue-and-white-stripedsoft collars with a bar pin across the front, does not even enter thestory. He was only a stepping-stone. From him the ascent or descent, orwhatever you choose to call it, was quick and sheer. 

Five years later Hester was the very private, the very exotic, manicured, coiffured, scented, svelted, and strictly _de-luxe_ chattelof one Charles G. Wheeler, of New York City and Rosencranz, Long Island, vice-president of the Standard Tractor Company, a member of no clubs butof the Rosencranz church, three lodges, and several corporations. 

You see, there is no obvious detail lacking. Yes, there was anapartment. "Flat" it becomes under their kind of tenancy, situated onthe windiest bend of Riverside Drive and minutely true to type fromthe pale-blue and brocade vernis-Martin parlor of talking-machine, mechanical piano, and cellarette built to simulate a music cabinet, tothe pink-brocaded bedroom with a _chaise-longue_ piled high with asmall mountain of lace pillowettes that were liberally interlarded withpaper-bound novels, and a spacious, white-marble adjoining bathroom witha sunken tub, rubber-sheeted shower, white-enamel weighing scales, and overloaded medicine chest of cosmetic array in frosted bottles, sleeping-, headache-, sedative powders, _et al_. There were also a negromaid, two Pomeranian dogs, and last, but by no means least, a privatetelephone inclosed in a hall closet and lighted by an electric bulb thatturned on automatically to the opening of the door. 

There was nothing sinister about Wheeler. He was a rather fair exponentof that amazing genus known as "typical New-Yorker, " a roll of money inhis pocket, and a roll of fat at the back of his neck. He went in forlight checked suits, wore a platinum-and-Oriental-pearl chain across hiswaistcoat, and slept at a Turkish bath once a week; was once named in alarge corporation scandal, escaping indictment only after violent andexpensive skirmishes; could be either savage or familiar with waiters;wore highly manicured nails, which he regarded frequently in public, white-silk socks only; and maintained, on a twenty-thousand-a-yearscale in the decorous suburb of Rosencranz, a decorous wife and threechildren, and, like all men of his code, his ethics were strictly doubledecked. He would not permit his nineteen-year-old daughter Marion somuch as a shopping tour to the city without the chaperonage of hermother or a friend, forbade in his wife, a comely enough woman with awhite unmarcelled coiffure and upper arms a bit baggy with witheringflesh, even the slightest of shirtwaist V's unless filled in withnet, and kept up, at an expense of no less than fifteen thousand ayear--thirty the war year that tractors jumped into the war-industryclass--the very high-priced, -tempered, -handed, and -stepping Hester ofwild-gazelle charm. 

Not that Hester stepped much. There were a long underslung roadsterand a great tan limousine with yellow-silk curtains at the call of herprivate telephone. 

The Wheeler family used, not without complaint, a large open car of veryearly vintage, which in winter was shut in with flapping curtains withisinglass peepers, and leaked cold air badly. 

On more than one occasion they passed on the road--these cars. Thelong tan limousine with the shock absorbers, foot warmers, two brownPomeranian dogs, little case of enamel-top bottles, fresh flowers, andoutside this little jewel-case interior, smartly exposed, so that theblast hit him from all sides, a chauffeur in uniform that harmonizednicely with the tans and yellows. And then the grotesque caravan of theAzoic motor age, with its flapping curtains and ununiformed youth invisored cap at the wheel. 

There is undoubtedly an unsavory aspect to this story. For purpose offiction, it is neither fragrant nor easily digested. But it is not sounsavory as the social scheme which made it possible for those two carsto pass thus on the road, and, at the same time, Charles G. Wheeler toremain the unchallenged member of the three lodges, the corporations, and the Rosencranz church, with a memorial window in his name on theleft side as you enter, and again his name spelled out on a brass plateat the end of a front pew. 

No one but God and Mrs. Wheeler knew what was in her heart. It ispossible that she did not know what the world knew, but hardly. That sheendured it is not admirable, but then there were the three children, and, besides, she lived in a world that let it go at that. And so shecontinued to hold up her head in her rather poor, mute way, rode besideher husband to funerals, weddings, and to the college Commencement oftheir son at Yale. Scrimped a little, cried a little, prayed a little inprivate, but outwardly lived the life of the smug in body and soul. 

But the Wheelers' is another story, also a running social sore; but itwas Hester, you remember, who came sobbing and clamoring to be told. 

As Wheeler once said of her, she was a darn fine clothes horse. Therewas no pushed-up line of flesh across the middle of her back, asthe corsets did it to Mrs. Wheeler. She was honed to the ounce. Thewhite-enameled weighing scales, the sweet oils, the flexible fingers ofher masseur, the dumb-bells, the cabinet, salt-water, needle-spray, and vapor baths saw to that. Her skin, unlike Marion Wheeler's, wasunfreckled, and as heavily and tropically white as a magnolia leaf, and, of course, she reddened her lips, and the moonlike pallor came out morethan ever. 

As I said, she was frankly what she was. No man looked at her more thanonce without knowing it. To use an awkward metaphor, it was before herface like an overtone; it was an invisible caul. The wells of her eyeswere muddy with it. 

But withal, she commanded something of a manner, even from Wheeler. Hehad no key to the apartment. He never entered her room without knocking. There were certain of his friends she would not tolerate, from one oranother aversion, to be party to their not infrequent carousals. Mendid not always rise from their chairs when she entered a room, but shesuffered few liberties from them. She was absolutely indomitable in herdemands. 

"Lord!" ventured Wheeler, upon occasion, across a Sunday-noon, lace-spread breakfast table, when she was slim and cool fingered inorchid-colored draperies, and his newest gift of a six-carat, pear-shaped diamond blazing away on her right hand. "Say, aren't theseYvette bills pretty steep?

 "One midnight-blue-and-silver gown . . . . . . . . . $485. 00 One blue-and-silver head bandeau . . . . . . . . . . 50. 00 One serge-and-satin trotteur gown . . . . . . . . . 275. 00 One ciel-blue tea gown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280. 00

"Is that the cheapest you can drink tea? Whew!"

She put down her coffee cup, which she usually held with one littlefinger poised elegantly outward as if for flight. 

"You've got a nerve!" she said, rising and pushing back her chair. "Overwhose ticker are you getting quotations that I come cheap?"

He was immediately conciliatory, rising also to enfold her in an embracethat easily held her slightness. 

"Go on, " he said. "You could work me for the Woolworth Building indiamonds if you wanted it badly enough. "

"Funny way of showing it! I may be a lot of things, Wheeler, but I'm notcheap. You're darn lucky that the war is on and I'm not asking for aFrench car. "

He crushed his lips to hers. 

"You devil!" he said. 

There were frequent parties. Dancing at Broadway cabarets, all-night joyrides, punctuated with road-house stop-overs, and not infrequently, ingroups of three or four couples, ten-day pilgrimages to showy Americanspas. 

"Getting boiled out, " they called it. It was part of Hester's scheme forkeeping her sveltness. 

Her friendships were necessarily rather confined to a definitecircle--within her own apartment house, in fact. On the floor above, also in large, bright rooms of high rental, and so that they wereexchanging visits frequently during the day, often _en déshabillé_, using the stairway that wound up round the elevator shaft, lived acertain Mrs. Kitty Drew, I believe she called herself. She was plump andblond, and so very scented that her aroma lay on a hallway for an hourafter she had scurried through it. She was well known and chieflydistinguished by a large court-plaster crescent which she wore on herleft shoulder blade. She enjoyed the bounty of a Wall Street brokerwho for one day had attained the conspicuousness of cornering the eggmarket. 

There were two or three others within this group. A Mrs. Denison, halfFrench, and a younger girl called Babe. But Mrs. Drew and Hester wereintimates. They dwaddled daily in one or the other's apartment, usuallylazy and lacy with negligée, lounging about on the mounds of lingeriepillows over chocolates, cigarettes, novels, Pomeranians, and always theheadache powders, nerve sedatives, or smelling salts, a running line of:"Lord! I've a head!" "I need a good cry for the blues!" "Talk about adark-brown taste!" or, "There was some kick to those cocktails lastnight, " through their conversation. 

KITTY: "Br-r-r! I'm as nervous as a cat to-day. "

HESTER: "Naughty, naughty bad doggie to bite muvver's diamond ring. "

KITTY: "Leave it to you to land a pear-shaped diamond on your hooks. "

HESTER: "He fell for it, just like that!"

KITTY: "You could milk a billiard ball. "

HESTER: "I don't see any 'quality of mercy' to spare around your flat. "

There were the two years of high school, you see. 

"Ed's going out to Geyser Springs next month for the cure. I told him hecould not go without me unless over my dead body, he could not. "

"Geyser Springs. That's thirty miles from my home town. "

"Your home town? Nighty-night! I thought you was born on the corner ofForty-second Street and Broadway with a lobster claw in your mouth. "

"Demopolis, Ohio. "

"What is that--a skin disease?"

"My last relation in the world died out there two years ago. An aunt. Wouldn't mind some Geyser Springs myself if I could get some of thisstiffness out of my joints. "

"Come on! I dare you! May Denison and Chris will come in on it, and Babecan always find somebody. Make it three or four cars full and let'smotor out. We all need a good boiling, anyways. Wheeler looks aboutready for spontaneous combustion, and I got a twinge in my left littletoe. You on?"

"I am, if he is. "

"If he is!' He'd fall for life in an Igorrote village with a ring in hisnose if you wanted it. "

And truly enough, it did come about that on a height-of-the-seasonevening a highly cosmopolitan party of four couples trooped into thesolid-marble foyer of the Geyser Springs Hotel, motor coated, goggled, veiled; a whole litter of pigskin and patent-leather bags, hampers, and hat boxes, two golf bags, two Pomeranians, a bull in spiked collar, furs, leather coats, monogrammed rugs, thermos bottles, air pillows, robes, and an _ensemble_ of fourteen wardrobe trunks sent by express. 

They took the "cure. " Rode horseback, motored, played roulette at thecasino for big stakes, and scorned the American plan of service for thesmarter European idea, with a special _à la carte_ menu for each meal. Extraordinary-looking mixed drinks, strictly against the mandates ofthe "cure, " appeared at their table. Strange midnight goings-on werereported by the more conservative hotel guests, and the privacy of theircircle was allowed full integrity by the little veranda groups of goutyladies or middle-aged husbands with liver spots on their faces. The bathattendants reveled in the largest tips of the season. When Hester walkeddown the large dining room evenings, she was a signal for the craning ofnecks for the newest shock of her newest extreme toilette. The kinds oftoilettes that shocked the women into envy and mental notes of how theunderarm was cut, and the men into covert delight. Wheeler liked to sitback and put her through her paces like a high-strung filly. 

"Make 'em sit up, girl! You got them all looking like dimes aroundhere. "

One night she descended to the dining room in a black evening gown sodaringly lacking in back, and yet, withal, so slimly perfect an elegantthing, that an actual breathlessness hung over the hall, the clatter ofdishes pausing. 

There was a gold bird of paradise dipped down her hair over oneshoulder, trailing its smoothness like fingers of lace. She defied withit as she walked. 

"Take it from me, " said Kitty, who felt fat in lavender that night, "she's going it one too strong. "

Another evening she descended, always last, in a cloth of silver with atiny, an absurd, an impeccably tight silver turban dipped down over oneeye, and absolutely devoid of jewels except the pear-shaped diamond onher left forefinger. 

They were a noisy, a spending, a cosmopolitan crowd of too-well-fed menand too-well-groomed women, ignored by the veranda groups of wives andmothers, openly dazzling and arousing a tremendous curiosity in theyounger set, and quite obviously sought after by their own kind. 

But Hester's world, too, is all run through with sharply defined socialschisms. 

"I wish that Irwin woman wouldn't always hang round our crowd, " shesaid, one morning, as she and Kitty lay side by side in the cooling roomafter their baths, massages, manicures, and shampoos. "I don't want tobe seen running with her. "

"Did you see the square emerald she wore last night?"

"Fake. I know the clerk at the Synthetic Jewelry Company had it made upfor her. She's cheap, I tell you. Promiscuous. Who ever heard of anybodystanding back of her? She knocks around. She sells her old clothes toTessie, my manicurist. I've got a line on her. She's cheap. "

Kitty, who lay with her face under a white mud of cold cream and herlittle mouth merely a hole, turned on her elbow. 

"We can't all be top-notchers, Hester, " she said. "You're hard asnails. "

"I guess I am, but you've got to be to play this game. The ones whoaren't end up by stuffing the keyhole and turning on the gas. You've gotto play it hard or not at all. If you've got the name, you might as wellhave the game. "

"If I had it to do over again--well, there would be one morewife-and-mother role being played in this little old world, even if Ihad to play it on a South Dakota farm. "

"'Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well, ' I used to write in acopy book. Well, that's the way I feel about this. To me, anything isworth doing to escape the cotton stockings and lisle next to your skin. I admit I never sit down and _think_. You know, sit down and take stockof myself. What's the use thinking? Live! Yes, " mused Hester, her armsin a wreath over her head, "I think I'd do it all over again. There'snot been so many, at that. Three. The first was a salesman. He'd havemarried me, but I couldn't see it on six thousand a year. Nice fellow, too--an easy spender in a small way, but I couldn't see a future toladies' neckwear. I hear he made good later in munitions. Al was apretty good sort, too, but tight. How I hate tightness! I've been prettylucky in the long run, I guess. "

"Did I say 'hard as nails'?" said Kitty, grotesquely fitting a cigarettein the aperture of her mouth. "I apologize. Why, alongside of you apiece of flint is morning cereal. Haven't you ever had a love affair?I've been married twice--that's how chicken hearted I can be. Haven'tyou ever pumped a little faster just because a certain some one walkedinto the room?"

"Once. "

"Once what?"

"I liked a fellow. Pretty much. A blond. Say, he was blond! I alwaysthink to myself, Kit, next to Gerald, you've got the bluest eyes underheaven. Only, his didn't have any dregs. "

"Thanks, dearie. "

"I sometimes wonder about Gerald. I ought to drive over while we're outhere. Poor old Gerald Fishback!"

"Sweet name--'Fishback. ' No wonder you went wrong, dearie. "

"Oh, I'm not getting soft. I saw my bed and made it, nice and soft andcomfy, and I'm lying on it without a whimper. "

"You just bet your life you made it up nice and comfy! You've the rightidea; I have to hand that to you. You command respect from them. Lord!Ed would as soon fire a teacup at me as not. But, with me, it pays. Thelast one he broke he made up to me with my opal-and-diamond beetle. "

"Wouldn't wear an opal if it was set next to the Hope diamond. "

"Superstitious, dearie?"

"Unlucky. Never knew it to fail. "

"Not a superstition in my bones. I don't believe in walking underladders or opening an umbrella in the house or sitting down withthirteen, but, Lordy! never saw the like with you! Thought you'd havethe hysterics over that little old vanity mirror you broke that day outat the races. "

"Br-r-r! I hated it. "

"Lay easy, dearie. Nothing can touch you the way he's raking in the warcontracts. "

"Great--isn't it?"

"Play for a country home, dearie. I always say real estate and jewelryare something in the hand. Look ahead in this game, I always say. "

"You just bet I've looked ahead. "

"So have I, but not enough. "

"Somehow, I never feel afraid. I could get a job to-morrow if I had to. "

"Say, dearie, if it comes to that, with twenty pounds off me, there'snot a chorus I couldn't land back in. "

"I worked once, you know, in Lichtig's import shop. "

"Fifth Avenue?"

"Yes. It was in between the salesman and Al. I sold two thousand fivehundred dollars' worth of gowns the first week. "

"Sure enough?"

"'Girl, ' old man Lichtig said to me the day I quit--'girl, ' he said, 'ifever you need this job again, comeback; it's waiting. '"

"Fine chance!"

"I've got the last twenty-five dollars I earned pinned away this minutein the pocket of the little dark-blue suit I wore to work. I paid forthat suit with my first month's savings. A little dark-blue Norfolk, Lichtig let me have out of stock for twenty-seven fifty. "

"Were they giving them away with a pound of tea?"

"Honest, Kitty, it was neat. Little white shirt waist, tan shoes, andone of those slick little five-dollar sailors, and every cent paid outof my salary. I could step into that outfit to-morrow, look the part, and land back that job or any other. I had a way with the trade, evenback at Finley's. "

"Here, hold my jewel bag, honey; I'm going to die of cold-creamsuffocation if she don't soon come back and unsmear me. "

"Opal beetle in it?"

"Yes, dearie; but it won't bite. It's muzzled with my diamondhorseshoe. "

"Nothing doing, Kit. Put it under your pillow. "

"You better watch out. There's a thirteenth letter in the alphabet; youmight accidentally use it some day. You're going to have a sweet timeto-night, you are!"

"Why?"

"The boys have engaged De Butera to come up to the rooms. "

"You mean the fortune teller over at the Stag Hotel?"

"She's not a fortune teller, you poor nervous wreck. She's thehighest-priced spiritualist in the world. Moving tables--spooks--woof!"

"Faugh!" said Hester, rising from her couch and feeling with her littlebare feet for the daintiest of pink-silk mules. "I could make tablesmove, too, at forty dollars an hour. Where's my attendant? I want analcohol rub. "

They did hold séance that night in a fine spirit of lark, huddledtogether in the _de-luxe_ sitting room of one of their suites, andlittle half-hysterical shrieks and much promiscuous ribaldry under coverof darkness. 

Madame de Butera was of a distinctly fat and earthy blondness, with acoarse-lace waist over pink, and short hands covered with turquoiserings of many shapes and blues. 

Tables moved. A dead sister of Wheeler's spoke in thin, high voice. Whyis it the dead are always so vocally thin and high?

A chair tilted itself on hind legs, eliciting squeals from the women. Babe spoke with a gentleman friend long since passed on, and Kitty witha deceased husband, and began to cry quite sobbily and took little sipsof highball quite gulpily. May Denison, who was openly defiant, allowedherself to be hypnotized and lay rigid between two chairs, andKitty went off into rampant hysteria until Wheeler finally placed ahundred-dollar bill over the closed eyes, and whether under it, or tothe legerdemain of madam's manipulating hands, the tight eyes opened, May, amid riots of laughter, claiming for herself the hundred-dollarbill, and Kitty, quite resuscitated, jumping up for a table cancan, heryellow hair tumbling, and her china-blue eyes with the dregs in theminclined to water. 

All but Hester. She sat off by herself in a peacock-colored gown thatwrapped her body suavity as if the fabric were soaking wet, a band ofsmoky-blue about her forehead. Never intoxicated, a slight amount ofalcohol had a tendency to make her morose. 

"What's the matter, Cleo?" asked Wheeler, sitting down beside her andlifting her cool fingers one by one, and, by reason of some remoteanalogy that must have stirred within him, seeing in her a Nile queen. "What's the matter Cleo? Does the spook stuff get your goat?"

She turned on him eyes that were all troubled up, like waters suddenlywind-blown. 

"God!" she said, her fingers, nails inward, closing about his arm. "Wheeler--can--can the--dead--speak?"

But fleeting as the hours themselves were the moods of them all, andthe following morning there they were, the eight of them, light withlaughter and caparisoned again as to hampers, veils, coats, dogs, offfor a day's motoring through the springtime countryside. 

"Where to?" shouted Wheeler, twisting from where he and Hester sat inthe first of the cars to call to the two motor-loads behind. 

"I thought Crystal Cave was the spot"--from May Denison in the last ofthe cars, winding her head in a scarlet veil. 

"Crystal Cave it is, then. "

"Is that through Demopolis?"

Followed a scanning of maps. 

"Sure! Here it is! See! Granite City. Mitchell. Demopolis. CrystalCave. "

"Good Lord! Hester, you're not going to spend any time in that dump?"

"It's my home town, " she replied, coldly. "The only relation I had isburied there. It's nothing out of your way to drop me on the court-housesteps and pick me up as you drive back, I've been wanting to get thereever since we're down here. Wanting to stop by your home town youhaven't seen in five years isn't unreasonable, is it?"

He admitted it wasn't, leaning to kiss her. 

She turned to him a face soft, with one of the pouts he usually foundirresistible. 

"Honey, " she said, "what do you think?"

"What?"

"Chris is buying May that chinchilla coat I showed you in Meyerbloom'swindow the day before we left. "

"The deuce he is!" he said, letting go of her hand, but hers immediatelycovering his. 

"She's wiring her sister in the 'Girlie Revue' to go in and buy it forher. "

"Outrage--fifteen thousand dollars to cover a woman's back! Look at thebeautiful scenery, honey! You're always prating about views. Look atthose hills over there! Great--isn't it?"

"I wouldn't expect it, Wheeler, if it wasn't war year and you landingone big contract after another. I'd hate to see May show herself inthat chinchilla coat when we could beat her to it by a wire. I couldtelegraph Meyerbloom himself. I bought the sable rug of him. I'd hateit, Wheeler, to see her and Chris beat us to it. So would you. What'sfifteen thousand when one of your contracts alone runs into the hundredthousands? Honey?"

"Wire, " he said, sourly, but not withdrawing his hand from hers. 

 * * * * *

They left her at the shady court-house steps in Demopolis, but withpleasantry and gibe. 

"Give my love to the town pump. "

"Rush the old oaken growler for me. "

"So long!" she called, eager to be rid of them. "Pick me up at sixsharp. "

She walked slowly up High Street. Passers-by turned to stare, butotherwise she was unrecognized. There was a new five-and-ten-cent store, and Finley Brothers had added an ell. High Street was paved. She made aforay down into the little side street where she had spent those queerlyremote first seventeen years of her life. How dim her aunt seemed! Thelittle unpainted frame house was gone. There was a lumber yard on thesite. Everything seemed to have shrunk. The street was narrower anddirtier than she recalled it. 

She made one stop, at the house of Maggie Simms, a high-school chum. Itwas a frame house, too, and she remembered that the front door openeddirectly into the parlor and the side entrance was popularly usedinstead. But a strange sister-in-law opened the side door. Maggie wasmarried and living in Cincinnati. Oh, fine--a master mechanic, and therewere twins. She started back toward Finley's, thinking of Gerald, andhalfway she changed her mind. 

Maggie Simms married and living in Cincinnati. Twins! Heigh-ho! What aworld! The visit was hardly a success. At half after five she was on herway back to the court-house steps. Stupid to have made it six!

And then, of course, and quite as you would have it, Gerald Fishbackcame along. She recognized his blondness long before he saw her. He wasbigger and more tanned, and, as of old, carried his hat in his hand. Shenoticed that there were no creases down the front of his trousers, butthe tweed was good and he gave off that intangible aroma of well-being. 

She was surprised at the old thrill racing over her. Seeing him was likea stab of quick steel through the very pit of her being. She reachedout, touching him, before he saw her. 

"Gerald, " she said, soft and teasingly. 

It was actually as if he had been waiting for that touch, because beforehe could possibly have perceived her her name was on his lips. 

"Hester!" he said, the blueness of his eyes flashing between blinks. "Not Hester?"

"Yes, Hester, " she said, smiling up at him. 

He grasped both her hands, stammering for words that wanted to comequicker than he could articulate. 

"Hester!" he kept repeating. "Hester!"

"To think you knew me, Gerald!"

"Know you! I'd know you blindfolded. And how--I--You're beautiful, Hester! I think you've grown five years younger. "

"You've got on, Gerald. You look it. "

"Yes; I'm general manager now at Finley's. "

"I'm so glad. Married?"

"Not while there's a Hester Bevins on earth. "

She started at her own name. 

"How do you know I'm not married?"

"I--I know--" he said, reddening up. 

"Isn't there some place we can talk, Gerald? I've thirty minutes beforemy friends call for me. "

"'Thirty minutes?'"

"Your rooms? Haven't you rooms or a room where we could go and sitdown?"

"Why--why, no, Hester, " he said, still red. "I'd rather you didn'tgo there. But here. Let's stop in at the St. James Hotel. There's aparlor. "

To her surprise, she felt herself color up and was pleasantly consciousof her finger tips. 

"You darling!" She smiled up at him. 

They were seated presently in the unaired plush-and-cherry, Nottingham-and-Axminster parlor of a small-town hotel. 

"Hester, " he said, "you're like a vision come to earth. "

"I'm a bad durl, " she said, challenging his eyes for what he knew. 

"You're a little saint walked down and leaving an empty pedestal in mydreams. "

She placed her forefinger over his mouth. 

"Sh-h!" she said. "I'm not a saint, Gerald; you know that. "

"Yes, " he said, with a great deal of boyishness in his defiance, "I doknow it, Hester, but it is those who have been through the fire who cansometimes come out--new. It was your early environment. "

"My aunt died on the town, Gerald, I heard. I could have saved her allthat if I had only known. She was cheap, aunt was. Poor soul! She neverlooked ahead. "

"It was your early environment, Hester. I've explained that often enoughto them here. I'd bank on you, Hester--swear by you. "

She patted him. 

"I'm a pretty bad egg, Gerald. According to the standards of a townlike this, I'm rotten, and they're about right. For five years, Gerald, I've--"

"The real _you_ is ahead of--and not behind you, Hester. "

"How wonderful, " she said, "for you to feel that way, but--"

"Hester, " he said, more and more the big boy, and his big blond headnearing hers, "I don't care about anything that's past; I only knowthat, for me, you are the--"

"Gerald, " she said, "for God's sake!"

"I'm a two hundred-a-month man now, Hester. I want to build you theprettiest, the whitest little house in this town. Out in the Briarwoodsection. I'll make them kowtow to you, Hester; I--"

"Why, " she said, slowly, and looking at him with a certain sadness, "youcouldn't keep me in stockings, Gerald! The aigrettes on this hat costmore than one month of your salary. "

"Good God!" he said. 

"You're a dear, sweet boy just the same; but you remember what I toldyou about my crêpe-de-Chine soul. "

"Just the same, I love you best in those crispy white shirt waists youused to wear and the little blue suits and sailor hats. You rememberthat day at Finleys' picnic, Hester, that day, dear, that you--you--"

"You dear boy!"

"But it--your mistake--it--it's all over. You work now, don't you, Hester?"

Somehow, looking into the blueness of his eyes and their entreaty forher affirmative, she did what you or I might have done. She half lied, regretting it while the words still smoked on her lips. 

"Why, yes, Gerald; I've held a fine position in Lichtig Brothers, NewYork importers. Those places sometimes pay as high as seventy-five aweek. But I don't make any bones, Gerald; I've not been an angel. "

"The--the salesman, Hester?"--his lips quivering with a nausea for thequestion. 

"I haven't seen him in four years, " she answered, truthfully. 

He laid his cheek on her hand. 

"I knew you'd come through. It was your environment. I'll marry youto-morrow--to-day, Hester. I love you. "

"You darling boy!" she said, her lips back tight against her teeth. "Youdarling, darling boy!"

"Please, Hester! We'll forget what has been. "

"Let me go, " she said, rising and pinning on her hat; "let me go--or--orI'll cry, and--and I don't want to cry. "

"Hester, " he called, rushing after her and wanting to fold her back intohis arms, "let me prove my trust--my love--"

"Don't! Let me go! Let me go!"

At slightly after six the ultra cavalcade drew up at the court-housesteps. She was greeted with the pleasantries and the gibes. 

"Have a good time, sweetness?" asked Wheeler, arranging her rugs. 

"Yes, " she said, lying back and letting her lids droop; "buttired--very, very tired. "

At the hotel, she stopped a moment to write a telegram before going upfor the vapor bath, nap, and massage that were to precede dinner. 

"Meyerbloom & Co. , Furriers. Fifth Avenue, New York, " it was addressed. 

 * * * * *

This is not a war story except that it has to do with profiteering, parlor patriots, and the return of Gerald Fishback. 

While Hester was living this tale, and the chinchilla coat wasenveloping her like an ineffably tender caress, three hundred thousandof her country's youths were at strangle hold across three thousandmiles of sea, and on a notorious night when Hester walked, fully dressedin a green gown of iridescent fish scales, into the electric fountain ofa seaside cabaret, and Wheeler had to carry her to her car wrapped in asable rug, Gerald Fishback was lying with his face in Flanders mud, andhis eye sockets blackly deep and full of shrapnel, and a lung-eating gascloud rolling at him across the vast bombarded dawn. 

 * * * * *

Hester read of him one morning, sitting up in bed against a mound oflace-over-pink pillows, a masseuse at the pink soles of her feet. It wasas if his name catapulted at her from a column she never troubled toread. She remained quite still, looking at the name for a full fiveminutes after it had pierced her full consciousness. Then, suddenly, sheswung out of bed, tilting over the masseuse. 

"Tessie, " she said, evenly enough, "that will do. I have to hurry toLong Island to a base hospital. Go to that little telephone in thehall--will you?--and call my car. "

But the visit was not so easy of execution. It required two days of redtape and official dispensation before she finally reached the seasidehospital that, by unpleasant coincidence, only a year before had beenthe resort hotel of more than one dancing orgy. 

She thought she would faint when she saw him, jerking herself back witha straining of all her faculties. The blood seemed to drain awayfrom her body, leaving her ready to sink, and only the watchful andthreatening eye of a man nurse sustained her. He was sitting up in bed, and she would never have recognized in him anything of Gerald exceptfor the shining Scandinavian quality of his hair. His eyes were notbandaged, but their sockets were dry and bare like the beds of old lakeslong since drained. She had only seen the like in eyeless marble busts. There were unsuspected cheek bones, pitched now very high in his face, and his neck, rising above the army nightshirt, seemed cruelly long, possibly from thinness. 

"Are you Hester?" whispered the man nurse. 

She nodded, her tonsils squeezed together in an absolute knot. 

"He called for you all through his delirium, " he said, and went out. Shestood at the bedside, trying to keep down the screams from her speechwhen it should come. But he was too quick for her. 

"Hester, " he said, feeling out. 

And in their embrace, her agony melted to tears that choked and seared, beat and scalded her, and all the time it was he who held her with rigidarm, whispered to her, soothed down the sobs which tore through her likethe rip of silk, seeming to split her being. 

"Now--now! Why, Hester! Now--now--now! Sh-h! It will be over in aminute. You mustn't feel badly. Come now, is this the way to greet afellow that's so darn glad to see you that nothing matters? Why I cansee you, Hester. Plain as day in your little crispy waist. Now, now!You'll get used to it in a minute. Now--now--"

"I can't stand it, Gerald! I can't! Can't! Kill me, Gerald, but don'task me to stand it!"

He stroked down the side of her, lingering at her cheek. 

"Sh-h! Take your time, dear, " he said, with the first furry note in hisvoice. "I know it's hard, but take your time. You'll get used to me. It's the shock, that's all. Sh-h!"

She covered his neck with kisses and scalding tears, her compassion forhim racing through her in chills. 

"I could tear out my eyes, Gerald, and give them to you. I could tearout my heart and give it to you. I'm bursting of pain. Gerald! Gerald!"

There was no sense of proportion left her. She could think only of whather own physical suffering might do in penance. She would willingly haveopened the arteries of her heart and bled for him on the moment. Hercompassion wanted to scream. She, who had never sacrificed anything, wanted suddenly to bleed at his feet, and prayed to do so on theagonized crest of the moment. 

"There's a girl! Why, I'm going to get well, Hester, and do whatthousands of others of the blinded are doing. Build up a new, a useful, and a busy life. "

"It's not fair! It's not fair!"

"I'm ready now, except for this old left lung. It's burnt a bit, yousee--gas. "

"God! God!"

"It's pretty bad, I admit. But there's another way of looking at it. There's a glory in being chosen to bear your country's wounds. "

"Your beautiful eyes! Your blue, beautiful eyes! O God, what does itall mean? Living! Dying! All the rotters, all the rat-eyed ones I know, scot-free and Gerald chosen. God! God! where are you?"

"He was never so close to me as now, Hester. And with you here, dear, Heis closer than ever. "

"I'll never leave you, Gerald, " she said, crying down into his sleeveagain. "Don't be afraid of the dark, dear; I'll never leave you. "

"Nonsense!" he said, smoothing her hair that the hat had fallen awayfrom. 

"Never! Never! I wish I were a mat for you to walk on. I want to crawlon my hands and knees for you. I'll never leave you, Gerald--never!"

"My beautiful Hester!" he said, unsteadily, and then again, "Nonsense!"

But, almost on the moment, the man nurse returned and she was obliged toleave him, but not without throbbing promises of the to-morrow'sreturn, and then there took place, downstairs in an anteroom, a long, acloseted, and very private interview with a surgeon and more red tapeand filing of applications. She was so weak from crying that a nurse wascalled finally to help her through the corridors to her car. 

Gerald's left lung was burned out and he had three, possibly four, weeksto live. 

All the way home, in her tan limousine with the little yellow curtains, she sat quite upright, away from the upholstery, crying down heruncovered face, but a sudden, an exultant determination hardening in hermind. 

 * * * * *

That night a strange conversation took place in the Riverside Driveapartment. She sat on Wheeler's left knee, toying with his platinumchain, a strained, a rather terrible pallor out in her face, but thesobs well under her voice, and its modulation about normal. She had beentalking for over two hours, silencing his every interruption until hehad fallen quite still. 

"And--and that's all, Wheeler, " she ended up. "I've told you everything. We were never more than just--friends--Gerald and me. You must take myword for it, because I swear it before God. "

"I take your word, Hester, " he said, huskily. 

"And there he lies, Wheeler, without--without any eyes in his head. Justas if they'd been burned out by irons. And he--he smiles when he talks. That's the awful part. Smiles like--well, I guess like the angel he--healmost is. You see, he says it's a glory to carry the wounds of hiscountry. Just think! just think! that boy to feel that, the way he liesthere!"

"Poor boy! Poor, poor boy!"

"Gerald's like that. So--so full of faith. And, Wheeler, he thinks he'sgoing to get well and lead a useful life like they teach the blind todo. He reminds me of one of those Greek statues down at the Athens Café. You know--broken. That's it; he's a broken statue. "

"Poor fellow! Poor fellow! Do something for him. Buy the finest fruit inthe town for him. Send a case of wine. Two. "

"I--I think I must be torn to pieces inside, Wheeler, the way I'vecried. "

"Poor little girl!"

"Wheeler?"

"Now, now, " he said; "taking it so to heart won't do no good. It'srotten, I know, but worrying won't help. Got me right upset, too. Come, get it off your mind. Let's take a ride. Doll up; you look a bit peaked. Come now, and to-morrow we'll buy out the town for him. "

"Wheeler?" she said. "Wheeler?"

"What?"

"Don't look, Wheeler. I've something else to ask of you--somethingqueer. "

"Now, now, " he said, his voice hardening but trying to maintain achiding note; "you know what you promised after the chinchilla--no morethis year until--"

"No, no; for God's sake, not that! It's still about Gerald. "

"Well?"

"Wheeler, he's only got four weeks to live. Five at the outside. "

"Now, now, girl; we've been all over that. "

"He loves me, Wheeler, Gerald does. "

"Yes?" dryly. 

"It would be like doing something decent--the only decent thing I'vedone in all my life, Wheeler, almost like doing something for the war, the way these women in the pretty white caps have done, and you knowwe--we haven't turned a finger for it except to--to gain--if I wasto--to marry Gerald for those few weeks, Wheeler. I know it's a--rottensacrifice, but I guess that's the only kind I'm capable of making. "

He sat squat, with his knees spread. 

"You crazy?" he said. 

"It would mean, Wheeler, his dying happy. He doesn't know it's all upwith him. He'd be made happy for the poor little rest of his life. Heloves me. You see, Wheeler, I was his first--his only sweetheart. I'm ona pedestal, he says, in his dreams. I never told you--but that boy waswilling to marry me, Wheeler, knowing--some--of the things I am. He'salways carried round a dream of me, you see--no, you wouldn't see, butI've been--well, I guess sort of a medallion that won't tarnish in hisheart. Wheeler, for the boy's few weeks he has left? Wheeler?"

"Well, I'll be hanged!"

"I'm not turning holy, Wheeler. I am what I am. But that boy lyingout there--I can't bear it! It wouldn't make any difference withus--afterward. You know where you stand with me and for always, but itwould mean the dying happy of a boy who fought for us. Let me marrythat boy, Wheeler. Let his light go out in happiness. Wheeler? Please, Wheeler?" He would not meet her eyes. "Wheeler?"

"Go to it, Hester, " he said, coughing about in his throat and rising towalk away. "Bring him here and give him the fat of the land. You cancount on me to keep out of the way. Go to it, " he repeated. 

And so they were married, Hester holding his hand beside the hospitalcot, the man nurse and doctor standing by, and the chaplain incantingthe immemorial words. A bar of sunshine lay across the bed, and Geraldpronounced each "I will" in a lifted voice that carried to the fourcorners of the little room. She was allowed to stay that night pasthospital hours, and they talked with the dusk flowing over them. 

"Hester, Hester, " he said, "I should have had the strength to hold outagainst your making this terrible sacrifice. "

"It's the happiest hour of my life, " she said, kissing him. 

"I feel well enough to get up now, sweetheart. "

"Gerald, don't force. You've weeks ahead before you are ready for that. "

"But to-morrow, dear, home! In whose car are you calling for meto-morrow to take me _home_?"

"In a friend's, dearest. "

"Won't I be crowding up our little apartment? Describe it again to me, dearest--our _home_. "

"It's so little, Gerald. Three rooms and the littlest, babiest kitchen. When you're once up, I'll teach its every corner to you. "

Tears seeped through the line where his lids had been, and it was almostmore than she could bear. 

"I'll make it up to you, though, Hester. I know I should have beenstrong enough to hold out against your marrying me, but I'll make it up. I've a great scheme; a sort of braille system of accountancy--"

"Please, Gerald--not now!"

"If only, Hester, I felt easier about the finances. Will your savingsstand the strain? Your staying at home from your work this way--and thenme--"

"Gerald dear, I've told you so often--I've saved more than we need. "

"My girl!"

"My dear, my dear!" she said. 

 * * * * *

They moved him with hardly a jar in an army ambulance, and with theyellow limousine riding alongside to be of possible aid, and she had thebed stripped of its laces and cool with linen for him, and he sighed outwhen they placed him on it and would not let go her hand. 

"What a feeling of space for so little a room!"

"It's the open windows, love. "

He lay back tiredly. 

"What sweet linen!"

"I shopped it for you. "

"You, too--you're in linen, Hester?"

"A percale shirt waist. I shopped it for you, too. "

"Give me your hand, " he said, and pressed a string of close kisses intoits palm. 

The simplicity of the outrageous subterfuge amazed even her. She heldhothouse grapes at two dollars a pound to his lips, and he ate themthrough a smile. 

"Naughty, extravagant girl!" he said. 

"I saw them on a fruit stand for thirty cents, and couldn't resist. "

"Never mind; I'll make it up to you. "

Later, he asked for braille books, turning his sightless face toward heras he studied, trying to concentrate through the pain in his lung. 

"If only you wouldn't insist upon the books awhile yet, dear. The doctorsays it's too soon. "

"I feel so strong, Hester, with you near, and, besides, I must start thepot boiling. "

She kissed down into the high nap of his hair, softly. 

Evenings, she read to him newspaper accounts of his fellow-soldiers, andthe day of the peace, for which he had paid so terribly, she rolled hisbed, alone, with a great tugging and straining, to the open window, where the wind from the river could blow in against him and steamboatwhistles shoot up like rockets. 

She was so inexpressibly glad for the peace day. Somehow, it seemedeasier and less blackly futile to give him up. 

Of Wheeler for three running weeks she had not a glimpse, and then, oneday, he sent up a hamper, not a box, but an actual trunk of roses, andshe, in turn, sent them up the back way to Kitty's flat, not wantingeven their fragrance released. 

With Kitty there were little hurried confabs each day outside theapartment door in the hallway before the elevator shaft. A veil of aweseemed to wrap the Drew woman. 

"I can't get it out of my head, Hester. It's like a fairy story, and, inanother way, it's a scream--Wheeler standing for this. "

"Sh-h, Kitty! His ears are so sensitive. "

"Quit shushing me every time I open my mouth. Poor kid! Let me have alook at him. He wouldn't know. "

"No! No!"

"God! if it wasn't so sad it would be a scream--Wheeler footing thebills!"

"Oh--you! Oh--oh--you!"

"All right, all right! Don't take the measles over it. I'm going. Here'ssome chicken broth I brought down. Ed sent it up to me from Sherry's. "

But Hester poured it into the sink for some nameless reason, and brewedsome fresh from a fowl she tipped the hallboy a dollar to go out andpurchase. 

She slept on a cot at the foot of his bed, so sensitive to his wakingthat almost before he came up to consciousness she was at his side. Allday she wore the little white shirt waists, a starchy one fresh eachmorning, and at night scratchy little unlacy nightgowns with longsleeves and high yokes. He liked to run his hand along the crispness ofthe fabric. 

"I love you in cool stuff, Hester. You're so cool yourself, I alwaysthink of you in the little white waist and blue skirt. You remember, dear--Finleys' annual?"

"I--I'm going to dress like that for you always, Gerald. "

"I won't let you be going back to work for long, sweetheart. I've someplans up my sleeve, I have. "

"Yes! Yes!"

But when the end did come, it was with as much of a shock as if she hadnot been for days expecting it. The doctor had just left, puncturing hisarm and squirting into his poor tired system a panacea for the pain. Buthe would not react to it, fighting down the drowsiness. 

"Hester, " he said, suddenly, and a little weakly, "lean down, sweetheart, and kiss me--long--long--"

She did, and it was with the pressure of her lips to his that he died. 

 * * * * *

It was about a week after the funeral that Wheeler came back. She was onthe _chaise-longue_ that had been dragged out into the parlor, in thewebbiest of white negligées, a little large-eyed, a little subdued, butsweetening the smile she turned toward him by a trick she had of liftingthe brows. 

"Hel-lo, Wheeler!" she said, raising her cheek to be kissed. 

He trailed his lips, but did not seek her mouth, sitting down ratherawkwardly and in the spread-kneed fashion he had. 

"Well, girl--you all right?"

"You helped, " she said. 

"It gave me a jolt, too. I made over twenty-five thousand to the RedCross on the strength of it. "

"Thank you, Wheeler. "

"Lord!" he said, rising and rubbing his hands together. "Give us acouple of fingers to drink, honey; I'm cotton-mouthed. "

She reached languidly for a blue-enameled bell, lying back, with herarms dangling and her smile out. Then, as if realizing that the occasionmust be lifted, turned her face to him. 

"Old bummer!" she said, using one of her terms of endearment for him andtwo-thirds closing her eyes. Then did he stoop and kiss her roundly onthe lips. 

 * * * * *

For the remainder of this tale, I could wish for a pen supernallydipped, or for a metaphysician's plating to my vernacular, or for thelinguistic patois of that land off somewhere to the west of Life. Ormaybe just a neurologist's chart of Hester's nerve history would help. 

In any event, after an evening of musical comedy and of gelatinousdancing, Hester awoke at four o'clock the next morning out of an hour ofsound sleep, leaping to her knees there in bed like a quick flame, hergesture shooting straight up toward the jointure of wall and ceiling. 

"Gerald!" she called, her smoky black hair floating around her and herarms cutting through the room's blackness. "Gerald!" Suddenly the roomwas not black. It was light with the Scandinavian blondness of Gerald, the head of him nebulous there above the pink-satin canopy of herdressing table, and, more than that, the drained lakes of his socketswere deep with eyes. Yes, in all their amazing blueness, but queerlysharpened to steel points that went through Hester and through her as ifbayonets were pushing into her breasts and her breathing. 

"Gerald!" she shrieked, in one more cry that curdled the quiet, and satup in bed, trembling and hugging herself, and breathing in until herlips were drawn shudderingly against her teeth like wind-sucked windowshades. 

"Gerald!" And then the picture did a sort of moving-picture fade-out, and black Lottie came running with her hair grotesquely greased andflattened to take out the kink, and gave her a drink of water with theaddition of two drops from a bottle, and turned on the night light andwent back to bed. 

The next morning Hester carried about what she called "a head, " and, since it was Wheeler's day at Rosencranz, remained in bed until threeo'clock, Kitty curled at the foot of it the greater part of theforenoon. 

"It was the rotten night did me up. Dreams! Ugh! dreams!"

"No wonder, " diagnosed Kitty, sweetly. "Indigestion from having yourcake and eating it. "

At three she dressed and called for her car, driving down to the IvyFuneral Rooms, a Gothic Thanatopsis, set, with one of those laughs upher sleeves in which the vertical city so loves to indulge, right inthe heart of the town, between an automobile-accessory shop and aquick-lunch room. Gerald had been buried from there with simpleflag-draped service in the Gothic chapel that was protected from theview and roar of the Elevated trains by suitably stained windows. Therewas a check in Hester's purse made out for an amount that correspondedto the statement she had received from the Ivy Funeral Rooms. And righthere again, for the sake of your elucidation, I could wish at least forthe neurologist's chart. At the very door to the establishment--withone foot across the threshold, in fact--she paused, her face tiltedtoward the corner where wall and ceiling met, and at whatever she sawthere her eyes dilated widely and her left hand sprang to her bosom asif against the incision of quick steel. Then, without even entering, sherushed back to her car again, urging her chauffeur, at the risk of everyspeed regulation, homeward. 

That was the beginning of purgatorial weeks that were soon to tell onHester. They actually brought out a streak of gray through her hair, which Lottie promptly dyed and worked under into the lower part of hercoiffure. For herself, Hester would have let it remain. 

Wheeler was frankly perplexed. God knows it was bad enough to be calledupon to endure streaks of unreasonableness at Rosencranz, but Hesterwasn't there to show that side to him if she had it. To be pretty frankabout it, she was well paid not to. Well paid! He'd done his part. Morethan nine out of ten would have done. Been made a jay of, if the truthwas known. She was a Christmas-tree bauble and was expected to throw offholiday iridescence. There were limits!

"You're off your feed, girl. Go off by yourself and speed up. "

"It's the nights, Gerald. Good God--I mean Wheeler! They kill me. Ican't sleep. Can't you get a doctor who will give me stronger drops? Hedoesn't know my case. Nerves, he calls it. It's this head. If only Icould get rid of this head!"

"You women and your nerves and your heads! Are you all alike? Get outand get some exercise. Keep down your gasoline bills and it will sendyour spirits up. There's such a thing as having it too good. "

She tried to meet him in lighter vein after that, dressing her mostbizarrely, and greeting him one night in a batik gown, a new process ofdyeing that could be flamboyant and narrative in design. This one, along, sinuous robe that enveloped her slimness like a flame, beginningdown around the train in a sullen smoke and rushing up to her face in aburst of crimson. 

He thought her so exquisitely rare that he was not above the poor, soggydevice of drinking his dinner wine from the cup of her small crimsonslipper, and she dangled on his knee like the dangerous little flame shenone too subtly purported to be, and he spanked her quickly and softlyacross the wrists because she was too nervous to hold the match steadilyenough for his cigar to take light, and then kissed away all the mocksting. 

But the next morning, at the fateful four o'clock, and in spite of foursleeping-drops, Lottie on the cot at the foot of her bed, and the nightlight burning, she awoke on the crest of such a shriek that a stilettomight have slit the silence, the end of the sheet crammed up and intoher mouth, and, ignoring all of Lottie's calming, sat up on her knees, her streaming eyes on the jointure of wall and ceiling, where the open, accusing ones of Gerald looked down at her. It was not that they wereterrible eyes. They were full of the sweet blue, and clear as lakes. Itwas only that they knew. Those eyes _knew. They knew!_ She tried thedevice there at four o'clock in the morning of tearing up the stillunpaid check to the Ivy Funeral Rooms, and then she curled up in bedwith her hand in the negro maid's and her face half buried in thepillow. 

"Help me, Lottie!" she begged; "help me!"

"Law! Pore child! Gettin' the horrors every night thisaway! I've beenthrough it before with other ladies, but I never saw a case of the soberhorrors befoh. Looks like they's the worst of all. Go to sleep, child. I's holdin'. "

You see, Lottie had looked in on life where you and I might not. Abird's-eye view may be very, very comprehensive, but a domestic's-eyeview can sometimes be very, very close. 

And then, one night, after Hester had beat her hands down into themattress and implored Gerald to close his accusing eyes, she sat up inbed, waiting for the first streak of dawn to show itself, railing at thepain in her head. 

"God! My head! Rub it, Lottie! My head! My eyes! The back of my neck!"

The next morning she did what you probably have been expecting she woulddo. She rose and dressed, sending Lottie to bed for a needed rest. Dressed herself in the little old blue-serge suit that had been hangingin the very back of a closet for four years, with a five-and twoten-dollar bills pinned into its pocket, and pressed the little bluesailor hat down on the smooth, winglike quality of her hair. She lookedsmaller, peculiarly, indescribably younger. She wrote Wheeler a note, dropping it down the mail-chute in the hall, and then came back, lookingabout rather aimlessly for something she might want to pack. There wasnothing; so she went out quite bare and simply, with all her lovelyjewels in the leather case on the upper shelf of the bedroom closet, asshe had explained to Wheeler in the note. 

That afternoon she presented herself to Lichtig. He was again as youwould expect--round-bellied, and wore his cigar up obliquely from onecorner of his mouth. He engaged her immediately at an increase of fivedollars a week, and as she was leaving with the promise to report ateight-thirty the next morning he pinched her cheek, she pulling awayangrily. 

"None of that!"

"My mistake, " he apologized. 

She considered it promiscuous and cheap, and you know her aversion forcheapness. 

Then she obtained, after a few forays in and out of brownstone housesin West Forty-fifth Street, one of those hall bedrooms so familiar tohuman-interest stories--the iron-bed, washstand, and slop-jar kind. There was a five-dollar advance required. That left her twenty dollars. 

She shopped a bit then in an Eighth Avenue department store, and, withthe day well on the wane, took a street car up to the Ivy Funeral Rooms. This time she entered, but the proprietor did not recognize her untilshe explained. As you know, she looked smaller and younger, and therewas no tan car at the curb. 

"I want to pay this off by the week, " she said, handing him outthe statement and a much-folded ten-dollar bill. He looked at her, surprised. "Yes, " she said, her teeth biting off the word in a click. 

"Certainly, " he replied, handing her out a receipt for the ten. 

"I will pay five dollars a week hereafter. "

"That will stretch it out to twenty-eight weeks, " he said, stilldoubtfully. 

"I can't help it; I must. "

"Certainly, " he said, "that will be all right, " but looked puzzled. 

That night she slept in the hall bedroom in the Eighth Avenue, machine-stitched nightgown. She dropped off about midnight, praying notto awaken at four. But she did--with a slight start, sitting up in bed, her eyes where the wall and ceiling joined. 

Gerald's face was there, and his blue eyes were open, but the steelpoints were gone. They were smiling eyes. They seemed to embrace her, towash her in their fluid. 

All her fear and the pain in her head were gone. She sat up, looking athim, the tears streaming down over her smile and her lips moving. 

Then, sighing out like a child, she lay back on the pillow, turned over, and went to sleep. 

 * * * * *

And this is the story of Hester which so insisted to be told. I thinkshe must have wanted you to know. And wanted Gerald to know that youknow, and, in the end, I rather think she wanted God to know. 

THE VERTICAL CITY

In the most vertical city in the world men have run up their dreamsand their ambitions into slim skyscrapers that seem to exclaim at theaudacity of the mere mortar that sustains them. 

Minarets appear almost to tamper with the stars; towers to impalethe moon. There is one fifty-six-story rococo castle, built from thefive-and-ten-cent-store earnings of a merchant prince, that shootsupward with the beautiful rush of a Roman candle. 

Any Manhattan sunset, against a sky that looks as if it might give tothe poke of a finger, like a dainty woman's pink flesh, there marches asilhouetted caravan of tower, dome, and the astonished crests of officebuildings. 

All who would see the sky must gaze upward between these rockets offrenzied architecture, which are as beautiful as the terrific can everbe beautiful. 

In the vertical city there are no horizons of infinitude to rest theeyes; rather little breakfast napkins of it showing between walls andup through areaways. Sometimes even a lunchcloth of five, six, or maybesixty hundred stars or a bit of daylight-blue with a caul of sunshineacross, hoisted there as if run up a flagpole. 

It is well in the vertical city if the eyes and the heart have a liftto them, because, after all, these bits of cut-up infinitude, asmany-shaped as cookies, even when seen from a tenement window and to theaccompaniment of crick in the neck, are as full of mysterious alchemyover men's hearts as the desert sky or the sea sky. That is why, upthrough the wells of men's walls, one glimpse of sky can twist the soulwith--oh, the bitter, the sweet ache that lies somewhere within theheart's own heart, curled up there like a little protozoa. That is, ifthe heart and the eyes have a lift to them. Marylin's had. 

 * * * * *

Marylin! How to convey to you the dance of her! The silver scheherazadeof poplar leaves when the breeze is playful? No. She was far nimblerthan a leaf tugging at its stem. A young faun on the brink of a pool, startled at himself? Yes, a little. Because Marylin's head always had alistening look to it, as if for a message that never quite came throughto her. From where? Marylin didn't know and didn't know that she didn'tknow. Probably that accounted for a little pucker that could sometimesalight between her eyes. Scarcely a shadow, rather the shadow of ashadow. A lute, played in a western breeze? Once a note of music, not from a lute however, but played on a cheap harmonica, had caughtMarylin's heart in a little ecstasy of palpitations, but that doesn'tnecessarily signify. Zephyr with Aurora playing? Laughter holding bothhis sides?

How Marylin, had she understood it, would have kicked the high hat offof such Miltonic phrasing. Ah, she was like--herself!

And yet, if there must be found a way to convey her to you more quickly, let it be one to which Marylin herself would have dipped a bow. 

She was like nothing so much as unto a whole two dollars' worth oflittle five-cent toy balloons held captive in a sea breeze and tuggingtoward some ozonic beyond in which they had never swum, yet strained sonaturally toward. 

That was it! A whole two dollars' worth of tugging balloons. Red--blue--orange--green--silver, jerking in hollow-sided collisions, and one fat-faced pink one for ten cents, with a smile painted on oneside and a tear on the other. 

And what if I were to tell you that this phantom of a delight of aMarylin, whose hair was a sieve for sun and whose laughter a streamer ofit, had had a father who had been shot to death on the underslingingof a freight car in one of the most notorious prison getaways everrecorded, and whose mother--but never mind right here; it doesn't matterto the opening of this story, because Marylin, with all her tantalizingcapacity for paradox, while every inch a part of it all, was not at alla part of it. 

For five years, she who had known from infancy the furtive Bradstreet ofsome of the vertical city's most notorious aliases and gang names, andwho knew, almost by baptism of fire, that there were short cuts to aneasier and weightier wage envelope, had made buttonholes from eightuntil five on the blue-denim pleat before it was stitched down the frontof men's blue-denim shirts. 

At sweet sixteen she, whose mother had borne her out of wed--well, anyway, at sweet sixteen, like the maiden in the saying, she had neverbeen kissed, nor at seventeen, but at eighteen--

It was this way. Steve Turner--"Getaway, " as the quick lingo of thestreet had him--liked her. Too well. I firmly believe, though, thatif in the lurid heat lightning of so stormy a career as Getaway's thebeauty of peace and the peace of beauty ever found moment, Marylinnestled in that brief breathing space somewhere deep down within thenoisy cabaret of Getaway's being. His eyes, which had never doneanything of the sort except under stimulus of the horseradish which heate in quantities off quick-lunch counters, could smart to tears at thethought of her. And over the emotions which she stirred in him, andwhich he could not translate, he became facetious--idiotically so. 

Slim and supine as the bamboo cane he invariably affected, he would waitfor her, sometimes all of the six work-a-evenings of the week, untilshe came down out of the grim iron door of the shirt factory where sheworked, his one hip flung out, bamboo cane bent almost double, and, inhis further zeal to attitudinize, one finger screwing up furiously ata vacant upper lip. That was a favorite comedy mannerism, screwing atwhere a mustache might have been. 

"Getaway!" she would invariably admonish, with her reproach all in theinflection and with the bluest blue in her eyes he had ever seen outsideof a bisque doll's. 

The peculiar joy, then, of linking her sweetly resisting arm into his;of folding over each little finger, so! until there were ten tendrilsat the crotch of his elbow and his heart. Of tilting his straw "katy"forward, with his importance of this possession, so that the back of hishead came out in a bulge and his hip, and then of walking off with her, so! Ah yes, so!

MARYLIN _(who had the mysterious little jerk in her laugh of a veryyoung child_): "Getaway, you're the biggest case!"

GETAWAY _(wild to amuse her further_): "Hocus pocus, Salamagundi! Ismell the blood of an ice-cream sundae!"

MARYLIN _(hands to her hips and her laughter full of the jerks_):"Getaway, stop your monkeyshines. The cop has his eye on you!"

GETAWAY _(sobered):_ "C'm on!"

Therein lay some of the wonder of her freshet laughter. Because toMarylin a police officer was not merely a uniformed mentor of the law, designed chiefly to hold up traffic for her passing, and with his nightstick strike security into her heart as she hurried home of short, wintry evenings. A little procession of him and his equally dreadbrother, the plain-clothes man, had significantly patrolled the days ofher childhood. 

Once her mother, who had come home from a shopping expedition with theinside pocket of her voluminous cape full of a harvest of the sheerestof baby things to match Marylin's blond loveliness--batiste--a wholebolt of Brussels lace--had bitten the thumb of a policeman until ithung, because he had surprised her horribly by stepping in through thefire escape as she was unwinding the Brussels lace. 

Another time, from her mother's trembling knee, she had seen her fatherin a crowded courtroom standing between two uniforms, four fingerspeeping over each of his shoulders!

A uniform had shot her father from the underpinnings of the freightcar. Her mother had died with the phantom of one marching across herdelirium. Even opposite the long, narrow, and exceedingly respectablerooming house in which she now dwelt a uniform had stood for severaldays lately, contemplatively. 

There was a menacing flicker of them almost across her eyeballs, soclose they lay to her experience, and yet how she could laugh whenGetaway made a feint toward the one on her beat, straightening up intoexaggerated decorum as the eye of the law, noting his approach, focused. 

"Getaway, " said Marylin, hop-skipping to keep up with him now, "why hasold Deady got his eye on you nowadays?"

Here Getaway flung his most Yankee-Doodle-Dandy manner, collapsinginward at his extremely thin waistline, arms akimbo, his step designedto be a mincing one, and his voice as soprano as it could be. 

"You don't know the half of it, dearie. I've been slapping granny'swrist, just like that. Ts-s-st!"

But somehow the laughter had run out of Marylin's voice. "Getaway, " shesaid, stopping on the sidewalk, so that when he answered his face mustbe almost level with hers--"you're up to something again. "

"I'm up to snuff, " he said, and gyrated so that the bamboo cane looped acircle. 

She almost cried as she looked at him, so swift was her change of mood, her lips trembling with the quiver of flesh that has been bruised. 

"Oh, Getaway!" she said, "get away. " And pushed him aside that she mightwalk on. He did not know, nor did she, for that matter, the rustlingthat was all of a sudden through her voice, but it was almost one ofthose moments when she could make his eyes smart. 

But what he said was, "For the luvagod, whose dead?"

"Me, in here, " she said, very quickly, and placed her hand to her flimsyblouse where her heart beat under it. 

"Whadda you mean, dead?"

"Just dead, sometimes--as if something inside of me that can't get outhad--had just curled up and croaked. "

The walk from the shirt factory where Marylin worked, to the long, leanhouse in the long, lean street where she roomed, smelled of unfastidiousbedclothes airing on window sills; of garbage cans that repulsed evenhigh-legged cats; of petty tradesmen who, mysteriously enough, withaërial clotheslines flapping their perpetually washings, worked andsweated and even slept in the same sour garments. Facing her there onthese sidewalks of slops, and the unprivacy of stoops swarming withenormous young mothers and puny old children, Getaway, with a certainfox pointiness out in his face, squeezed her arm until she could feelthe bite of his elaborately manicured finger nails. 

"Marry me, Marylin, " he said, "and you'll wear diamonds. "

In spite of herself, his bay-rummed nearness was not unpleasant to her. "Cut it out--here, Getaway, " she said through a blush. 

He hooked her very close to him by the elbow, and together they crossedthrough the crash of a street bifurcated by elevated tracks. 

"You hear, Marylin, " he shouted above the din. "Marry me and you'll weardiamonds. "

"Getaway, you're up to something again!"

"Whadda you mean?"

"Diamonds on your twenty a week! It can't be done. "

His gaze lit up with the pointiness. "I tell you, Marylin, I can promiseyou headlights!"

"How?"

"Never you bother your little head how; O. K. , though. "

"_How_, Getaway?"

"Oh--clean--if that's what's worrying you. Clean-cut. "

"It _is_ worrying me. "

"Saw one on a little Jane yesterday out to Belmont race track. Afist-load for a little trick like her. And sparkle! Say, every time thatlittle Jane daubed some whitewash on her little nosie she gave thatgrand stand the squints. That's what I'm going to do. Sparkle you up!With a diamond engagement ring. Oh boy! How's that? A diamond engagementring!"

"Oh, Getaway!" she said, with her hand on the flutter of her throat andclosing her eyes as if to imprison the vision against her lids. "A purewhite one with lots of fire dancing around it. " And little Marylin, whodidn't want to want it, actually kissed the bare dot on her left ringfinger where she could feel the burn of it, and there in the crowdedstreet, where he knew he was surest of his privacy with her, he stole akiss off that selfsame finger, too. 

"I'll make their eyes hang out on their cheeks like grapes when they seeyou coming along, Marylin. "

"I love them because they're so clear--and clean! Mountain water that'sbeen filtered through pebbles. "

"Pebbles is right! I'm going to dike you out in one as big as a pebble. And poils! Sa-y, they're what cost the spondulicks. A guy showed me astring of little ones no bigger than pimples. Know what? That littlestring could knock the three spots out of a thousand-dollar bond--I meanbill!"

It was then that something flashed out of Marylin's face. A shade mighthave been lowered; a candle blown out. 

"Getaway, " she said, with a quick little dig of fingers into hisforearm, "you're up to something!"

"Snuff, I said. "

"What did you mean by that word, 'bond'?"

"Who built a high fence around the word 'bond'?"

"Bonds! All that stuff in the newspapers about those messengersdisappearing out of Wall Street with--bonds! Getaway, are you mixed upin that? Getaway!"

"Well, well! I like that! I had you doped out for fair and warmerto-day. The weather prophet didn't predict no brainstorm. "

"That's not answering. "

"Well, whadda you know! Miss Sherlock Holmes finds a corkscrew in thewine cellar and is sore because it's crooked!"

"Getaway--answer. "

"Whadda you want me to answer, Fairylin? That I'm the master mind behindthe--"

"It worries me so! You up in Monkey's room so much lately. You think Idon't know it? I do! All the comings and goings up there. Muggs Towerssneaking up to Monkey's room in that messenger boy's suit he keepswearing all the time now. He's no more messenger boy than I am. Getaway, tell me, you and Muggs up in Monkey's room so often? Footsteps up there!Yours!"

"Gawalmighty! Now it's my footsteps!"

"I know them! Up in Monkey's room, right over mine. I know how you sneakup there evenings after you leave me. It don't look nice your going intothe same house where I live, Getaway, even if it isn't to see me. Itdon't look right from the outside!"

"Nobody can ever say I wanted to harm a hair of your little head. I evenlook the other way when I pass your door. That's the kind of a modestviolet I am. "

"It's not that, but the looks. That's the reason, I'll bet, if thetruth's known, why Monkey squirmed himself into that room over mine--tohide your comings and goings as if they was to see me. "

"Nothing of the kind!"

"Everything--up there--worries me so! Monkey's room right over mine. My ceiling so full of soft footsteps that frighten me. Iknow your footsteps, Getaway, just as well as anything. Theball-of-your-foot--squeak! The-ball-of-your-foot--squeak!"

"Well, that's a good one! The-ball-of-me-foot--squeak!"

"Everybody tiptoeing! Muggs! Somebody's stocking feet! Monkey's. Stepsthat aren't honest. All on my ceiling. Monkey never ought to have renteda room in a respectable house like Mrs. Granady's. Nobody but genteelyoung fellows holding down genteel jobs ever had that room before. Monkey passing himself off as Mr. James Pollard, or whatever it is hecalls himself, just for the cover of a respectable house--or of me, forall I know. You could have knocked me down with a feather the first timeI met him in the hall. If I did right I'd squeal. "

"You would, like hell. "

"Of course I wouldn't, but with Mrs. Granady trying to run a respectablehouse, only the right kind of young fellows and girls rooming there, it's not fair. Monkey getting his nose into a house like that andhatching God knows what! Getaway, what do you keep doing up in thatroom--all hours--you and all the pussyfooters?"

"That's the thanks a fellow gets for letting a straight word like'marry' slip between his teeth; that's the thanks a fellow gets forhonest-to-God intentions of trying to get his girl out of a shirtfactory and dike her out in--"

"But, Getaway, if I was only sure it's all straight!"

"Well, if that's all you think of me--"

"All your big-gun talk about the ring. Of course I--I'd like it. Howcould a girl help liking it? But only if it's on the level. Getaway--yousee, I hate to act suspicious all the time, but all your new silk shirtsand now the new checked suit and all. It don't match up with yourtwenty-dollar job in the Wall Street haberdashery. "

Then Getaway threw out one of his feints of mock surprise. "Didn't Itell you, Fairylin? Well, whadda you know about that? I didn't tell her, and me thinking I did. "

"What, Getaway, what?"

"Why, I'm not working there any more. Why, Gawalmighty couldn't havepleased that old screwdriver. He was so tight the dimes in his pocketused to mildew from laying. He got sore as a pup at me one day justbecause I--"

"Getaway, you never told me you lost that job that I got for you out ofthe newspaper!"

"I didn't lose it, Marylin. I heard it when it fell. Jobs is likevaccination, they take or they don't. "

"They never take with you, Getaway. "

"Don't you believe it. I'm on one now--"

"A job?"

"Aw, not the way you mean. Me and a guy got a business proposition on. If it goes through, I'll buy you a marriage license engraved on solidgold. "

"What is it, then, the proposition?"

"Can't you trust me, Marylin, for a day or two, until it goes through?Sometimes just talking about it is enough to put the jinx on a goodthing. "

"You mean--"

"I mean I'm going to have money in my pockets. "

"What kind of money?"

"Real money. "

"_Honest_ money?"

"Honest-to-God money. And I'm going to dike you out. That's my idea. Pink! That's the color for you. A pink sash and slippers, and one ofthem hats that show your yellow hair right through it, and a laceumbrella and--"

"And streamers on the hat! I've always been just crazy for streamers ona hat. "

"Red-white-and-blue ones!"

"No, just pink. Wide ones to dangle it like a basket. "

"And slippers with real diamond buckles. "

"What do you mean, Getaway? How can you give me real diamond shoebuckles--"

"There you go again. Didn't you promise to trust me and my new businessproposition?"

"I do, only you've had so many--"

"You do--_only!_ Yah, you do, only you don't!"

"I--You see--Getaway--I know how desperate you can be--when you'recornered. I'll never forget how you--you nearly killed a cop--once! Oh, Getaway, when I think back, that time you got into such trouble with--"

"Leave it to a woman, by Jove! to spoil a fellow's good name, if she hasto rub her fingers in old soot to do it. "

"I--I guess it is from seeing so much around me all the time that it'sin me so to suspect. "

"Oh, it's in you all right. Gawalmighty knows that!"

"You see, it's because I've seen so much all my life. That's why it'sbeen so grand these last years since I'm alone and--and away from it. Nothing to fear. My own little room and my own little job and me notgetting heart failure every time I recognize a plain-clothes man on thebeat or hear a night stick on the sidewalk jerk me out of my sleep. Getaway, don't do anything bad. You had one narrow escape. You'refinger-printed. Headquarters wouldn't give you the benefit of a doubt ifthere was one. Don't--Getaway!"

"Yah, stay straight and you'll stay lonesome. "

"Money wouldn't make no difference with me, anyway, if everything elsewasn't all right. Nothing can be pink to me even if it is pink, unlessit's honest. That's why I hold back, Getaway--there's things in youI--can't trust. "

"Yah, fine chance of you holding back if I was to come rolling up toyour door in a six-cylinder--"

"I tell you, no! If I was that way I wouldn't be holding down the sameold job at the factory. I know plenty of boys who turn over easy money. Too easy--"

"Then marry me, Marylin, and you'll wear diamonds. In a couple of days, when this goes through, this deal with the fellows--oh, _honest_ deal, if that's what you're opening your mouth to ask--I can stand up besideyou with money in my pockets. Twenty bucks to the pastor, just likethat! Then you can pick out another job and I'll hold it down for you. Bet your life I will--Oh--here, Marylin--this way--quick!"

"Getaway, why did you turn down this street so all of a sudden? Thisisn't my way home. "

"It's only a block out of the way. Come on! Don't stand gassing. "

"You-thought-that-fellow-on-the-corner-of-Dock-Street-might-be-a-plain-clothes-man!"

"What if I did? Want me to go up and kiss him?"

"Why-should-you-care, Getaway?"

"Don't. "

"But--"

"Don't believe in hugging the law, though. It's enough when it hugsyou. "

"I want to go home, Getaway. "

"Come on. I'll buy some supper. Steak and French frieds and some Frenchpastry with a cherry on top for your little sweet tooth. That's the kindof a regular guy I am. "

"No. I want to go home. "

"All right, all right! I'm taking you there, ain't I?"

"Straight. "

"Oh, you'll go straight, if you can't go that way anywhere but home. "

They trotted the little detour in silence, the corners of her mouthwilting, he would have declared, had he the words, like a field flowerin the hands of a picnicker. Marylin could droop that way, so suddenlyand so whitely that almost a second could blight her. 

"Now you're mad, ain't you?" he said, ashamed to be so quicklyconciliatory and trying to make his voice grate. 

"No, Getaway--not mad--only I guess--sad. "

She stopped before her rooming house. It was as long and as lean andas brown as a witch, and, to the more fanciful, something even of theriding of a broom in the straddle of the doorway, with an empty flagpolejutting from it. And then there was the cat, too--not a black one withgold eyes, just one of the city's myriad of mackerel ones, with chewedear and a skillful crouch for the leap from ash to garbage can. 

"I'm going in now, Getaway. "

"Gowann! Get into your blue dress and I'll blow you to supper. "

"Not to-night. "

"Mad?"

"No. I said only--"

"Sad?"

"No--tired--I guess. "

"Please, Marylin. "

"No. Some other time. "

"When? To-morrow? It's Saturday! Coney?"

"Oh!"

He thought he detected the flash of a dimple. He did. Remember, she wasvery young and, being fanciful enough to find the witch in the face ofher rooming house, the waves at Coney Island, peanut cluttered as theywere apt to be, told her things. Silly, unrepeatable things. Nonsensethings. Little secret goosefleshing things. Prettinesses. And then theshoot the chutes! That ecstatic leap of heart to lips and the feelingof folly down at the very pit of her. Marylin did like the shoot thechutes!

"All right, Getaway--to-morrow--Coney!"

He did not conceal his surge of pleasure, grasping her small hand inboth his. "Good girlie!"

"Good night, Getaway, " she said, but with the inflection of somethingleft unsaid. 

He felt the unfinished intonation, like a rocket that had never droppedits stick, and started up the steps after her. 

"What is it, Marylin?"

"Nothing, " she said and ran in. 

The window in her little rear room with the zigzag of fire escape acrossit was already full of dusk. She took off her hat, a black straw with alittle pink-cotton rose on it, and, rubbing her brow where it had left ared rut, sat down beside the window. There were smells there from a citybouquet of frying foods; from a pool of old water near a drain pipe;from the rear of a butcher shop. Slops. Noises, too. Babies, traffic, whistles, oaths, barterings, women, strife, life. On her veryown ceiling the whisper of footsteps--of restless comings andgoings--stealthy comings and goings--and then after an hour, suddenly and ever so softly, the ball-of-a-foot--squeak!The-ball-of-a-foot--squeak!

Marylin knew that step. 

And yet she sat, quiet. A star had come out. Looking up at the napkin ofsky let in through the walls of the vertical city, Marylin had learnedto greet it almost every clear evening. It did something for her. Itwas a little voice. A little kiss. A little upside down pool of lightwithout a spill. A little of herself up there in that beyond--thatlittle napkin of beyond that her eyes had the lift to see. 

 * * * * *

Who are you, whose neck has never ached from nine hours a day, six daysa week, of bending over the blue-denim pleat that goes down the frontof men's shirts, to quiver a supersensitive, supercilious, and superiornose over what, I grant you, may appear on the surface to be the omeletof vulgarities fried up for you on the gladdest, maddest strip ofcarnival in the world?

But it is simpler to take on the cold glaze of sophistication than toremain simple. When the eyelids become weary, it is as if littlered dancing shoes were being wrapped away forever, or a very tightheartstring had suddenly sagged, and when plucked at could no longerplong. 

To Marylin, whose neck very often ached clear down into her shoulderblade and up into a bandeau around her brow, and to whom city wallswere sometimes like slaps confronting her whichever way she turned, herenjoyment of Coney Island was as uncomplex as A B C. Untortured by anyawarenesses of relative values, too simple to strive to keep simple, unself-conscious, and with a hungry heart, she was not a spectator, halfashamed of being amused. She _was_ Coney Island! Her heart a shoot thechutes for sheer swoops of joy, her eyes full of confetti points, thesurf creaming no higher than her vitality. 

And it was so the evening following, as she came dancing down thekicked-up sand of the beach, in a little bright-blue frock, mercerizedsilk, if you please, with very brief sleeves that ended right up in thejolliest part of her arm, with a half moon of vaccination winking outroguishly beneath a finish of ribbon bow, and a white-canvas sport hatwith a jockey rosette to cap the little climax of her, and by no meansleast, a metal coin purse, with springy insides designed to hold exactlyfifty cents in nickels. 

Once on the sand, which ran away, tickling each step she took, herspirits, it must be admitted, went just a little crazily off. Thewindow, you see, where Marylin sewed her buttonholes six days the week, faced a brick wall that peeled with an old scrofula of white paint. Coney Island faced a world of sky. So that when she pinched Getaway'snose in between the lips of her coin purse and he, turning a doublesomersault right in his checked suit, landed seated in a sprawl of mockdaze, off she went into peals of laughter only too ready to be released. 

He bought her a wooden whirring machine, an instrument of noise that, because it was not utilitarian, became a toy of delicious sound. 

They rode imitation ocean waves at five cents a voyage, their only _malde mer_, regret when it was over. He bought her salt-water taffy, andwhen the little red cave of her mouth became too ludicrously full of thepully stuff he tried to kiss its state of candy paralysis, and instantlyshe became sober and would have no more of his nonsense. 

"Getaway, " she cried, snapping fingers of inspiration, "let's go inbathing!"

"I'll say we will!"

No sooner said than done. In rented bathing suits, unfastidious, if youwill, but, pshaw! with the ocean for wash day, who minded! Hers a littleblue wrinkly one that hit her far too far, below the knees, but her headflowered up in a polka-dotted turban, that well enough she knew boundher up prettily, and her arms were so round with that indescribablesoftiness of youth! Getaway, whose eyes could focus a bit when he lookedat them, set up a leggy dance at sight of her. He shocked her a bit inhis cheap cotton trunks--woman's very old shock to the knobby knees andhairy arms of the beach. But they immediately ran, hand in hand, downthe sand and fizz! into the grin of a breaker. 

Marylin with her face wet and a fringe of hair, like a streak ofseaweed, down her cheek! Getaway, shivery and knobbier than ever, pushing great palms of water at her and she back at him, only lessskillfully her five fingers spread and inefficient. Once in the water, he caught and held her close, and yet, for the wonder of it, almostreverentially close, as if what he would claim for himself he must keepintact. 

"Marry me, Marylin, " he said, with all the hubbub of the ocean aboutthem. 

She reached for some foam that hissed out before she could touch it. 

"That's you, " he said. "Now you are there, and now you aren't. "

"I wish, " she said--"oh, Getaway, there's so much I wish!"

"What do you wish?"

She looked off toward the immensity of sea and sky. "I--Oh, I don'tknow! Being here makes me wish--Something as beautiful as out there iswhat I wish. "

"Out where?"

"There. "

"I don't see--"

"You--wouldn't. "

And then, because neither of them could swim, he began chasing herthrough shallow water, and in the kicked-up spray of their own merrimentthey emerged finally, dripping and slinky, the hairs of his forearmslashed flat, and a little drip of salt water running off the tip of herchin. 

Until long after the sun went down they lay drying on the sand, herhair spread in a lovely amber flare, and, stretched full length on hisstomach beside her, he built a little grave of sand for her feet. Andthe crowd thinned, and even before the sun dipped a faint young moon, almost as if wearing a veil, came up against the blue. They were quietnow with pleasant fatigue, and, propped up on his elbows, he spilledlittle rills of sand from one fist into the other. 

"Gee! you're pretty, Marylin!"

"Are I, Getaway?"

"You know you are. You wasn't born with one eye shut and the otherblind. "

"Honest, I don't know. Sometimes I look in the mirror and hope so. "

"You've had enough fellows tell you so. "

"Yes, but--but not the kind of fellows that mean by pretty what _I_ meanby pretty. "

"Well, this here guy means what you mean by pretty. "

"What do you mean by pretty, Getaway?"

"Pep. Peaches. Cream. Teeth. Yellow hair. Arms. Le--those little holesin your cheeks. Dimples. What do I mean by pretty? I mean you by pretty. Ain't that what you want me to mean by pretty?"

"Yes--and no--"

"Well, what the--"

"It's all right, Getaway. It's fine to be pretty, but--notenough--somehow. I--I can't explain it to you--to anybody. I guesspretty isn't the word. It's beauty I mean. "

"All right, then, anything your little heart desires--beauty. "

"The ocean beauty out there, I mean. Something that makes you hurtand want to hurt more and more. Beauty, Getaway. It's something youunderstand or something you don't. It can't be talked. It sounds silly. "

"Well, then, whistle it!"

"It has to be _felt_. "

"Peel me, " he said, laying her arm to his bare bicep. "Some littlegladiator, eh? Knock the stuffings out of any guy that tried to take youaway from me. "

She turned her head on its flare of drying hair away from him. The beachwas all but quiet and the haze of the end of day in the air, almost inher eyes, too. 

"Oh, Getaway!" she said, on a sigh, and again, "Getaway!"

His reserve with her, at which he himself was the first to marvel, went down a little then and he seized her bare arm, kissing it, almostsinking his teeth. The curve of her chin down into her throat, as sheturned her head, had maddened him. 

"Quit, " she said. 

"Never you mind. You'll wear diamonds, " he said, in his sole phraseologyof promise. "Will you get sore if I ask you something, Fairylin?"

"What?"

"Want one now?"

"Want what?"

"A diamond. "

"No, " she said. "When I'm out here I quit wanting things like that. "

"Fine chance a fellow has to warm up to you!"

"Getaway!"

"What?"

"What did you do last night, after you walked home with me?"

"When?"

"You know when. "

"Why, bless your heart, I went home, Fairylin!"

"Please, Getaway--"

"Home, Fairy. "

"You were up in Monkey's room last night about eleven. Now think, Getaway!"

"Aw now--"

"You were. "

"Aw now--"

"Nobody can fool me on your step. You tiptoed for all you were worth, but I knew it! The-ball-of your-foot--squeak! The-ball-of-yourfoot--squeak!"

"Sure enough, now you mention it, maybe for a minute around eleven, butonly for a minute--"

"Please, Getaway, don't lie. It was for nearly all night. Comings andgoings on my ceiling until I couldn't sleep, not because they were sonoisy, but because they were so soft. Like ugly whispers. Is Monkey thefriend you got the deal on with, Getaway?"

"We just sat up there talking old times--"

"And Muggs, about eleven o'clock, sneaking up through the halls, dressedlike the messenger boy again. I saw him when I peeked out of the door tosee who it was tiptoeing. Getaway, for God's sake--"

He closed over her wrist then, his face extremely pointed. It was a bonyface, so narrow that the eyes and the cheek bones had to be pitchedclose, and his black hair, usually so shiny, was down in a bang now, because it was damp, and to Marylin there was something sinister in thatdip of bang which frightened her. 

"What you don't know don't hurt you. You hear that? Didn't I tell youthat after a few days this business deal--_business_, get that?--will beover. Then I'm going to hold down any old job your heart desires. Butfirst I'm going to have money in my pockets! That's the only way to makethis old world sit up and take notice. Spondulicks! Then I'm going tocarry you off and get spliced. See? Real money. Diamonds. If you weren'tso touchy, maybe you'd have diamonds sooner than you think. Want onenow?"

"Getaway, I know you're up to something. You and Monkey and Muggs aretied up with those Wall Street bond getaways. "

"For the luvagod, cut that talk here! First thing I know you'll have mein a brainstorm too. "

"Those fake messenger boys that get themselves hired and, instead ofdelivering the bonds from one office to another--disappear with them. Muggs isn't wearing that messenger's uniform for nothing. You and Monkeyare working with him under cover on something. You can't pass a cop anymore without tightening up. I can feel it when I have your arm. You'vegot that old over-your-shoulder look to you, Getaway. My father--had it. My--mother--too. Getaway!"

"By gad! you can't beat a woman!"

"You don't deny it. "

"I do!"

"Oh, Getaway, I'm glad then, glad!"

"Over-the-shoulder look. Why, if I'd meet a plain-clothes this minuteI'd go up and kiss him--with my teeth in his ear. That's how much I gotto be afraid of. "

"Oh, Getaway, I'm so glad!"

"Well, then, lay off--"

"Getaway, you jumped then! Like somebody had hit you, and it was only akid popping a paper bag. "

"You get on my nerves. You'd make a cat nervous, with your suspecting!The more a fellow tries to do for a girl like you the less--Look herenow, you got to get the hell out of my business. "

She did not reply, but lay to the accompaniment of his violentnervousness and pinchings into the sand, with her face still away fromhim, while the dusk deepened and the ocean quieted. 

After a while: "Now, Marylin, don't be sore. I may be a rotten egg someways, but when it comes to you, I'm there. "

"I'm not sore, Getaway, " she said, with her voice still away from him. "Only I--Let's not talk for a minute. It's so quiet out here--so full ofrest. "

He sat, plainly troubled, leaning back on the palms of his hands anddredging his toes into the sand. In the violet light the tender line ofher chin to her throat still teased him. 

Down farther along the now deserted beach a youth in a bathing suit wasplaying a harmonica, his knees hunched under his chin, his mouth andhand sliding at cross purposes along the harp. That was the silhouetteof him against a clean sky, almost Panlike, as if his feet might becloven. 

What he played, if it had any key at all, was rather in the mood ofChopin's Nocturne in D flat major. A little sigh for the death of a day, a sob for the beauty of that death, and a hope and ecstasy for the newday yet unborn--all of that on a little throbbing mouth organ. 

"Getaway, " cried Marylin, and sat up, spilling sand, "that's it! That'swhat I meant a while ago. Hear? It can't be talked. That's it on themouth organ!"

"It?"

"It! Yes, like I said. Somebody has to feel it inside of him, just likeI do, before he can understand. Can't you feel it? Please! Listen. "

"Aw, that's an old jew's-harp. I'll buy you one. How's that?"

"All right, I guess, " she said, starting off suddenly toward thebathhouse. 

He was relieved that she had thrown off the silence. 

"Ain't mad any more, are you, Marylin?"

"No, Getaway--not mad. "

"Mustn't get fussy that way with me, Marylin. It scares me off. I've hadsomething to show you all day, but you keep scaring me off. "

"What is it?" she said, tiptoe. 

His mouth drew up to an oblique. "You know. "

"No, I don't. "

"Maybe I'll tell you and maybe I won't, " he cried, scooping up a handfulof sand and spraying her. "What'll you give me if I tell?"

"Why--nothing. "

"Want to know?"

But at the narrowing something in his eyes she sidestepped him, stoopingdown at the door of her bathhouse for a last scoop of sand at him. 

"No, " she cried, her hair blown like spray and the same breeze carryingher laughter, guiltless of mood, out to sea. 

On the way home, though, for the merest second, there recurred thepuzzling quirk in her thoughtlessness. 

In the crush of the electric train, packed tightly into the heart ofthe most yammering and petulant crowd in the world--home-going pleasureseekers--a youth rose to give her his seat. A big, beach-tanned fellowwith a cowlick of hair, when he tipped her his hat, standing up off hisright brow like a little apostrophe to him, and blue eyes so very wideapart, and so clear, that they ran back into his head like aisles withlittle lakes shining at the ends of them. 

"Thank you, " said Marylin, the infinitesimal second while his hat andcowlick lifted, her own gaze seeming to run down those avenues of hiseyes for a look into the pools at the back. 

"That was it, too, Getaway! The thing that fellow looked--that Icouldn't say. He said it--with his eyes. "

"Who?"

"That fellow who gave me this seat. "

"I'll break his face if he goo-goos you, " said Getaway, who by this timehad a headache and whose feet had fitted reluctantly back into patentleather. 

But inexplicably, even to herself, that night, in the shadow of thestoop of her witch of a rooming house, she let him kiss her lips. Hisfirst of her--her first to any man. It may have been that suddenly shewas so extremely tired--tired of the lay of the week ahead, suggested bythe smells and the noises and the consciousness of that front box pleat. 

The little surrender, even though she drew back immediately, was wine tohim and as truly an intoxicant. 

"Marylin, " he cried, wild for her lips again, "I can't be held off muchlonger. I'm straight with you, but I'm human, too. "

"Don't, Getaway, not here! To-morrow--maybe. "

"I'm crazy for you!"

"Go home now, Getaway. "

"Yes--but just one more--"

"Promise me you'll go straight home from here--to bed. "

"I promise. Marylin, one more. One little more. Your lips--"

"No, no--not now. Go--"

Suddenly, by a quirk in the dark, there was a flash of something downMarylin's bare third finger, so hurriedly and so rashly that it scrapedthe flesh. 

"That's for you! I've been afraid all day. Touchy! Didn't I tell you?Diamonds! Now will you kiss me? Now will you?"

In the shadow of where she stood, looking down, it was as if she gazedinto a pool of fire that was reaching in flame clear up about her head, and everywhere in the conflagration Getaway's triumphant "Now will you!Now will you!"

"Getaway, " she cried, flecking her hand as if it burned, "where did youget this?"

"It's for you, Fairylin, and more like it coming. It weighs a carat anda half. That stone's worth more than a sealskin jacket. You're going tohave one of those, too. Real seal! Now are you sore at me any more? Nowyou've a swell kick coming, haven't you? Now! Now!"

"Getaway, " she cried behind her lit hand, because her palm was to hermouth and above it her eyes showing the terror in their whites, "wheredid you get this?"

"There!" he said, and kissed her hotly and squarely on the lips. 

Somehow, with the ring off her finger and in a little pool of its lightas it lay at his feet, where he stood dazed on the sidewalk, Marylinwas up the stoop, through the door, up two flights, and through herown door, slamming it, locking it, and into her room, rubbing and halfcrying over her left third finger where the flash had been. 

She was frightened, because for all of an hour she sat on the end of thecot in her little room trembling and with her palms pressed into hereyes so tightly that the darkness spun. There was quick connection inMarylin between what was emotional and what was merely sensory. Sheknew, from the sickness at the very pit of her, how sick were her heartand her soul--and how afraid. 

She undressed in the dark--a pale darkness relieved by a lighted windowacross the areaway. The blue mercerized dress she slid over a hanger, covering it with one of her cotton nightgowns and putting it intocareful place behind the cretonne curtain that served her as clothescloset. Her petticoat, white, with a rill of lace, she folded away. Andthen, in her bare feet and a pink-cotton nightgown with a blue birdmachine-stitched on the yoke, stood cocked to the hurry of indistinctfootsteps across her ceiling, and in the narrow slit of hallwayoutside her door, where the stairs led up still another flight, the-ball-of-a-foot--squeak! The sharp crack of a voice. Running. 

"Getaway!" cried Marylin's heart, almost suffocating her with a dreadfulspasm of intuition. 

It was all so quick. In the flash of her flung-open door, as her headin its amber cloud leaned out, Getaway, bending almost double overthe upper banister, his lips in his narrow face back to show a whiteterribleness of strain that lingered in the memory, hurled out an armsuddenly toward two men mounting the steps of the flight below him. 

There was a shot then, and on the lower flight one of the men, withan immediate red mouth opening slowly in his neck, slid downstairsbackward, face up. 

Suddenly, from a crouching position beside her door, the secondfigure shot forward now, with ready and perfect aim at thealready-beginning-to-be-nerveless figure of Getaway hanging over thebanister with the smoking pistol. 

By the reaching out of her right hand Marylin could have deflected thatperfect aim. In fact, her arm sprang toward just that reflex act, thenstayed itself with the jerk of one solid body avoiding collision withanother. 

So much quicker than it takes in the telling there marched acrossMarylin's sickened eyes this frieze: Her father trailing dead from theunderslinging of a freight car. That moment when a uniform had steppedin from the fire escape across the bolt of Brussels lace; hermother's scream, like a plunge into the heart of a rapier. Uniforms--contemplating. On street corners. Opposite houses. Those fourfingers peeping over each of her father's shoulders in the courtroom. Getaway! His foxlike face leaner. Meaner. Black mask. Electric chair. Volts. Ugh--volts! God--you know--best--help--

When the shot came that sent Getaway pitching forward down thethird-floor flight she was on her own room floor in a long and mercifulfaint. Marylin had not reached out. 

 * * * * *

Time passed. Whole rows of days of buttonholes down pleats that wereoften groped at through tears. Heavy tears like magnifying glasses. Andthen, with that gorgeous and unassailable resiliency of youth, lightertears. Fewer tears. Few tears. No tears. 

Under the cretonne curtain, though, the blue mercerized frock hungunworn, and in its dark drawer remained the petticoat with its rill oflace. But one night, with a little catch in her throat (it was the lastof her sobs), she took out the sport hat, and for no definite reasonbegan to turn the jockey rosette to the side where the sun had not fadedit. 

These were quiet evenings in her small room. All the ceiling agitationhad long ago ceased since the shame of the raided room above, and Muggs, in his absurd messenger's suit, and Monkey marching down the threeflights to the clanking of steel at the wrists. 

There were new footsteps now. Steps that she had also learned to know, but pleasantly. They marched out so regularly of mornings, invariablyjust as she was about to hook her skirtband or pull on her stockings. They came home so patly again at seven, about as she sat herself down toa bit of sewing or washing-out. They went to bed so pleasantly. Thud, on the floor, and then, after the expectant interval of unlacing, thudagain. They were companionable, those footsteps, almost like reverentialmarching on the grave of her heart. 

Marylin reversed the rosette, and as the light began to go sat downbeside her window, idly, looking up. There was the star point in herpatch of sky, eating its way right through the purple like a diamond, and her ache over it was so tangible that it seemed to her she couldalmost lift the hurt out of her heart, as if it were a little imprisonedbird. And as it grew darker there came two stars, and three, and nine, and finally the sixty hundred. 

Then from the zig of the fire escape above, before it twisted down intothe zag of hers, there came to Marylin, through the medley of citysilences and the tears in her heart, this melody, on a jew's-harp:

If it had any key at all, it was in the mood of Chopin's Nocturne in Dflat major. A little sigh for the death of a day, a sob for the beautyof that death, and the throb of an ecstasy for the new day not yet born. 

Looking up against the sheer wall of the vertical city, on the ledge offire escape above hers, and in the yellow patch of light thrown out fromthe room behind, a youth, with his knees hunched up under his chin, andhis mouth and hand moving at cross purposes, was playing the harmonica. 

Wide apart were his eyes, and blue, so that while she gazed up, smiling, as he gazed down, smiling, it was almost as if she ran up the fireescape through the long clear lanes of those eyes, for a dip into thelittle twin lakes at the back of them. 

And--why, didn't you know?--there was a lift of cowlick to the rightside of his front hair, as he sat there playing in the twilight, thatwas exactly the shape of an apostrophe!

THE SMUDGE

In the bleak little graveyard of Hattie Bertch's dead hopes, dead loves, and dead ecstasies, more than one headstone had long since begun to sagand the wreaths of bleeding heart to shrivel. 

That was good, because the grave that is kept bubbly with tears is atender, quivering thing, almost like an amputated bit of self that stillaches with threads of life. 

Even over the mound of her dead ambitions, which grave she had dug withthe fingers of her heart, Hattie could walk now with unsensitive feet. It had become dry clay with cracks in it like sardonic smiles. 

Smiles. That was the dreadful part, because the laugh where therehave been tears is not a nice laugh, and Hattie could sit among theheadstones of her dead dreams now and laugh. But not horridly. Justdrearily. 

There was one grave, Heart's Desire, that was still a little moist. Butit, too, of late years, had begun to sink in, like an old mouth withreceding gums, as if the very teeth of a smiling dream had rotted. Theyhad. 

Hattie, whose heart's desire had once been to play Juliet, played maidsnow. Buxom negro ones, with pale palms, white eyes, and the beat ofkettledrums somewhere close to the cuticle of the balls of her feet. 

She was irrevocably down on managers' and agents' lists as "comedyblack. " Countless the premiers she had opened to the fleck of a duster!Hattie came high, as maids go. One hundred and fifty dollars a week andno road engagements. She dressed alone. Her part in "Love Me Long" hadbeen especially written in for the sake of the peculiar kind of comedyrelief she could bring to it. A light roar of recognition swept theaudience at her entrance. Once in a while, a handclap. So Hattie, whoseheart's desire had once been to play Juliet, played maids now. Buxomly. 

And this same Hattie, whose heart's desire had once been to kiss Love, but whose lips were still a little twisted with the taste of clay, couldkiss only Love's offspring now. But not bitterly. Thanksgivingly. 

Love's offspring was Marcia. Sixteen and the color and odor of an ivoryfan that has lain in frangipani. And Hattie could sometimes poke hertongue into her cheek over this bit of whimsy:

It was her well-paid effort in the burnt cork that made possible, forinstance, the frill of real lace that lay to the low little neck ofMarcia's first party dress, as if blown there in sea spume. 

Out of the profits of Hattie's justly famous Brown ColdCream--Guaranteed Color-fast--Mulatto, Medium, Chocolate, had comeMarcia's ermine muff and tippet; the enamel toilet set; the Steinwaygrand piano; the yearly and by no means light tuition toll at MissHarperly's Select Day School for Girls. 

You get the whimsy of it? For everything fair that was Marcia, Hattiehad brownly paid for. Liltingly, and with the rill of the song ofthanksgiving in her heart. 

That was how Hattie moved through her time. Hugging this melody ofMarcia. Through the knife-edged nervous evenings in the theater. Bawlings. Purple lips with loose muscles crawling under the rouge. Fetidness of scent on stale bodies. Round faces that could hook into thelook of vultures when the smell of success became as the smell of redmeat. All the petty soiled vanities, like the disordered boudoir of acocotte. The perpetual stink of perfume. Powder on the air and cakingthe breathing. Open dressing-room doors that should have been closed. The smelling geometry of the make-up box. Curls. Corsets. Cosmetics. Menin undershirts, grease-painting. "Gawdalmighty, Tottie, them's my teddybears you're puttin' on. " Raw nerves. Raw emotions. Ego, the actor'sovertone, abroad everywhere and full of strut. "Overture!" The wait inthe wings. Dizziness at the pit of the stomach. Audiences with lean jawsetched into darkness. Jaws that can smile or crack your bones and eatyou. Faces swimming in the stage ozone and wolfish for cue. The purplelips--

Almost like a frieze stuck on to the border of each day was Hattie'slife in the theater. Passementerie. 

That was how Hattie treated it. Especially during those placid years ofthe phenomenal New York run of "Love Me Long. " The outer edge of herreality. The heart of her reality? Why, the heart of it was the longmorning hours in her own fragrant kitchen over doughnuts boiled in oiland snowed under in powdered sugar! Cookies that bit with a snap. Filetof sole boned with fingers deft at it and served with a merest fluff oftartar sauce. Marcia ate like that. Preciously. Pecksniffily. An egg atbreakfast a gag to the sensibilities! So Hattie ate hers in the kitchen, standing, and tucked the shell out of sight, wrapped in a lettuce leaf. Beefsteak, for instance, sickened Marcia, because there was blood in theooze of its juices. But Hattie had a sly way of camouflage. Filetmignon (so strengthening, you see) crushed under a little millinery ofmushrooms and served under glass. Then when Marcia's neat little row ofneat little teeth bit in and the munch began behind clean and carefullips, Hattie's heart, a regular old bandit for cunning, beat hoppity, skippity, jump!

Those were her realities. Home. The new sandwich cutters. Heart shape. Diamond shape. Spade. The strip of hall carpet newly discovered to scourlike new with brush and soap and warm water. Epstein's meat marketthrows in free suet. The lamp with the opal-silk shade for Marcia'spiano. White oilcloth is cleaner than shelf paper. Dotted Swisscurtains, the ones in Marcia's room looped back with pink bows. Oldsashes, pressed out and fringed at the edges. 

And if you think that Hattie's six rooms and bath and sunny, full-sizedkitchen, on Morningside Heights, were trumped-up ones of the press agentfor the Sunday Supplement, look in. 

Any afternoon. Tuesday, say, and Marcia just home from school. OnTuesday afternoon of every other week Hattie made her cream, in a largecopper pot that hung under the sink. Six dozen half-pint jars waitingto be filled with Brown Cold Cream. One hundred and forty-four jarsa month. Guaranteed Color-fast. Mulatto, Medium, Chocolate. Labeled. Sealed. Sold. And demand exceeding the supply. An ingratiating, expertcream, known the black-faced world over. It slid into the skin, notsootily, but illuminating it to winking, African copper. For instance, Hattie's make-up cream for Linda in "Love Me Long" was labeled"Chocolate. " But it worked in even a truer brown, as if it had come outof the pigment instead of gone into the pores. 

Four hours of stirring it took, adding with exact minutiae themysteriously proper proportions of spermacetti, oil of sweet almonds, white wax--But never mind. Hattie's dark secret was her own. 

Fourteen years of her black art as Broadway's maid _de luxe_ had beenher laboratory. It was almost her boast now--remember the sunkenheadstones--that she had handled spotlessly every fair young star of thetheaters' last ten years. 

It was as mysterious as pigment, her cream, and as true, and nettedher, with occasional extra batches, an average of two hundred dollars amonth. She enjoyed making it. Singing as she stirred or rather stirringas she sang, the plenitude of her figure enveloped in a blue-and-whitebungalow apron with rickrack trimming. 

Often Marcia, home from day school, watched. Propped up in the windowframe with her pet cat, a Persian, with eyes like swimming pools withpainted green bottoms, seated in a perfect circle in her quiet lap, for all the world in the attitude of a sardel except for the toothpickthrough. 

Sometimes it almost seemed as if Marcia did the purring. She could sitlike that, motionless, her very stare seeming to sleep. To Hattie thatstare was beautiful, and in a way it was. As if two blue little sunswere having their high noon. 

Sometimes Marcia offered to help, because toward the end, Hattie's backcould ache at this process, terribly, the pain knotting itself into herface when the rotary movement of her stirring arm began to yank at hernerves. 

"Momie, I'll stir for a while. "

Marcia's voice was day-schooled. As clipped, as boxed, and as preciseas a hedge. Neat, too, as neat as the way her clear lips met, and herteeth, which had a little mannerism of coming down after each word, biting them off like threads. They were appealing teeth that had nevergrown big or square. Very young corn. To Hattie there was somethingabout them that reminded her of a tiny set of Marcia's doll dishes thatshe had saved. Little innocences. 

"I don't mind stirring, dear. I'm not tired. "

"But your face is all twisted. "

Hattie's twisted face could induce in Marcia the same gagged pallor thatthe egg in the morning or the red in the beefsteak juices brought there. 

"Go in and play the piano awhile, Marcy, I'll be finished soon. "

"Sh-h-h! No. Pussy-kitty's asleep. "

As the cream grew heavier and its swirl in the pot slower, Hattie couldkeep the twist out of her face only by biting her tongue. She did, and alittle arch of sweat came out in a mustache. 

The brown mud of the cream began to fluff. Hattie rubbed a fleck of itinto her freckled forearm. Yes, Hattie's arm was freckled, and so wasthe bridge of her nose, in a little saddle. Once there had been aprettiness to the freckles because they whitened the skin they sprinkledand were little stars to the moon reddiness of Hattie's hair. But thered of the moon had set coldly in Hattie's hair now, and the stars werejust freckles, and there was the dreaded ridge of flesh showing abovethe ridge of her corsets, and when she leaned forward to stir her cheekshung forward like a spaniel's, not of fat, but heaviness. Hattie's armsand thighs were granite to the touch and to the scales. Kindly freckledgranite. She weighed almost twice what she looked. Marcia, whose hipswere like lyres, hated the ridge above the corset line and massaged it. Mab smacking the Himalayas. 

After a while, there in the window frame, Marcia closed her eyes. Therewas still the illusion of a purr about her. Probably because, as herkitten warmed in its circle, its coziness began to whir mountingly. The September afternoon was full of drone. The roofs of the city fromHattie's kitchen window, which overlooked Morningside Heights, lay flatas slaps. Tranced, indoor quiet. Presently Hattie began to tiptoe. Theseventy-two jars were untopped now, in a row on a board over the built-inwashtub. Seventy-two yawning for content. Squnch! Her enormous spooninto the copper kettle and flop, gurgle, gooze, softly into the jars. One--two--three--At the sixty-eighth, Marcia, without stirring orlifting her lids, spoke into the sucky silence. 

"Momie?"

"Yes, Marcy. "

"You'll be glad. "

Hattie, pausing at the sixty-eighth, "Why, dear?"

"I came home in Nonie Grosbeck's automobile. I'm invited to a dinnerdance October the seventeenth. At their house in Gramercy Park. "

The words must have gone to Hattie's knees, because, dropping a spat ofmulatto cold cream on the linoleum, she sat down weakly on the kitchenchair that she had painted blue and white to match the china cereal seton the shelf above it. 

"Marcy!"

"And she likes me better than any girl in school, momie, and I'm tobe her chum from to-day on, and not another girl in school is invitedexcept Edwina Nelson, because her father's on nearly all the same boardsof directors with Mr. Grosbeck, and--"

"Marcia! Marcia! and you came home from school just as if nothing hadhappened! Child, sometimes I think you're made of ice. "

"Why, I'm glad, momie. "

But that's what there were, little ice glints of congealed satisfactionin Marcia's eyes. 

"Glad, " said Hattie, the word full of tears. "Why, honey, you don'trealize it, but this is the beginning! This is the meaning of mystruggle to get you into Miss Harperly's school. It wasn't easy. I'venever told you the--strings I had to pull. Conservative people, you see. That's what the Grosbecks are, too. Home people. The kind who can affordto wear dowdy hats and who have lived in the same house for thirtyyears. "

"Nome's mother was born in the house they live in. "

"Substantial people, who half-sole their shoes and endow colleges. Taxpayers. Policyholders. Church members. Oh, Marcia, those are the safepeople!"

"There's a Grosbeck memorial window in the Rock Church. "

"I used to be so afraid for you, Marcy. Afraid you would take to themake-believe folks. The play people. The theater. I used to fear foryou! The Pullman car. The furnished room. That going to the hotelroom, alone, nights after the show. You laugh at me sometimes for justthrowing a veil over my face and coming home black-face. It's becauseI'm too tired, Marcy. Too lonesome for home. On the road I always usedto think of all the families in the audience. The husbands and wives. Brides and grooms. Sweethearts. After the performance they all went tohomes. To brownstone fronts like the Grosbecks'. To cottages. To flats. With a snack to eat in the refrigerator or laid out on the dining-roomtable. Lamps burning and waiting. Nighties laid out and bedcovers turnedback. And then--me. Second-rate hotels. That walk through the darkdowntown streets. Passing men who address you through closed lips. Thedingy lobby. There's no applause lasts long enough, Marcia, to reachover that moment when you unlock your hotel room and the smell ofdisinfectant and unturned mattress comes out to you. "

"Ugh!"

"Oh, keep to the safe people, Marcia! The unexciting people, maybe, butthe safe home-building ones with old ideals and old hearthstones. "

"Nonie says they have one in their library that comes from Italy. "

"Hitch your ideal to a hearthstone like that, Marcia. "

"Nonie goes to riding academy. "

"So shall you. "

"It's six dollars an hour. "

"I don't care. "

"Her father's retired except for being director in banks. And, momie--they don't mind, dear--about us. Nonie knows that my--fatheris--is separated and never lived at home with us. She's broad-minded. She says just so there's no scandal, a divorce, or anything like that. She said it's vulgar to cultivate only rich friends. She says she'd gowith me even if she's forbidden to. "

"Why, Marcy darling, why should she be forbidden?"

"Oh, Nonie's broadminded. She says if two people are unsuited theyshould separate, quietly, like you and my father. She knows we're one ofthe first old Southern families on my father's side. I--I'm not tryingto make you talk about it, dear, but--but we are--aren't we?"

"Yes, Marcy. "

"He--he was just--irresponsible. That's not being--not nice people, isit?"

"No, Marcy. "

"Nonie's not forbidden. She just meant in case, momie. You see, withsome old families like hers--the stage--but Nonie says her fathercouldn't even say anything to that if he wanted to. His own sister wenton the stage once, and they had to hush it up in the papers. "

"Did you explain to her, Marcy, that stage life at its best can be fullof fine ideals and truth? Did you make her see how regular your ownlittle life has been? How little you know about--my work? How away I'vekept you? How I won't even play out-of-town engagements so we can alwaysbe together in our little home? You must explain all those things toyour friends at Miss Harperly's. It helps--with steady people. "

"I have, momie, and she's going to bring me home every afternoon intheir automobile after we've called for her brother Archie at ColumbiaLaw School. "

"Marcy! the Grosbeck automobile bringing you home every day!"

"And it's going to call for me the night of the party. Nonie's getting alemon taffeta. "

"I'll get you ivory, with a bit of real lace!"

"Oh, momie, momie, I can scarcely wait!"

"What did she say, Marcy, when she asked--invited you?"

"She?"

"Nonie. "

"Why--she--didn't invite me, momie. "

"But you just said--"

"It was her brother Archie invited me. We called for him at Columbia LawSchool, you see. It was he invited me. Of course Nonie wants me and said'Yes' right after him--but it's he--who wants Nonie and me to be chums. I--He--I thought--I--told--you--momie. "

Suddenly Marcia's eyes, almost with the perpendicular slits of herkitten's in them, seemed to swish together like portières, shuttingHattie behind them with her. 

"Oh--my Marcy!" said Hattie, dimly, after a while, as if from theirdepths. "Marcy, dearest!"

"At--at Harperly's, momie, almost all the popular upper-class girlswear--a--a boy's fraternity pin. "

"Fraternity pin?"

"It's the--the beginning of being engaged. "

"But, Marcy--"

"Archie's a Pi Phi!"

"A--what?"

"A Pi Phi. "

"Phi--pie--Marcy--dear--"

 * * * * *

On October 17th "Love Me Long" celebrated its two-hundredth performance. Souvenir programs. A few appropriate words by the management. A flashlight of the cast. A round of wine passed in theafter-the-performance gloom of the wings. Aqueous figures fading off inthe orderly back-stage fashion of a well-established success. 

Hattie kissed the star. They liked each other with the unenvy of theirdivergent roles. Miss Robinson even humored some of Hattie's laughs. Sheliked to feel the flame of her own fairness as she stood there waitingfor the audience to guffaw its fill of Hattie's drolleries; a narcissusswaying reedily beside a black crocodile. 

She was a new star and her beauty the color of cloth of gold, and Hattiein her lowly comedian way not an undistinguished veteran. So they couldkiss in the key of a cat cannot unseat a king. 

But, just the same, Miss Robinson's hand flew up automatically againstthe dark of Hattie's lips. 

"I don't fade off, dearie. Your own natural skin is no more color-fast. I handled Elaine Doremus in 'The Snowdrop' for three seasons. Never somuch as a speck or a spot on her. My cream don't fade. "

"Of course not, dear! How silly of me! Kiss me again. "

That was kind enough of her. Oh yes, they got on. But sometimes Hattie, seated among her sagging headstones, would ache with the dry sob of theblack crocodile who yearned toward the narcissus.... 

Quite without precedent, there was a man waiting for her in the wings. 

The gloom of back-stage was as high as trees and Hattie had not seenhim in sixteen years. But she knew. With the stunned consciousness of astabbed person that glinting instant before the blood begins to flow. 

It was Morton Sebree--Marcia's father. 

"Morton!"

"Hattie. "

"Come up to my dressing room, " she said, as matter-of-factly as if herbrain were a clock ticking off the words. 

They walked up an iron staircase of unreality. Fantastic stairs. Wispsof gloom. Singing pains in her climbing legs like a piano key hit veryhard and held down with a pressing forefinger. She could listen to herpain. That was her thought as she climbed. How the irrelevant littleideas would slide about in her sudden chaos. She must concentrate now. Terribly. Morton was back. 

His hand, a smooth glabrous one full of clutch, riding up the banister. It could have been picked off, finger by finger. It was that kind of ahand. But after each lift, another finger would have curled back again. Morton's hand, ascending the dark like a soul on a string in a burlesqueshow. 

Face to face. The electric bulb in her dressing room was incased in awire like a baseball mask. A burning prison of light. Fat sticks ofgrease paint with the grain of Hattie's flesh printed on the daub end. Furiously brown cheesecloth. An open jar of cream (chocolate) with thegesture of the gouge in it. A woolly black wig on a shelf, its kinksseeming to crawl. There was a rim of Hattie _au natural_ left around herlips. It made of her mouth a comedy blubber, her own rather firm lipssliding about somewhere in the lightish swamp. That was all of Hattiethat looked out. Except her eyes. They were good gray eyes with poppingwhites now, because of a trick of blackening the lids. But the iriseswere in their pools, inviolate. 

"Well, Hattie, I reckon I'd have known you even under black. "

"I thought you were in Rio. "

"Got to hankering after the States, Hattie. "

"I read of a Morris Sebree died in Brazil. Sometimes I used to thinkmaybe it might have been a misprint--and--that--you--were--the--one. "

"No, no. 'Live and kickin'. Been up around here a good while. "

"Where?"

"Home. N'Orleans. M' mother died, Hattie, God rest her bones. Know it?"

"No. "

"Cancer. "

It was a peculiar silence. A terrible word like that was almost slowlysoluble in it. Gurgling down. 

"O-oh!"

"Sort of gives a fellow the shivers, Hattie, seeing you kinda hidin'behind yourself like this. But I saw you come in the theater to-night. You looked right natural. Little heavier. "

"What do you want?"

"Why, I guess a good many things in general and nothing in particular, as the sayin' goes. You don't seem right glad to see me, honey. "

"Glad!" said Hattie, and laughed as if her mirth were a dice shaking ina box of echoes. 

"Your hair's right red yet. Looked mighty natural walkin' into thetheater to-night. Take off those kinks, honey. "

She reached for her cleansing cream, then stopped, her eyes full of thefoment of torture. 

"What's my looks to you?"

"You've filled out. "

"You haven't, " she said, putting down the cold-cream jar. "You haven'taged an hour. Your kind lies on life like it was a wall in the sun. Awall that somebody else has built for you stone by stone. "

"I reckon you're right in some ways, Hattie. There's been a meanderin'streak in me somewheres. You and m' mother, God rest her bones, had adifferent way of scoldin' me for the same thing. Lot o' Huck Finn inme. "

"Don't use bad-boy words for vicious, bad-man deeds!"

"But you liked me. Both of you liked me, honey. Only two women I everreally cared for, too. You and m' mother. "

Her face might have been burning paper, curling her scorn for him. 

"Don't try that, Morton. It won't work any more. What used to infatuateme only disgusts me now. The things I thought I--loved--in you, I loathenow. The kind of cancer that killed your mother is the kind that eatsout the heart. I never knew her, never even saw her except from adistance, but I know, just as well as if I'd lived in that fine bighouse with her all those years in New Orleans, that you were thesickness that ailed her--lying, squandering, gambling, no-'count son! Ifshe and I are the only women you ever cared for, thank God that therearen't any more of us to suffer from you. Morton, when I read that aMorris Sebree had died in Brazil, I hoped it was you! You're no good!You're no good!"

She was thumping now with the sobs she kept under her voice. 

"Why, Hattie, " he said, his drawl not quickened, "you don't mean that!"

"I do! You're a ruiner of lives! Her life! Mine! You're a rotten applethat can speck every one it touches. "

"That's hard, Hattie, but I reckon you're not all wrong. "

"Oh, that softy Southern talk won't get us anywhere, Morton. The verysound of it sickens me now. You're like a terrible sickness I once had. I'm cured now. I don't know what you want here, but whatever it is youmight as well go. I'm cured!"

He sat forward in his chair, still twirling the soft brown hat. He wasdressed like that. Softly. Good-quality loosely woven stuffs. There wasstill a tan down of persistent youth on the back of his neck. But hishands were old, the veins twisted wiring, and his third finger yellowlystained, like meerschaum darkening. 

"Grantin' everything you say, Hattie--and I'm holdin' no brief formyself--_I've_ been the sick one, not you. Twenty years I've been downsick with hookworm. "

"With devilishness. "

"No, Hattie. It's the government's diagnosis. Hookworm. Been a sick manall my life with it. Funny thing, though, all those years in Rio knockedit out of me. "

"Faugh!"

"I'm a new man since I'm well of it. "

"Hookworm! That's an easy word for ingrained no-'countness, deviltry, and deceit. It wasn't hookworm came into the New Orleans stock companywhere I was understudying leads and getting my chance to play bigthings. It wasn't hookworm put me in a position where I had to takeanything I could get! So that instead of finding me playing leadsyou find me here--black-face! It was a devil! A liar! A spendthrift, no-'count son out of a family that deserved better. I've cried moretears over you than I ever thought any woman ever had it in her to cry. Those months in that boarding house in Peach Tree Street down in NewOrleans! Peach Tree Street! I remember how beautiful even the name ofit was when you took me there--lying--and how horrible it became to me. Those months when I used to see your mother's carriage drive by thehouse twice a day and me crying my eyes out behind the curtains. That'swhat I've never forgiven myself for. She was a woman who stood forfine things in New Orleans. A good woman whom the whole town pitied! Ano-'count son squandering her fortune and dragging down the family name. If only I had known all that then! She would have helped me if I hadappealed to her. She wouldn't have let things turn out secretly--the waythey did. She would have helped me. I--You--Why have you come hereto jerk knives out of my heart after it's got healed with the pointssticking in? You're nothing to me. You're skulking for a reason. You'vebeen hanging around, getting pointers about me. My life is my own! Youget out!"

"The girl. She well?"

It was a quiet question, spoken in the key of being casual, and Hattie, whose heart skipped a beat, tried to corral the fear in her eyes to takeit casually, except that her eyelids seemed to grow old even as theydrooped. Squeezed grape skins. 

"You get out, Morton, " she said. "You've got to get out. "

He made a cigarette in an old, indolent way he had of wetting it withhis smile. He was handsome enough after his fashion, for those who likethe rather tropical combination of dark-ivory skin, and hair a lightershade of tan. It did a curious thing to his eyes. Behind their allotmentof tan lashes they became neutralized. Straw colored. 

"She's about sixteen now. Little over, I reckon. "

"What's that to you?"

"Blood, Hattie. Thick. "

"What thickened it, Morton--after sixteen years?"

"Used to be an artist chap down in Rio. On his uppers. One night, according to my description of what I imagined she looked like, he drewher. Yellow hair, I reckoned, and sure enough--"

"You're not worthy of the resemblance. It wouldn't be there if I had thesaying. "

"You haven't, " he said, suddenly, his teeth snapping together as ifbiting off a thread. 

"Nor you!" something that was the whiteness of fear lightening behindher mask. She rose then, lifting her chair out of the path toward thedoor and flinging her arm out toward it, very much after the manner ofMiss Robinson in Act II. 

"You get out, Morton, " she said, "before I have you put out. They'reclosing the theater now. Get out!"

"Hattie, " his calm enormous, "don't be hasty. A man that has come to hissenses has come back to you humble and sincere. A man that's been sick. Take me back, Hattie, and see if--"

"Back!" she said, lifting her lips scornfully away from touching theword. "You remember that night in that little room on Peach Tree Streetwhen I prayed on my knees and kissed--your--shoes and crawled for yourmercy to stay for Marcia to be born? Well, if you were to lie on thisfloor and kiss my shoes and crawl for my mercy I'd walk out on you theway you walked out on me. If you don't go, I'll call a stage hand andmake you go. There's one coming down the corridor now and locking thehouse. You go--or I'll call!"

His eyes, with their peculiar trick of solubility in his color scheme, seemed all tan. 

"I'll go, " he said, looking slim and Southern, his imperturbability everso slightly unfrocked--"I'll go, but you're making a mistake, Hattie. "

Fear kept clanging in her. Fire bells of it. 

"Oh, but that's like you, Morton! Threats! But, thank God, nothing youcan do can harm me any more. "

"I reckon she's considerable over sixteen now. Let's see--"

Fire bells. Fire bells. 

"Come out with what you want, Morton, like a man! You're feelingfor something. Money? Now that your mother is dead and her fortunesquandered, you've come to harass me? That's it! I know you, like aperson who has been disfigured for life by burns knows fire. Well, Iwon't pay!"

"Pay? Why, Hattie--I want you--back--"

She could have cried because, as she sat there blackly, she was sickwith his lie. 

"I'd save a dog from you. "

"Then save--her--from me. "

The terrible had happened so quietly. Morton had not raised his voice;scarcely his lips. 

She closed the door then and sat down once more, but that which hadcrouched out of their talk was unleashed now. 

"That's just exactly what I intend to do. "

"How?"

"By saving her sight or sound of you. "

"You can't, Hattie. "

"Why?"

"I've come back. " There was a curve to his words that hooked into herheart like forceps about a block of ice. But she outstared him, holdingher lips in the center of the comedy rim so that he could see how firmtheir bite. 

"Not to me. "

"To her, then. "

"Even you wouldn't be low enough to let her know--"

"Know what?"

"Facts. "

"You mean she doesn't know?"

"Know! Know you for what you are and for what you made of me? I'vekept it something decent for her. Just the separation of husband andwife--who couldn't agree. Incompatibility. I have not told her--" Andsuddenly could have rammed her teeth into the tongue that had betrayedher. Simultaneously with the leap of light into his eyes came the leapof her error into her consciousness. 

"Oh, " he said, and smiled, a slow smile that widened as leisurely assorghum in the pouring. 

"You made me tell you that! You came here for that. To find out!"

"Nothin' the sort, Hattie. You only verified what I kinda suspected. Naturally, you've kept it from her. Admire you for it. "

"But I lied! See! I know your tricks. She does know you for what you areand what you made of me. She knows everything. Now what are you goingto do? She knows! I lied! I--" then stopped, at the curve his lips weretaking and at consciousness of the pitiableness of her device. 

"Morton, " she said, her hands opening into her lap into pads of greatpink helplessness, "you wouldn't tell her--on me! You're not that low!"

"Wouldn't tell what?"

He was rattling her, and so she fought him with her gaze, trying tofasten and fathom under the flicker of his lids. But there were no eyesthere. Only the neutral, tricky tan. 

"You see, Morton, she's just sixteen. The age when it's more importantthan anything else in the world to a young girl that's been reared likeher to--to have her life _regular_! Like all her other little schoolfriends. She's like that, Morton. Sensitive! Don't touch her, Morton. For God's sake, don't! Some day when she's past having to care soterribly--when she's older--you can rake it up if you must torture. I'lltell her then. But for God's sake, Morton, let us live--now!"

"Hattie, you meet me to-morrow morning and take a little journey to oneof these little towns around here in Jersey or Connecticut, and your lieto her won't be a lie any more. "

"Morton--I--I don't understand. Why?"

"I'll marry you. "

"You fool!" she said, almost meditatively. "So you've heard we've gottenon a bit. You must even have heard of this"--placing her hand over thejar of the Brown Cold Cream. "You want to be in at the feast. You're soeasy to read that I can tell you what you're after before you can getthe coward words out. Marry you! You fool!"

It was as if she could not flip the word off scornfully enough, suckingback her lower lip, then hurling. 

"Well, Hattie, " he said, unbunching his soft hat, "I reckon that'spretty plain. "

"I reckon it is, Morton. "

"All right. Everybody to his own notion of carryin' a grudge to thegrave. But it's all right, honey. No hard feelin's. It's something toknow I was willin' to do the right thing. There's a fruit steamer out ofhere for N'Orleans in the mawnin'. Reckon I'll catch it. "

"I'd advise you to. "

"No objection to me droppin' around to see the girl first? Entitled to alittle natural curiosity. Come, I'll take you up home this evenin'. Thegirl. No harm. "

"You're not serious, Morton. You wouldn't upset things. You wouldn'ttell--that--child!"

"Why, not in a thousand years, honey, unless you forced me to it. Well, you've forced me. Come, Hattie, I'm seein' you home this evenin'. "

"You can't put your foot--"

"Come now. You're too clever a woman to try to prevent me. Coursethere's a way to keep me from goin' up home with you this evenin'. Iwouldn't use it, if I were you. You know I'll get to see her. I evenknow where she goes to school. Mighty nice selection you made, Hattie, Miss Harperly's. "

"You can't frighten me, " she said, trying to moisten her lips with hertongue. But it was dry as a parrot's. It was hard to close her lips. They were oval and suddenly immobile as a picture frame. What if shecould not swallow. There was nothing to swallow! Dry tongue. O God!Marcia!

That was the fleeting form her panic took, but almost immediately shecould manage her lips again. Her lips, you see, they counted so! Shemust keep them firm in the slippery shine of the comedy black. 

"Come, " he said, "get your make-up off. I'll take you up in a cab. "

"How do you know it's--up?"

"Why, I don't know as I do know exactly. Just came kind of natural toput it that way. Morningside Heights is about right, I calculate. "

"So--you _have_--been watching. "

"Well, I don't know as I'd put it thataway. Naturally, when I got totown--first thing I did--most natural thing in the world. That's amighty fine car with a mighty fine-looking boy and a girl bringsyour--our girl home every afternoon about four. We used to have a familyof Grosbeaks down home. Another branch, I reckon. "

"O--God!" A malaprop of a tear, too heavy to wink in, came rollingsuddenly down Hattie's cheek. "Morton--let--us--live--for God's sake!Please!"

He regarded the clean descent of the tear down Hattie's color-fast cheekand its clear drop into the bosom of her black-taffeta housemaid'sdress. 

"By Jove! The stuff _is_ color-fast! You've a fortune in that cream ifyou handle it right, honey. "

"My way is the right way for me. "

"But it's a woman's way. Incorporate. Manufacture it. Get a man on thejob. Promote it!"

"Ah, that sounds familiar. The way you promoted away every cent of yourmother's fortune until the bed she died in was mortgaged. One of yourwildcat schemes again! Oh, I watched you before I lost track of you inSouth America--just the way you're watching--us--now! I know the way yousquandered your mother's fortune. The rice plantation in Georgia. Thealfalfa ranch. The solid-rubber-tire venture in Atlanta. You don't getyour hands on my affairs. My way suits me!"

The tumult in her was so high and her panic so like a squirrel in thecircular frenzy of its cage that she scarcely noted the bang on the doorand the hairy voice that came through. 

"All out!"

"Yes, " she said, without knowing it. 

"You're losing a fortune, Hattie. Shame on a fine, strapping woman likeyou, black-facing herself up like this when you've hit on something witha fortune in it if you work it properly. You ought to have more regardfor the girl. Black-face!"

"What has her--father's regard done for her? It's my black-face has kepther like a lily!"

"Admitting all that you say about me is right. Well, I'm here eatinghumble pie now. If that little girl doesn't know, bless my heart, I'm willin' she shouldn't ever know. I'll take you out to Greenwichto-morrow and marry you. Then what you've told her all these years isthe truth. I've just come back, that's all. We've patched up. It's doneevery day. Right promoting and a few hundred dollars in that there creamwill--"

She laughed. November rain running off a broken spout. Yellow leavesscuttling ahead of wind. 

"The picture puzzle is now complete, Morton. Your whole scheme, pieceby piece. You're about as subtle as corn bread. Well, my answer to youagain is, 'Get out!'"

"All right. All right. But we'll both get out, Hattie. Come, I'm a-goin'to call on you-all up home a little while this evenin'!"

"No. It's late. She's--"

"Come, Hattie, you know I'm a-goin' to see that girl one way or another. If you want me to catch that fruit steamer to-morrow, if I were you I'dlet me see her my way. You know I'm not much on raisin' my voice, but ifI were you, Hattie, I wouldn't fight me. "

"Morton--Morton, listen! If you'll take that fruit steamer withouttrying to see her--would you? You're on your uppers. I understand. Woulda hundred--two hundred--"

"I used to light my cigarette with that much down on my rice swamps--"

"You see, Morton, she's such a little thing. A little thing with bigeyes. All her life those eyes have looked right down into me, believingeverything I ever told her. About you too, Morton. Good things. Not thatI'm ashamed of anything I ever told her. My only wrong was ignorance. And innocence. Innocence of the kind of lesson I was to learn from you. "

"Nothin' was ever righted by harping on it, Hattie. "

"But I want you to understand--O God, make him understand--she's such asensitive little thing. And as things stand now--glad I'm her mother. Yes, glad--black-face and all! Why, many's the time I've gone home fromthe theater, too tired to take off my make-up until I got into my ownrocker with my ankles soaking in warm water. They swell so terriblysometimes. Rheumatism, I guess. Well, many a time when I kissed her inher sleep she's opened her eyes on me--black-face and all. Her arms upand around me. I was there underneath the black! She knows that! Andthat's what she'll always know about me, no matter what you tell her. I'm there--her mother--underneath the black! You hear, Morton! That'swhy you must let us--live--"

"My proposition is the mighty decent one of a gentleman. "

"She's only a little baby, Morton. And just at that age where beinglike all the other boys and girls is the whole of her little life. It'skilling--all her airiness and fads and fancies. Such a proper littleyoung lady. You know, the way they clip and trim them at finishingschool. Sweet-sixteen nonsense that she'll outgrow. To-night, Morton, she's at a party. A boy's. Her first. That fine-looking yellow-hairedyoung fellow and his sister that bring her home every afternoon. Attheir house. Gramercy Park. A fine young fellow--Phi Pi--"

"Looka here, Hattie, are you talking against time?"

"She's home asleep by now. I told her she had to be in bed by eleven. She minds me, Morton. I wouldn't--couldn't--wake her. Morton, Morton, she's yours as much as mine. That's God's law, no matter how much man'slaw may have let you shirk your responsibility. Don't hurt your ownflesh and blood by coming back to us--now. I remember once when you cutyour hand it made you ill. Blood! Blood is warm. Red. Sacred stuff. She's your blood, Morton. You let us alone when we needed you. Leave usalone, now that we don't!"

"But you do, Hattie girl. That's just it. You're running things awoman's way. Why, a man with the right promoting ideas--"

There was a fusillade of bangs on the door now, and a shout as if thehair on the voice were rising in anger. 

"All out or the doors 'll be locked on yuh! Fine doings!"

She grasped her light wrap from its hook, and her hat with its whirl ofdark veil, fitting it down with difficulty over the fizz of wig. 

"Come, Morton, " she said, suddenly. "I'm ready. You're right, now ornever. "

"Your face!"

"No time now. Later--at home! She'll know that I'm there--under theblack!"

"So do I, Hattie. That's why I--"

"I'm not one of the ready-made heroines you read about. That's not myidea of sacrifice! I'd let my child hang her head of my shame soonerthan stand up and marry you to save her from it. Marcia wouldn't want meto! She's got your face--but my character! She'll fight! She'll glorythat I had the courage to let you tell her the--truth! Yes, she will, "she cried, her voice pleading for the truth of what her words exclaimed. "She'll glory in having saved me--from you! You can come! Now, too, while I have the strength that loathing you can give me. I don't wantyou skulking about. I don't want you hanging over my head--or hers! Youcan tell her to-night--but in my presence! Come!"

"Yes, sir, " he repeated, doggedly and still more doggedly. "Yes, siree!"Following her, trying to be grim, but his lips too soft to click. "Yes--sir!"

They drove up silently through a lusterless midnight with a threat ofrain in it, hitting loosely against each other in a shiver-my-timberstaxicab. Her pallor showing through the brown of her face did somethinghorrid to her. 

It was as if the skull of her, set in torment, were looking through atransparent black mask, but, because there were not lips, forced togrin. 

And yet, do you know that while she rode with him Hattie's heart washigh? So high that when she left him finally, seated in her littlelamplit living room, it was he whose unease began to develop. 

"I--If she's asleep, Hattie--"

Her head looked so sure. Thrust back and sunk a little between theshoulders. 

"If she's asleep, I'll wake her. It's better this way. I'm glad, now. Iwant her to see me save myself. She would want me to. You banked on mockheroics from me, Morton. You lost. "

Marcia was asleep, in her narrow, pretty bed with little bowknotspainted on the pale wood. About the room all the tired and happy muss ofafter-the-party. A white-taffeta dress with a whisper of real lace atthe neck, almost stiffishly seated, as if with Marcia's trimness, ona chair. A steam of white tulle on the dressing table. A buttonholegardenia in a tumbler of water. One long white-kid glove on the tablebeside the night light. A naked cherub in a high hat, holding a pinkumbrella for the lamp shade. 

"Dear me! Dear me!" screamed Hattie to herself, fighting to keep hermind on the plane of casual things. "She's lost a glove again. Dear me!Dear me! I hope it's a left one to match up with the right one she savedfrom the last pair. Dear me!"

She picked up a white film of stocking, turning and exploring withspread fingers in the foot part for holes. There was one! Marcia's bigtoe had danced right through. "Dear me!"

Marcia sleeping. Very quietly and very deeply. She slept like that. Whitely and straightly and with the covers scarcely raised for the ridgeof her slim body. 

Sometimes Marcia asleep could frighten Hattie. There was something abouther white stilliness. Lilies are too fair and so must live briefly. That thought could clutch so that she would kiss Marcia awake. Kiss hersoundly because Marcia's sleep could be so terrifyingly deep. 

"Marcia, " said Hattie, and stood over her bed. Then again, "Mar-cia!" Onmore voice than she thought her dry throat could yield her. 

There was the merest flip of black on the lacy bosom of Marcia'snightgown, and Hattie leaned down to fleck it. No. It was a pin--a smallblack-enameled pin edged in pearls. Automatically Hattie knew. 

"Pi Phi!"

"Marcia, " cried Hattie, and shook her a little. She hated so to wakenher. Always had. Especially for school on rainy days. Sometimes didn't. Couldn't. Marcia came up out of sleep so reluctantly. A little dazed. Alittle secretive. As if a white bull in a dream had galloped off withher like Persephone's. 

Only Hattie did not know of Persephone. She only knew that Marcia sleptbeautifully and almost breathlessly. Sweet and low. It seemed silly, sleeping beautifully. But just the same, Marcia did. 

Then Hattie, not faltering, mind you, waited. It was better that Marciashould know. Now, too, while her heart was so high. 

Sometimes it took as many as three kisses to awaken Marcia. Hattie bentfor the first one, a sound one on the tip of her lip. 

"Marcia!" she cried. "Marcy, wake up!" and drew back. 

Something had happened! Darkly. A smudge the size of a quarter andthe color of Hattie's guaranteed-not-to-fade cheek, lay incredibly onMarcia's whiteness. 

Hattie had smudged Marcia! _Hattie Had Smudged Marcia!_

There it lay on her beautiful, helpless whiteness. Hattie's smudge. 

 * * * * *

It is doubtful, from the way he waited with his soft hat danglingfrom soft fingers, if Morton had ever really expected anything else. Momentary unease gone, he was quiet and Southern and even indolent aboutit. 

"We'll go to Greenwich first thing in the morning and be married, " hesaid. 

"Sh-h-h!" she whispered to his quietness. "Don't wake Marcia. "

"Hattie--" he said, and started to touch her. 

"Don't!" she sort of cried under her whisper, but not without notingthat his hand was ready enough to withdraw. "Please--go--now--"

"To-morrow at the station, then. Eleven. There's a train every hour forGreenwich. "

He was all tan to her now, standing there like a blur. 

"Yes, Morton, I'll be there. If--please--you'll go now. "

"Of course, " he said. "Late. Only I--Well, paying the taxi--strappedme--temporarily. A ten spot--old Hat--would help. "

She gave him her purse, a tiny leather one with a patent clasp. Somehowher fingers were not flexible enough to open it. 

His were. 

There were a few hours of darkness left, and she sat them out, exactlyas he had left her, on the piano stool, looking at the silence. 

Toward morning quite an equinoctial storm swept the city, bangingshutters and signs, and a steeple on 122d Street was struck bylightning. 

And so it was that Hattie's wedding day came up like thunder. 

GUILTY

To the swift hiss of rain down soot-greasy window panes and through amedley of the smells of steam off wet overcoats and a pale stenchof fish, a judge turned rather tired Friday-afternoon eyes upon theprisoner at the bar, a smallish man in a decent-enough salt-and-peppersuit and more salt than pepper in his hair and mustache. 

"You have heard the charge against you, " intoned the judge in the holyand righteous key of justice about to be administered. "Do you pleadguilty or not guilty?"

"I--I plead guilty of not having told her facts that would have helpedher to struggle against the--the thing--her inheritance. "

"You must answer the Court directly. Do you--"

"You see, Your Honor--my little girl--so little--my promise. Yes, yes, I--I plead guilty of keeping her in ignorance of what she should haveknown, but you see, Your Honor, my little gi--"

"Order! Answer to the point. Do you, " began the judge again, "pleadguilty or not guilty?" his tongue chiming the repetition into thewaiting silence like a clapper into a bell. 

The prisoner at the bar thumbed his derby hat after the immemorialdry-fingered fashion of the hunted meek, his mouth like an open woundpuckering to close. 

"Guilty or not guilty, my man? Out with it. "

Actually it was not more than a minute or two before the prisoner foundreply, but it was long enough for his tortured eye to flash inward andbackward with terrible focus.... 

 * * * * *

On its long cross-town block, Mrs. Plush's boarding house repeateditself no less than thirty-odd times. Every front hall of them smelledlike cold boiled potato, and the gilt chair in the parlor like banana. At dinner hour thirty-odd basement dining rooms reverberated, notuncheerfully, to the ironstone clatter of the canary-bird bathtub ofsuccotash, the three stewed prunes, or the redolent boiled potato, andon Saturday mornings, almost to the thirty-odd of them, wasp-waisted, oiled-haired young negro girls in white-cotton stockings and cut-downhigh shoes enormously and rather horribly run down of heel, tilted pintsof water over steep stone stoops and scratched at the trickle with oldbroom runts. 

If Mrs. Plush's house broke rank at all, it did so by praiseworthyomission. In that row of the fly-by-night and the van-by-day, the movingor the express wagon seldom backed up before No. 28, except immediatelypreceding a wedding or following a funeral. And never, in twenty-twoyears of respectable tenancy, had the furtive lodger oozed, underdarkness, through the Plush front door by night, or a huddle ofsidewalk trunks and trappings staged the drab domestic tragedy of thedispossessed. 

The Kellers (second-story back) had eaten their satisfied way throughfourteen years of the breakfasts of apple sauce or cereal; choice of hamand eggs any style or country sausage and buckwheat cakes. 

Jeanette Peopping, born in the back parlor, was married out of thefront. 

On the night that marked the seventeenth anniversary of the Dangs intothe third-floor alcove room there was frozen pudding with hot fudgesauce for dessert, and a red-paper bell ringing silently from thedining-room chandelier. 

For the eight years of their placid connubiality Mr. And Mrs. Henry Jetthad occupied the second-story front. 

Stability, that was the word. Why, Mrs. Plush had dealt with her cornerbutcher for so long that on crowded Saturday mornings it was her customto step without challenge into the icy zone of the huge refrigerator, herself pinching and tearing back the cold-storage-bitten wings offowls, weighing them with a fidelity to the ounce, except for a fewextra giblets (Mr. Keller loved them), hers, anyhow, most of the time, for the asking. 

Even the nearest drug store, wary of that row of the transienthat-on-the-peg, off-the-peg, would deliver to No. 28 a mustard plasteror a deck of cards and charge without question. 

To the Jett Fish Company, "Steamers, Hotels, and RestaurantsSupplied--If It Swims We Have It, " Mrs. Plush paid her bill quarterlyonly, then Mr. Jett deducting the sum delicately from his board. 

So it may be seen that Mrs. Plush's boarding house offered scanty palateto the dauber in local color. 

On each of the three floors was a bathroom, spotlessly clean, with aneat hand-lettered sign over each tin tub:

 DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU

 PLEASE WASH OUT THE TUB AFTER YOU

Upon the outstanding occasion of the fly in the soup and Mr. Keller'ssubsequent deathly illness, the regrettable immersion had been directlytraceable, not to the kitchen, but to the dining-room ceiling. It wasNovember, a season of heavy dipterous mortality. Besides, Mrs. Peoppinghad seen it fall. 

Nor entered here the dirge of the soggy towel; Mrs. Plush placed fluffystacks of them outside each door each morning. Nor groggy coffee; Mrs. Plush was famous for hers. Drip coffee, boiled up to an angry sea andhalf an eggshell dropped in like a fairy barque, to settle it. 

The Jetts, with whom we have really to do, drank two cups apiece atbreakfast. Mrs. Jett, to the slight aid and abetment of one of her tworolls, stopped right there; Mr. Jett plunging on into choice-of--

The second roll Mrs. Jett usually carried away with her from the table. Along about ten o'clock she was apt to feel faint rather than hungry. 

"Gone, " she called it. "Feeling a little gone. "

Not that there was a suggestion of frailty about Mrs. Jett. Anything butthat. On the contrary, in all the eight years in the boarding house, she held the clean record of not a day in bed, and although her historyprevious to that time showed as many as fifteen hours a day on duty inthe little fancy-goods store of her own proprietorship, those yearsshowed her guilty of only two incapacitated days, and then because sheran an embroidery needle under her finger nail and suffered a slightinfection. 

Yet there was something about Emma Jett--eight years of married lifehad not dissipated it--that was not eupeptic; something of the sear andyellow leaf of perpetual spinsterhood. She was a wintry little bodywhose wide marriage band always hung loosely on her finger with an airof not belonging; wore an invariable knitted shawl iced with beadsacross her round shoulders, and frizzed her graying bangs, which, although fruit of her scalp, had a set-on look. Even the softness to herkind gray eyes was cozy rather than warm. 

She could look out tabbily from above a lap of handiwork, but in herboudoir wrapper of gray flannelette scalloped in black she was scrawny, almost rangy, like a horse whose ribs show. 

"I can no more imagine those two courting, " Mrs. Keller, a proud twinherself and proud mother of twins, remarked one afternoon to a euchregroup. "They must have sat company by correspondence. Why, they won'teven kiss when he comes home if there's anybody in the room!"

"They kiss, all right, " volunteered Mrs. Dang of the bay-window alcoveroom, "and she waves him good-by every morning clear down the block. "

"You can't tell about anybody nowadays, " vouchsafed some one, tremendously. 

But in the end the consensus of opinion, unanimous to the vote, was:Lovely woman, Mrs. Jett. 

Nice couple; so unassuming. The goodness looks out of her face; and soreserved!

But it was this aura of reserve that kept Mrs. Jett, not without a bitof secret heartache about it, as remote from the little world about heras the yolk of an egg is remote from the white. Surrounded, yet no partof those surroundings. No osmosis took place. 

Almost daily, in some one or another's room, over Honiton lace or themaking of steel-bead chatelaine bags, then so much in vogue, thoseimmediate, plushy-voiced gatherings of the members of the plain goldcircle took place. Delicious hours of confidence, confab, and theexchanges of the connubially loquacious. 

The supreme _lèse majesté_ of the married woman who wears her state ofwedlock like a crown of blessed thorns; bleeds ecstatically and swapsafternoon-long intimacies, made nasty by the plush in her voice, withher sisters of the matrimonial dynasty. 

Mrs. Jett was also bidden, by her divine right, to those conclaves ofthe wives, and faithfully she attended, but on the rim, as it were. Bitterly silent she sat to the swap of:

"That's nothing. After Jeanette was born my hair began to fall out justas if I had had typhoid"; or, "Both of mine, I am proud to say, werebottle babies"; and once, as she listened, her heart might have been apersimmon, puckering: "The idea for a woman of forty-five to have herfirst! It's not fair to the child. "

They could not, of course, articulate it, but the fact of the matter wasnot alone that Mrs. Jett was childless (so was Mrs. Dang, who somehowbelonged), it was that they sensed, with all the antennae of their busylittle intuitions, the ascetic odor of spinsterhood which clung to Mrs. Jett. She was a little "too nice. " Would flush at some of the innuendoesof the _contes intimes_, tales of no luster and dulled by soot, but inspite of an inner shrinkage would loop up her mouth to smile, becausenot to do so was to linger even more remotely outside the privileged rimof the wedding band. 

Evenings, after these gatherings, Mrs. Jett was invariably even a bitgentler than her wont in her greetings to Mr. Jett. 

Of course, they kissed upon his arrival home, comment to the contrarynotwithstanding, in a taken-for-granted fashion, perhaps, but there wassomething sweet about their utter unexcitement; and had the afternoonsession twisted her heart more than usual, Mrs. Jett was apt to place asecond kiss lightly upon the black and ever so slightly white mustache, or lay her cheek momentarily to his, as if to atone by thus yearningover him for the one aching and silent void between them. 

But in the main Henry Jett was a contented and happy man. 

His wife, whom he had met at a church social and wooed in the front ofthe embroidery and fancy-goods store, fitted him like the proverbialglove--a suede one. In the eight years since, his fish business hadalmost doubled, and his expenses, if anything, decreased, because moreand more it became pleasanter to join in the evening game of no-stakeseuchre down in the front parlor or to remain quietly upstairs, agas lamp on the table between them, Mr. Jett in a dressing gown ofhand-embroidered Persian design and a newspaper which he read from firstto last; Mrs. Jett at her tranquil process of fine needlework. 

Their room abounded in specimens of it. Centerpieces of rose design. Mounds of cushions stamped in bulldog's head and pipe and appropriatelyetched in colored floss. A poker hand, upheld by realistic five fingersembroidered to the life, and the cuff button denoted by a blue-glassjewel. Across their bed, making it a dais of incongruous splendor, wasflung a great counterpane of embroidered linen, in design as narrativeas a battle-surging tapestry and every thread in it woven out of theselong, quiet evenings by the lamp side. 

He was exceedingly proud of her cunning with a needle, so fine that itsstab through the cloth was too slight to be seen, and would lose nooccasion to show off the many evidences of her delicate workmanship thatwere everywhere about the room. 

"It's like being able to create a book or a piece of music, Em, to sayall that on a piece of cloth with nothing but a needle. "

"It's a good thing I am able to create something, Henry, " placing herthimbled hand on his shoulder and smiling down. She was slightly thetaller. 

It was remarkable how quick and how tender his intuitions could be. An innuendo from her, faint as the brush of a wing, and he wouldimmediately cluck with his tongue and throw out quite a bravado ofchest. 

"You're all right, Em. You suit me. "

"And you suit me, Henry, " stroking his hand. 

This he withdrew. It was apt to smell of fish and he thought that onceor twice he had noticed her draw back from it, and, anyway, he wasexceedingly delicate about the cling of the rottenly pungent fish odorof his workadays. 

Not that he minded personally. He had long ago ceased to have anyconsciousness of the vapors that poured from the bins and the incomingcatches into his little partitioned-off office. But occasionally henoticed that in street cars noses would begin to crinkle around him, and every once in a while, even in a crowded conveyance he would findhimself the center of a little oasis of vacant seats which he hadcreated around himself. 

Immediately upon his arrival home, although his hands seldom touched thefish, he would wash them in a solution of warm water and carbolicacid, and most of the time he changed his suit before dinner, from asalt-and-pepper to a pepper-and-salt, the only sartorial variety inwhich he ever indulged. 

His wife was invariably touched by this little nicety of his, andsometimes bravely forced his hand to her cheek to prove her lack ofrepugnance. 

Boarding-house lore had it correctly. They were an exceedingly nicecouple, the Jetts. 

One day in autumn, with the sky the color and heaviness of a Lynnhavenoyster, Mrs. Jett sat quite unusually forward on her chair at one ofthe afternoon congresses of the wives, convened in Mrs. Peopping's backparlor, Jeanette Peopping, aged four, sweet and blond, whom the Jettsloved to borrow Sunday mornings, while she was still in her littlenightdress, playing paper dolls in the background. 

Her embroidery hoop, with a large shaded pink rose in the working, had, contrary to her custom, fallen from idle hands, and instead of followingthe dart of the infinitesimal needle, Mrs. Jett's eyes were burninglyupon Mrs. Peopping, following, with almost lip-reading intensity, thatworthy lady's somewhat voluptuous mouthings. 

She was a large, light person with protuberant blue eyes that looked asif at some time they had been two-thirds choked from their sockets anda characteristic of opening every sentence with her mouth shaped to anexplosive O, which she filled with as much breath as it would hold. 

It had been a long tale of obstetrical fact and fancy, told plushily, of course, against the dangerous little ears of Jeanette, and at itsconclusion Mrs. Peopping's steel-bead bag, half finished, lay in ahuddle at her feet, her pink and flabby face turned reminiscently towardthe fire. 

"--and for three days six doctors gave me up. Why, I didn't see Jeanetteuntil the fourteenth day, when most women are up and out. The crisis, you know. My night nurse, an awful sweet girl--I send her a Christmaspresent to this day--said if I had been six years younger it wouldn'thave gone so hard with me. I always say if the men knew what we women gothrough--Maybe if some of them had to endure the real pain themselvesthey would have something to do besides walk up and down the hall andturn pale at the smell of ether coming through the keyhole. Ah me! I'vebeen a great sufferer in my day. "

"Thu, thu, thu, " and, "I could tell tales, " and, "I've been through myshare"--from various points of vantage around the speaker. 

It was then that Mrs. Jett sat forward on the edge of the straightchair, and put her question. 

There was a pause after it had fallen into the silence, as if anintruder had poked her head in through the door, and it brought only themost negligible answer from Mrs. Peopping. 

"Forty-three. "

Almost immediately Mrs. Dang caught at the pause for a case in pointthat had been trembling on her lips all during Mrs. Peopping's recital. 

"A doctor once told a second cousin of my sister-in-law's--" and so on_ad infinitum, ad lib. _, and _ad nauseaum_. 

That night Mrs. Jett did an unprecedented thing. She crept into thecrevice of her husband's arm from behind as he stood in his waistcoat, washing his hands in the carbolic solution at the bowl and washstand. He turned, surprised, unconsciously placing himself between her and thereeky water. 

"Henry, " she said, rubbing up against the alpaca back to his vest likean ingratiating Maltese tabby, "Hen-ery. "

"In a minute, Em, " he said, rather puzzled and wishing she would wait. 

Suddenly, swinging herself back from him by his waistcoat lapel, easily, because of his tenseness to keep her clear of the bowl of water, shedirected her eyes straight into his. 

"Hen-ery--Hen-ery, " each pronouncement of his name surging higher in herthroat. 

"Why, Em?"

"Hen-ery, I haven't words sweet enough to tell you. "

"Em, tell what?" And stopped. He could see suddenly that her eyes werefull of new pins of light and his lightening intuition performed amiracle of understanding. 

"Emmy!" he cried, jerking her so that her breath jumped, and at thesudden drench of tears down her face sat her down, supporting herroundish back with his wet hands, although he himself felt weak. 

"I--can't say--what I feel, Henry--only--God is good and--I'm notafraid. "

He held her to his shoulder and let her tears rain down into his watchpocket, so shaken that he found himself mouthing silent words. 

"God is good, Henry, isn't He?"

"Yes, Emmy, yes. Oh, my Emmy!"

"It must have been our prayers, Henry. "

"Well, " sheepishly, "not exactly mine, Emmy; you're the saint of thisfamily. But I--I've wished. "

"Henry. I'm so happy--Mrs. Peopping had Jeanette at forty-three. Threeyears older than me. I'm not afraid. "

It was then he looked down at her graying head there, prone against hischest, and a dart of fear smote him. 

"Emmy, " he cried, dragging her tear-happy face up to his, "if you'reafraid--not for anything in the world! You're _first_, Em. "

She looked at him with her eyes two lamps. 

"Afraid? That's the beautiful _part_, Henry. I'm not. Only happy. Whyafraid, Henry--if others dare it at--forty-three--You mean because itwas her second?"

He faced her with a scorch of embarrassment in his face. 

"You--We--Well, we're not spring chickens any more, Em. If you are sureit's not too--"

She hugged him, laughing her tears. 

"I'm all right, Henry--we've been too happy not to--to--perpetuate--it. "

This time he did not answer. His cheek was against the crochet of heryoke and she could hear his sobs with her heart. 

 * * * * *

Miraculously, like an amoeba reaching out to inclose unto itself, thecircle opened with a gasp of astonishment that filled Mrs. Peopping's Oto its final stretch and took unto its innermost Emma Jett. 

Nor did she wear her initiation lightly. There was a new tint out in herlong cheeks, and now her chair, a rocker, was but one removed from Mrs. Peopping's. 

Oh, the long, sweet afternoons over garments that made needleworksublime. No longer the padded rose on the centerpiece or the futiledoily, but absurd little dresses with sleeves that she measured to thelength of her hand, and yokes cut out to the pattern of a playing card, and all fretted over with feather-stitching that was frailer thanmaidenhair fern and must have cost many an eye-ache, which, because ofits source, was easy to bear. 

And there happened to Mrs. Jett that queer juvenescence that sometimescomes to men and women in middle life. She who had enjoyed no particularyouth (her father had died in a ferryboat crash two weeks before herbirth, and her mother three years after) came suddenly to acquirecomeliness which her youth had never boasted. 

The round-shouldered, long-cheeked girl had matured gingerly to rathersparse womanhood that now at forty relented back to a fulsome thirty. 

Perhaps it was the tint of light out in her face, perhaps the splendorof the vision; but at any rate, in those precious months to come, Mrs. Jett came to look herself as she should have looked ten years back. 

They were timid and really very beautiful together, she and Henry Jett. He came to regard her as a vase of porcelain, and, in his ignorance, regarded the doctor's mandates harsh; would not permit her to walk, butordered a hansom cab every day from three to four, Mrs. Jett alternatingpunctiliously with each of the boarding-house ladies for drivingcompanion. 

Every noon, for her delectation at luncheon, he sent a boy from thestore with a carton of her special favorites--Blue Point oysters. Shesuddenly liked them small because, as she put it, they went down easier, and he thought that charming. Lynnhavens for mortals of tougher growth. 

Long evenings they spent at names, exercising their pre-determinationas to sex. "Ann" was her choice, and he was all for canceling hispreference for "Elizabeth, " until one morning she awakened to the whitelight of inspiration. 

"I have it! Why not Ann Elizabeth?"

"Great!" And whistled so through his shaving that his mouth was rayedwith a dark sunburst of beard where the razor had not found surface. 

They talked of housekeeping, reluctantly, it is true, because Mrs. Plushherself was fitting up, of hard-to-spare evenings, a basinette of pinkand white. They even talked of schools. 

Then came the inevitable time when Mrs. Jett lost interest. Quite out ofa clear sky even the Blue Points were taboo, and instead of joining thisor that card or sewing circle, there were long afternoons of stitchingaway alone, sometimes the smile out on her face, sometimes not. 

"Em, is it all right with you?" Henry asked her once or twice, anxiously. 

"Of course it is! If I weren't this way--now--it wouldn't be natural. You don't understand. "

He didn't, so could only be vaguely and futilely sorry. 

Then one day something quite horrible, in a small way, happened to Mrs. Jett. Sitting sewing, suddenly it seemed to her that through the veryfluid of her eyeballs, as it were, floated a school of fish. Smallones--young smelts, perhaps--with oval lips, fillips to their tails, andsides that glisted. 

She laid down her bit of linen lawn, fingers to her lids as if tosqueeze out their tiredness. She was trembling from the unpleasantness, and for a frightened moment could not swallow. Then she rose, shook outher skirts, and to be rid of the moment carried her sewing up toMrs. Dang's, where a euchre game was in session, and by a few adroitquestions in between deals gained the reassurance that a nervous statein her "condition" was highly normal. 

She felt easier, but there was the same horrid recurrence three timesthat week. Once during an evening of lotto down in the front parlor shepushed back from the table suddenly, hand flashing up to her throat. 

"Em!" said Mr. Jett, who was calling the numbers. 

"It's nothing, " she faltered, and then, regaining herself more fully, "nothing, " she repeated, the roundness out in her voice this time. 

The women exchanged knowing glances. 

"She's all right, " said Mrs. Peopping, omnipotently. "Those thingspass. "

Going upstairs that evening, alone in the hallway, they flung an armeach across the other's shoulder, crowding playfully up the narrowflight. 

"Emmy, " he said, "poor Em, everything will be all right. "

She restrained an impulse to cry. "Poor nothing, " she said. 

But neither the next evening, which was Friday, nor for Fridaysthereafter, would she venture down for fish dinner, dining cozily upin her room off milk toast and a fluffy meringue dessert preparedespecially by Mrs. Plush. It was floating-island night downstairs. 

Henry puzzled a bit over the Fridays. It was his heaviest day at thebusiness, and it was upsetting to come home tired and feel her placebeside him at the basement dinner table vacant. 

But the women's nods were more knowing than ever, the reassuringinsinuations more and more delicate. 

But one night, out of one of those stilly cisterns of darkness thatbetween two and four are deepest with sleep, Henry was awakened on thecrest of such a blow and yell that he swam up to consciousness in aready-made armor of high-napped gooseflesh. 

A regrettable thing had happened. Awakened, too, on the high tide ofwhat must have been a disturbing dream, Mrs. Jett flung out her arm asif to ward off something. That arm encountered Henry, snoring lightly inhis sleep at her side. But, unfortunately, to that frightened fling ofher arm Henry did not translate himself to her as Henry. 

That was a fish lying there beside her! A man-sized fish with its mouthjerked open to the shape of a gasp and the fillip still through itsenormous body, as if its flanks were uncomfortably dry. A fish!

With a shriek that tore a jagged rent through the darkness Mrs. Jettbegan pounding at the slippery flanks, her hands sliding off itsshininess. 

"Out! Out! Henry, where are you? Help me! O God, don't let him get me. Take him away, Henry! Where are you? My hands--slippery! Where areyou--"

Stunned, feeling for her in the darkness, he wanted to take hershuddering form into his arms and waken her out of this horror, but witheach groping move of his her hurtling shrieks came faster, and finally, dragging the bedclothing with her, she was down on the floor at thebedside, blobbering. That is the only word for it--blobbering. 

He found a light, and by this time there were already other lightsflashing up in the startled household. When he saw her there in the agueof a huddle on the floor beside the bed, a cold sweat broke out over himso that he could almost feel each little explosion from the pores. 

"Why, Emmy--Emmy--my Emmy--my Emmy--"

She saw him now and knew him, and tried in her poor and alreadyburningly ashamed way to force her chattering jaws together. 

"Hen-ery--dream--bad--fish--Hen-ery--"

He drew her up to the side of the bed, covering her shivering knees asshe sat there, and throwing a blanket across her shoulders. Fortunatelyhe was aware that the soothing note in his voice helped, and so he satdown beside her, stroking her hand, stroking, almost as if to hypnotizeher into quiet. 

"Henry, " she said, closing her fingers into his wrists, "I must havedreamed--a horrible dream. Get back to bed, dear. I--I don't know whatails me, waking up like that. That--fish! O God! Henry, hold me, holdme. "

He did, lulling her with a thousand repetitions of his limited store ofendearments, and he could feel the jerk of sobs in her breathing subsideand she seemed almost to doze, sitting there with her far hand acrossher body and up against his cheek. 

Then came knocks at the door, and hurried explanations through the slitthat he opened, and Mrs. Peopping's eye close to the crack. 

"Everything is all right.... Just a little bad dream the missus had.... All right now.... To be expected, of course.... No, nothing anyone cando.... Good night. Sorry.... No, thank you. Everything is all right. "

The remainder of the night the Jetts kept a small light burning, after awhile Henry dropping off into exhausted and heavy sleep. For hours Mrs. Jett lay staring at the small bud of light, no larger than a human eye. It seemed to stare back at her, warning, Now don't you go dropping offto sleep and misbehave again. 

And holding herself tense against a growing drowsiness, she didn't--forfear--

 * * * * *

The morning broke clear, and for Mrs. Jett full of small reassurances. It was good to hear the clatter of milk deliveries, and the first barof sunshine came in through the hand-embroidered window curtains like asmile, and she could smile back. Later she ventured down shamefacedlyfor the two cups of coffee, which she drank bravely, facing theinevitable potpourri of comment from this one and that one. 

"That was a fine scare you gave us last night, Mrs. Jett. "

"I woke up stiff with fright. Didn't I, Will? Gracious! That first yellwas a curdler!"

"Just before Jeanette was born I used to have bad dreams, too, butnothing like that. My!"

"My mother had a friend whose sister-in-law walked in her sleep rightout of a third-story window and was dashed to--"

"Shh-h-h!"

"It's natural, Mrs. Jett. Don't you worry. "

She really tried not to, and after some subsequent and privatereassurance from Mrs. Peopping and Mrs. Keller, went for her hansom ridewith a pleasant anticipation of the Park in red leaf, Mrs. Plush, in abrocade cape with ball fringe, sitting erect beside her. 

One day, in the presence of Mrs. Peopping, Mrs. Jett jumped to her feetwith a violent shaking of her right hand, as if to dash off somethingthat had crawled across its back. 

"Ugh!" she cried. "It flopped right on my hand. A minnow! Ugh!"

"A what?" cried Mrs. Peopping, jumping to her feet and her flesh seemingto crawl up. 

"A minnow. I mean a bug--a June bug. It was a bug, Mrs. Peopping. "

There ensued a mock search for the thing, the two women, on all-fours, peering beneath the chairs. In that position they met levelly, eye toeye. Then without more ado rose, brushing their knees and reseatingthemselves. 

"Maybe if you would read books you would feel better, " said Mrs. Peopping, scooping up a needleful of steel beads. "I know a woman whomade it her business to read all the poetry books she could lay handson, and went to all the bandstand concerts in the Park the whole time, and now her daughter sings in the choir out in Saginaw, Michigan. "

"I know some believe in that, " said Mrs. Jett, trying to force a smilethrough her pallor. "I must try it. "

But the infinitesimal stitching kept her so busy. 

 * * * * *

It was inevitable, though, that in time Henry should begin to shouldermore than a normal share of unease. 

One evening she leaned across the little lamplit table between them ashe sat reading in the Persian-design dressing gown and said, as rapidlyas her lips could form the dreadful repetition, "The fish, the fish, thefish, the fish. " And then, almost impudently for her, disclaimed havingsaid it. 

He urged her to visit her doctor and she would not, and so, secretly, hedid, and came away better satisfied, and with directions for keeping herdiverted, which punctiliously he tried to observe. 

He began by committing sly acts of discretion on his own accord. Wascareful not to handle the fish. Changed his suit now before cominghome, behind a screen in his office, and, feeling foolish, went out andpurchased a bottle of violet eau de Cologne, which he rubbed into hispalms and for some inexplicable reason on his half-bald spot. 

Of course that was futile, because the indescribably and faintly rottensmell of the sea came through, none the less, and to Henry he washimself heinous with scent. 

One Sunday morning, as was his wont, Mr. Jett climbed into his dressinggown and padded downstairs for the loan of little Jeanette Peopping, with whom he returned, the delicious nub of her goldilocks head showingjust above the blanket which enveloped her, eyes and all. 

He deposited her in bed beside Mrs. Jett, the little pink feet peepingout from her nightdress and her baby teeth showing in a smile that Mr. Jett loved to pinch together with thumb and forefinger. 

"Cover her up quick, Em, it's chilly this morning. "

Quite without precedent, Jeanette puckered up to cry, holding herselfrigidly to Mr. Jett's dressing gown. 

"Why, Jeanette baby, don't you want to go to Aunty Em?"

"No! No! No!" Trying to ingratiate herself back into Mr. Jett's arms. 

"Baby, you'll take cold. Come under covers with Aunty Em?"

"No! No! No! Take me back. "

"Oh, Jeanette, that isn't nice! What ails the child? She's always soeager to come to me. Shame on Jeanette! Come, baby, to Aunty Em?"

"No! No! No! My mamma says you're crazy. Take me back--take me. "

For a frozen moment Henry regarded his wife above the glittering fluffof little-girl curls. It seemed to him he could almost see her facebecome smaller, like a bit of ice under sun. 

"Naughty little Jeanette, " he said, shouldering her and carrying herdown the stairs; "naughty little girl. "

When he returned his wife was sitting locked in the attitude in which hehad left her. 

"Henry!" she whispered, reaching out and closing her hand over his sothat the nails bit in. "Not that, Henry! Tell me not that!"

"Why, Em, " he said, sitting down and trembling, "I'm surprised at you, listening to baby talk! Why, Em, I'm surprised at you!"

She leaned over, shaking him by the shoulder. 

"I know. They're saying it about me. I'm not that, Henry. I swear I'mnot that! Always protect me against their saying that, Henry. Notcrazy--not that! It's natural for me to feel queer at times--now. Every woman in this house who says--that--about me has had her nervousfeelings. It's not quite so easy for me, as if I were a bit younger. That's all. The doctor said that. But nothing to worry about. Mrs. Peopping had Jeanette--Oh, Henry promise me you'll always protect meagainst their saying that! I'm not that--I swear to you, Henry--notthat!"

"I know you're not, Emmy. It's too horrible and too ridiculous to talkabout. Pshaw--pshaw!"

"You do know I'm not, don't you? Tell me again you do know. "

"I do. Do. "

"And you'll always protect me against anyone saying it? They'll believeyou, Henry, not me. Promise me to protect me against them, Henry. Promise to protect me against our little Ann Elizabeth ever thinkingthat of--of her mother. "

"Why, Emmy!" he said. "Why, Emmy! I just promise a thousand times--" andcould not go on, working his mouth rather foolishly as if he had notteeth and were rubbing empty gums together. 

But through her hot gaze of tears she saw and understood and, satisfied, rubbed her cheek against his arm. 

The rest is cataclysmic. 

Returning home one evening in a nice glow from a January out-of-doors, his mustache glistening with little frozen drops and his hands (he neverwore gloves) unbending of cold, Mrs. Jett rose at her husband's entrancefrom her low chair beside the lamp. 

"Well, well!" he said, exhaling heartily, the scent of violet denyingthe pungency of fish and the pungency of fish denying the scent ofviolet. "How's the busy bee this evening?"

For answer Mrs. Jett met him with the crescendo yell of a gale sweepingaround a chimney. 

"Ya-a-ah! Keep out--you! Fish! Fish!" she cried, springing toward him;and in the struggle that ensued the tubing wrenched off the gas lamp andplunged them into darkness. "Fish! I'll fix you! Ya-a-ah!"

"Emmy! For God's sake, it's Henry! Em!"

"Ya-a-ah! I'll fix you! Fish! Fish!"

 * * * * *

Two days later Ann Elizabeth was born, beautiful, but premature by twoweeks. 

Emma Jett died holding her tight against her newly rich breasts, for afew of the most precious and most fleeting moments of her life. 

All her absurd fears washed away, her free hand could lie without spasmin Henry's, and it was as if she found in her last words a secreteuphony that delighted her. 

"Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful. "

Later in his bewildered and almost ludicrous widowerhood tears wouldsometimes galumph down on his daughter's face as Henry rocked her ofevenings and Sunday mornings. 

"Sweet-beautiful, " came so absurdly from under his swiftly grayingmustache, but often, when sure he was quite alone, he would say it overand over again. 

"Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth. "

 * * * * *

Of course the years puttied in and healed and softened, until for Henryalmost a Turner haze hung between him and some of the stark facts ofEmma Jett's death, turping out horror, which is always the first to fadefrom memory, and leaving a dear sepia outline of the woman who had beenhis. 

At seventeen, Ann Elizabeth was the sun, the sky, the west wind, and theshimmer of spring--all gone into the making of her a rosebud off thestock of his being. 

His way of putting it was, "You're my all, Annie, closer to me than I amto myself. "

She hated the voweling of her name, and because she was so nimble withyouth could dance away from these moods of his rather than plumb them. 

"I won't be 'Annie. ' Please, daddy, I'm your Ann Elizabeth. "

"Ann Elizabeth, then. My Ann Elizabeth, " an inner rhythm in him echoing:Sweet-Beautiful. Sweet-Beautiful. 

There was actually something of the lark about her. She awoke with asong, sometimes kneeling up in bed, with her pretty brown hair touslingdown over her shoulders and chirruping softly to herself into the littlebird's-eye-maple dressing-table mirror, before she flung her feet overthe side of the bed. 

And then, innate little housekeeper that she was, it was to thepreparing of breakfast with a song, her early morning full of antics. Tiptoeing in to awaken her father to the tickle of a broom straw. Spreading his breakfast piping hot, and then concealing herself behind ascreen, that he might marvel at the magic of it. And once she put saltin his coffee, a fresh cup concealed behind the toast rack, and knee toknee they rocked in merriment at his grimace. 

She loved thus to tease him, probably because he was so stolid that eachnew adventure came to him with something of a shock. He was foreverbeing taken unawares, as if he could never become entirely accustomed tothe wonder of her, and that delighted her. Even the obviousness of hisslippers stuffed out with carrots could catch him napping. To her danceof glee behind him, he kept poking and poking to get into them, onlythe peck of her kiss upon his neck finally initiating him into theabsurdity. 

There was a little apartment of five rooms, twenty minutes removed bySubway from the fish store; her bedroom, all pink and yellow maple; his;a kitchen, parlor, and dining room worked out happily in white-muslincurtains, spindle-legged parlor chairs, Henry's newfangled chifferobeand bed with a fine depth of mattress, and a kitchen with eight shiningpots above the sink and a border of geese, cut out to the snip of Ann'sown scissors, waddling across the wall. 

It was two and a half years since Mrs. Plush had died, and the boarders, as if spilled from an ark on rough seas, had struck out for diverseshores. The marvel to them now was that they had delayed so long. 

"A home of our own, Ann. Pretty sweet, isn't it?"

"Oh, daddy, it is!"

"You mustn't overdo, though, baby. Sometimes we're not so strong as wethink we are. A little hired girl would be best. " The fish business hadmore than held its own. 

"But I love doing it alone, dad. It--it's the next best thing to a homeof--my own. "

He looked startled into her dreaming eyes. 

"Your own? Why, Annie, isn't this--your own?"

She laid fingers against his eyes so that he could not see the pinkinessof her. 

"You know what I mean, daddy--my--very--own. "

At that timid phrasing of hers Henry felt that his heart was actuallystrangling, as if some one were holding it back on its systolic swing, like a caught pendulum. 

"Why, Annie, " he said, "I never thought--"

But inevitably and of course it had happened. 

The young man's name was Willis--Fred E. Willis--already credit man ina large wholesale grocery firm and two feet well on the road toadvancement. A square-faced, clean-faced fellow, with a clean love oflife and of Ann Elizabeth in his heart. 

Henry liked him. 

Ann Elizabeth loved him. 

And yet, what must have been a long-smoldering flame of fear shot upthrough the very core of Henry's being, excoriating. 

"Why, Ann Elizabeth, " he kept repeating, in his slow and alwaysinarticulate manner, "I--You--Mine--I just never thought. "

She wound the softest of arms about his neck. 

"I know, daddy-darlums, and I'll never leave you. Never. Fred haspromised we will always be together. We'll live right here with you, oryou with us. "

"Annie, " he cried, "you mustn't ever--marry. I mean, leave daddy--thatway--anyway. You hear me? You're daddy's own. Just his by himself. Nobody is good enough for my girl. "

"But, daddy, " clouding up for tears, "I thought you liked Fred so much!"

"I do, but it's you I'm talking about. Nobody can have you. "

"But I love him, daddy. This is terrible. I love him. "

"Oh, Ann, Ann! daddy hasn't done right, perhaps, but he meant well. There are _reasons_ why he wants to keep his little girl with himalways--alone--his. "

"But, daddy dear, I promise you we'll never let you be lonely. Why, Icouldn't stand leaving you any more than you could--"

"Not those reasons alone, Ann. "

"Then what?"

"You're so young, " he tried to procrastinate. 

"I'll be eighteen. A woman. "

All his faculties were cornered. 

"You're--so--Oh, I don't know--I--"

"You haven't any reasons, dad, except dear silly ones. You can't keep mea little girl all the time, dear. I love Fred. It's all planned. Don'truin my life, daddy--don't ruin my life. "

She was lovely in her tears and surprisingly resolute in her mind, andhe was more helpless than ever with her. 

"Ann--you're not strong. "

"Strong!" she cried, flinging back her curls and out her chest. "That isa fine excuse. I'm stronger than most. All youngsters have measles andscarlet fever and Fred says his sister Lucile out in Des Moines had St. Vitus' dance when she was eleven, just like I did. I'm stronger than youare, dad. I didn't get the flu and you did. "

"You're nervous, Annie. That's why I want always to keep you athome--quiet--with me. "

She sat back, her pretty eyes troubled-up lakes. 

"You mean the dreams and the scared feeling, once in a while, that Ican't swallow. That's nothing. I know now why I was so frightened in mysleep the other night. I told Fred, and he said it was the peach sundaeon top of the crazy old movie we saw that evening. Why, JeanettePeopping had to take a rest cure the year before she was married. Girlsare always more nervous than fellows. Daddy--you--you frighten me whenyou look at me like that! I don't know what you mean! What-do-you-mean?"

He was helpless and at bay and took her in his arms and kissed her hair. 

"I guess your old daddy is a jealous pig and can't bear to share hisgirl with anyone. Can't bear to--to give her up. "

"You won't be giving up, daddums. I couldn't stand that, either. Itwill be three of us then. You'll see. Look up and smile at your AnnElizabeth. Smile, now, smile. "

And of course he did. 

It was typical of her that she should be the busiest of brides-to-be, her complete little trousseau, every piece down to the dishcloths, monogrammed by her--A. E. W. 

Skillful with her needle and thrifty in her purchases, the outfit whencompleted might have represented twice the outlay that Henry expendedon it. Then there were "showers, "--linen, stocking, and even a tin one;gifts from her girl friends--cup, face, bath and guest towels; all thetremendous trifles and addenda that go to gladden the chattel-lovingheart of a woman. A little secret society of her erstwhile schoolfriends presented her with a luncheon set; the Keller twins with asilver gravy boat; and Jeanette Peopping Truman, who occupied anapartment in the same building, spent as many as three afternoons a weekwith her, helping to piece out a really lovely tulip-design quilt ofpink and white sateen. 

"Jeanette, " said Ann Elizabeth, one afternoon as the two of them sat ina frothy litter of the pink and white scraps, "how did you feel thattime when you had the nerv--the breakdown?"

Jeanette, pretty after a high-cheek-boned fashion and her still brighthair worn coronet fashion about her head, bit off a thread with sharpwhite teeth, only too eager to reminisce her ills. 

"I was just about gone, that's what I was. Let anybody so much as lookat me twice and, pop! I'd want to cry about it. "

"And?"

"For six weeks I didn't even have enough interest to ask after Truman, who was courting me then. Oh, it was no fun, I can tell you, thatnervous breakdown of mine!"

"What--else?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"Did it--was it--was it ever hard to swallow, Jeanette?"

"To swallow?"

"Yes. I mean--did you ever dream or--think--or feel so frightened youcouldn't swallow?"

"I felt lots of ways, but that wasn't one of them. Swallow! Who everheard of not swallowing?"

"But didn't you ever dream, Jeanette--terrible things--such terriblethings--and get to thinking and couldn't stop yourself? Silly, ghostly--things. "

Jeanette put down her sewing. 

"Ann, are you quizzing me about--your mother?"

"My mother? Why my mother? Jeanette, what do you mean? Why do you ask mea thing like that? What has my mother got to do with it? Jeanette!"

Conscious that she had erred, Jeanette veered carefully back. 

"Why, nothing, only I remember mamma telling me when I was just a kiddiehow your mamma used to--to imagine all sorts of things just to pass thetime away while she embroidered the loveliest pieces. You're like her, mamma used to say--a handy little body. Poor mamma, to think she had tobe taken before Truman, junior, was born! Ah me!"

That evening, before Fred came for his two hours with her in the littleparlor, Ann, rid of her checked apron and her crisp pink frock savedfrom the grease of frying sparks, flew in from a ring at the doorbellwith a good-sized special-delivery box from a silversmith, untying itwith eager, fumbling fingers, her father laying aside his newspaper toventure three guesses as to its contents. 

"Another one of those syrup pitchers. "

"Oh dear!"--plucking the twine--"I hope not!"

"Some more nut picks. "

"Daddy, stop calamity howling. Here's the card. Des Moines, Iowa. 'FromLucile Willis, with love to her new sister. ' Isn't that the sweetest!It's something with a pearl handle. "

"I know. Another one of those pie-spade things. "

"Wrong! Wrong! It's two pieces. Oh!"

It was a fish set of silver and mother-of-pearl. A large-bowled spoonand a sort of Neptune's fork, set up in a white-sateen bed. 

"Say now, that _is_ neat, " said Henry, appraising each piece with a showof critical appreciation not really his. All this spread of the gewgawsof approaching nuptials seemed meaningless to him; bored him. Butterknives. Berry spoons. An embarrassment of nut picks and silver pitchers. A sliver of silver paper cutter with a hilt and a dog's-head handle. Andnow, for Fred's delectation this evening, the newly added fish set, soappropriately inscribed from his sister. 

Tilting it against the lamp in the place of honor, Ann Elizabeth turnedaway suddenly, looking up at her father in a sudden dumb panic of whichhe knew nothing, her two hands at her fair, bare throat. It was so hardagain to swallow. Impossible. 

But finally, as was always the case, she did swallow, with a great surgeof relief. A little later, seated on her father's knee and plucking athis tie in a futile fashion that he loved, she asked him:

"Daddy--about mother--"

They seldom talked of her, but always during these rare moments abeautiful mood shaped itself between them. It was as if the mere breathof his daughter's sweetly lipped use of "mother" swayed the bitter-sweetmemory of the woman he carried so faithfully in the cradle of his heart. 

"Yes, baby--about mother?"

"Daddy"--still fingering at the tie--"was mother--was everything allright with her up--to the very--end? I mean--no nerv--no pain? Just allof a sudden the end--quietly. Or have you told me that just to--spareme?"

She could feel him stiffen, but when his voice came it was even. 

"Why, Ann, what a--question! Haven't I told you so often how mother justpeacefully passed on, holding a little pink you. "

Sweet-Beautiful--his heart was tolling through a sense ofpanic--Sweet-Beautiful. 

"I know, daddy, but before--wasn't there any nerv--any sickness?"

"No, " he said, rather harshly for him. "No. No. What put such ideas intoyour head?"

You see, he was shielding Emma way back there, and a typhoon of herwords was raging through his head:

"Oh, Henry, protect me against anyone ever saying--that. Promise me. "

And now, with no sense of his terrible ruthlessness, he was protectingher with her own daughter. 

"Then, daddy, just one more thing, " and her underlip caught while shewaited for answer. "There is no other reason except your own dear sillyone of loneliness--why you keep wanting me to put off my marriage?"

"No, baby, " he said, finally, his words with no more depth than if hisbody were a hollow gourd. "What else could there be?"

Immediately, and with all the resilience of youth, she was her happyself again, kissing him through his mustache and on his now frankly baldhead, which gave off the incongruous odor of violet eau de Cologne. 

"Old dude daddy!" she cried, and wanted to kiss his hands, which he heldsuddenly very still and far from her reach. 

Then the bell rang again and Fred Willis arrived. All the evening, long after Henry lay on his deep-mattressed bed, staring, the littleapartment trilled to her laughter and the basso of Fred's. 

 * * * * *

A few weeks later there occurred a strike of the delivery men and truckdrivers of the city, and Henry, especially hard hit because of theperishable nature of his product, worked early and late, oftentimesloading the wagons himself and riding alongside of the precariouslydriving "scab. "

Frequently he was as much as an hour or two late to dinner, and upon oneor two occasions had tiptoed out of the house before the usual hourwhen Ann opened her eyes to the consciousness of his breakfast to beprepared. 

They were trying days, the scheme of his universe broken into, and Henrythrived on routine. 

The third week of the strike there were street riots, some of themdirectly in front of the fish store, and Henry came home after a day ofthe unaccustomed labor of loading and unloading hampers of fish, reallyquite shaken. 

When he arrived Ann Elizabeth was cutting around the scalloped edge ofa doily with embroidery scissors, the litter of cut glass and silverthings out on the table and throwing up quite a brilliance under theelectric lamp, and from the kitchen the slow sizzle of waiting chops. 

"Whew!" he said, as he entered, both from the whiff he emanated as heshook out of his overcoat, and from a great sense of his weariness. Loading the hampers, you understand. "Whew!"

Ann Elizabeth started violently, first at the whiff which preceded himand at his approach into the room; then sat forward, her hand closinginto the arm of the chair, body thrust forward and her eyes wideninglike two flowers opening. 

Then she rose slowly and slyly, and edged behind the table, her twohands up about her throat. 

"Don't you come in here, " she said, lowly and evenly. "I know you, butI'm not afraid. I'm only afraid of you at night, but not by light. Youlet me swallow, you hear! Get out! Get out!"

Rooted, Henry stood. 

"Why, Annie!" he said in the soothing voice from out of his long ago, "Annie--it's daddy!"

"No, you don't, " she cried, springing back as he took the step forward. "My daddy'll kill you if he finds you here. He'll slit you up from yourtail right up to your gill. He knows how. I'm going to tell him and Fredon you. You won't let me swallow. You're slippery. I can't stand it. Don't you come near me! Don't!"

"Annie!" he cried. "Good God! Annie, it's daddy who loves you!" PoorHenry, her voice was still under a whisper and in his agony he committedthe error of rushing at her. "Annie, it's daddy! See, your own deardaddy!"

But she was too quick. Her head thrown back so that the neck musclesstrained out like an outraged deer's cornered in the hunt and hereyes rolled up, Ann felt for and grasped the paper knife off thetrinket-littered table. 

"Don't you touch me--slit you up from tail to your gills. "

"Annie, it's daddy! Papa! For God's sake look at daddy--Ann! God!" Andcaught her wrist in the very act of its plumb-line rush for his heart. 

He was sweating in his struggle with her, and most of all her strengthappalled him, she was so little for her terrible unaccountable power. 

"Don't touch me! You can't! You haven't any arms! Horrible gills!"

She was talking as she struggled, still under the hoarse and franticwhisper, but her breath coming in long soughs. "Slit-you-up-from-tail. Slit--you--up--from--tail--to--gills. "

"Annie! Annie!" still obsessed by his anguished desire to reassureher with the normality of his touch. "See, Annie, it's daddy. AnnElizabeth's daddy. " With a flash her arm and the glint of the papercutter eluded him again and again, but finally he caught her by thewaist, struggling, in his dreadful mistake, to calm her down into thechair again. 

"Now I've got you, darling. Now--sit--down--"

"No, you haven't, " she said, a sort of wild joy coming out in herwhisper, and cunningly twisting the upper half of her body back fromhis, the hand still held high. "You'll never get me--you fish!"

And plunged with her high hand in a straight line down into her throat. 

It was only when the coroner withdrew the sliver of paper knife from itswhiteness, that, coagulated, the dead and waiting blood began to ooze. 

 * * * * *

"Do you, " intoned the judge for the third and slightly more impatienttime, "plead guilty or not guilty to the charge of murder against you?"

This time the lips of the prisoner's wound of a mouth moved stifflytogether:

"Guilty. "

ROULETTE

I

Snow in the village of Vodna can have the quality of hot white plushof enormous nap, so dryly thick it packs into the angles where fencescross, sealing up the windward sides of houses, rippling in great seasacross open places, flaming in brilliancy against the boles of ever sooccasional trees, and tucking in the houses up to the sills and downover the eaves. 

Out in the wide places it is like a smile on a dead face, this snowhush, grateful that peace can be so utter. It is the silence of a broodyGod, and out of that frozen pause, in a house tucked up to the sills anddown to the eaves, Sara Turkletaub was prematurely taken with the pangsof childbirth, and in the thin dawn, without even benefit of midwife, twin sons were born. 

Sturdy sons, with something even in their first crescendo wails thatbespoke the good heritage of a father's love-of-life and a mother'slife-of-love. 

No Sicilian sunrise was ever more glossy with the patina of hopethan the iced one that crept in for a look at the wide-faced, high-cheek-boned beauty of Sara Turkletaub as she lay with her sons tothe miracle of her full breasts, her hair still rumpled with the agonyof deliverance. So sweetly moist her eyes that Mosher Turkletaub, hisown brow damp from sweat of her writhings, was full of heartbeat, evento his temples. 

Long before moontime, as if by magic of the brittle air, the tidings hadspread through the village, and that night, until the hand-hewn raftersrang, the house of Turkletaub heralded with twofold and world-old fervorthe advent of the man-child. And through it all--the steaming warmth, the laughter through bushy beards, the ministering of women wise andfoolish with the memory of their own pangs, the shouts of vodka-stirredmen, sheepish that they, too, were part custodians of the miracle oflife--through it all Sara Turkletaub lay back against her coarse bed, sorich--so rich that the coves of her arms trembled each of its burden andheld tighter for fear somehow God might repent of his prodigality. 

That year the soil came out from under the snow rich and malmy to theplow, and Mosher started heavy with his peddler's pack and returnedlight. It was no trick now for Sara to tie her sons to an iron ring inthe door jamb and, her strong legs straining and her sweat willing, undertake household chores of water lugging, furniture heaving, marketing with baskets that strained her arms from the sockets as shecarted them from the open square to their house on the outskirts, hermassive silhouette moving as solemnly as a caravan against the sky line. 

Rich months these were and easy to bear because they were backed by adream that each day, however relentless in its toil, brought closer toreality. 

"America!"

The long evenings full of the smell of tallow; maps that curled underthe fingers; the well-thumbed letters from Aaron Turkletaub, olderbrother to Mosher and already a successful pieceworker on skirts inBrooklyn. The picture postcards from him of the Statue of Liberty! Ofthe three of them, Aaron, Gussie, his wife, and little Leo, with donkeybodies sporting down a beach labeled "Coney. " A horrific tintype oflittle Leo in tiny velveteen knickerbockers that fastened with large, ruble-sized, mother-of-pearl buttons up to an embroidered sailor blouse. 

It was those mother-of-pearl buttons that captured Sara's imaginationso that she loved and wept over the tintype until little Leo quitedisappeared under the rust of her tears. Long after young Mosher, wholoved his Talmud, had retired to sway over it, Sara could yearn at thistintype. 

Her sons in little knickerbockers that fastened to the waistband withlarge pearl buttons!

Her black-eyed Nikolai with the strong black hair and the virile littleprofile that hooked against the pillow as he slept. 

Her red-headed Schmulka with the tight curls, golden eyes, and evenmore thrusting profile. So different of feature her twins and yet sotemperamentally of a key. Flaming to the same childish passions, oftentoo bitter, she thought, and, trembling with an unnamed fear, would tearthem apart. 

Pull of the cruelties and the horrible torture complex of the youngmale, they had once burned a cat alive, and the passion of their fatherand their cries under flaying had beat about in her brain for weeksafter. Jealousies, each of the other, burned fiercely, and, aged three, they scratched blood from one another over the favor of the shoemaker'stot of a girl. And once, to her soul-sickness, Nikolai, the black one, had found out the vodka and drunk of it until she discovered him in alittle stupor beside the cupboard. 

Yet--and Sara would recount with her eyes full of more tears than theycould hold the often-told tale of how Schmulka, who could bear noinjustice, championed the cause of little Mottke, the butcher's son, against the onslaught of his drunken father, beating back the lumberingattack with small fists tight with rage; of little Nikolai, who felldown the jagged wall of a quarry and endured a broken arm for the sixhours until his father came home rather than burden his mother with whathe knew would be the agony of his pain. 

Red and black were Sara's sons in pigment. But by the time they werefour, almost identical in passion, inflammable both to the same angers, the impulsive and the judiciary cunningly distributed in them. 

And so, to the solemn and Talmud teachings of Mosher and thewide-bosomed love of this mother who lavishly nurtured them, these sons, so identically pitched, grew steady of limb, with all the thigh-pullingpower of their parents, the calves of their little legs already tightas fists. And from the bookkeeping one snow-smelling night, to thedrip-drip of tallow, there came the decisive moment when America lookedexactly four months off!

Then one starlit hour before dawn the pogrom broke. Redly, from the verystart, because from the first bang of a bayonet upon a door blood beganto flow and smell. 

There had been rumors. For days old Genendel, the ragpicker, hadprophetically been showing about the village the rising knobs of hisknotting rheumatic knuckles, ill omen of storm or havoc. A star had shotdown one night, as white and sardonic as a Cossack's grin and almostwith a hiss behind it. Mosher, returning from a peddling tour to aneighboring village, had worn a furrow between his eyes. Headache, hecalled it. Somehow Sara vaguely sensed it to be the ache of a fear. 

One night there was a furious pink tint on the distant horizon, andborne on miles of the stiffly thin air came the pungency of burningwood and flesh across the snowlight. Flesh! The red sky lay off in thedirection of Kishinef. What was it? The straw roof of a burning barn?The precious flesh of an ox? What? Reb Baruch, with a married daughterand eleven children in Kishinef, sat up all night and prayed and swayedand trembled. 

Packed in airtight against the bite of the steely out-of-doors, most ofthe village of Vodna--except the children and the half-witted Shimsha, the _ganef_--huddled under its none-too-plentiful coverings that nightand prayed and trembled. 

At five o'clock that red dawn, almost as if a bayonet had crashed intoher dream, Sara, her face smeared with pallor, awoke to the smell ofher own hair singeing. A bayonet _had_ crashed, but through the door, terribly!

The rest is an anguished war frieze of fleeing figures; of runninghither and thither in the wildness of fear; of mothers running withbabes at breasts; of men, their twisted faces steaming sweat, locked inthe Laocoön embrace of death. Banners of flame. The exultant belch ofiridescent smoke. Cries the shape of steel rapiers. A mouth torn back toan ear. Prayers being moaned. The sticky stench of coagulating blood. Pillage. Outrage. Old men dragging household chattels. Figures crumplingup in the outlandish attitudes of death. The enormous braying offrightened cattle. A spurred heel over a face in that horrible momentwhen nothing can stay its descent. The shriek of a round-bosomed girlto the smear of wet lips across hers. The superb daring of her lover tokill her. A babe in arms. Two. The black billowing of fireless smoke. 

A child in the horse trough, knocked there from its mother's arms by thebutt end of a bayonet, its red curls quite sticky in a circle of itslittle blood. A half-crazed mother with a singed eyebrow, blatting overit and groveling on her breasts toward the stiffening figure for thewarmth they could not give; the father, a black-haired child in hisarms, tearing her by force out of the zone of buckshot, plunging backinto it himself to cover up decently, with his coat, what the horsetrough held. 

Dawn. A huddle of fugitives. Footsteps of blood across the wide openplaces of snow. A mother, whose eyes are terrible with what she has leftin the horse trough, fighting to turn back. A husband who literallycarries her, screaming, farther and farther across the cruel openplaces. A town. A ship. The crucified eyes of the mother always lookingback. Back. 

And so it was that Sara and Mosher Turkletaub sailed for America withonly one twin--Nikolai, the black. 

 * * * * *

The Turkletaubs prospered. Turkletaub Brothers, Skirts, the year afterthe war, paying a six-figure excess-profit tax. 

Aaron dwelt in a three-story, American-basement house in West 120thStreet, near Lenox Avenue, with his son Leo, office manager of theTurkletaub Skirt Company, and who had recently married the eldestdaughter of an exceedingly well-to-do Maiden Lane jewelry merchant. 

The Mosher Turkletaubs occupied an eight-room-and-two-baths apartmentnear by. Sara, with much of the fleetness gone from her face and a smiletempered by a look of unshed tears, marketing now by white-enameled desktelephone or, on days when the limp from an old burn down her thigh wasnot too troublesome, walked up to a plate-glass butcher shop on 125thStreet, where there was not so much as a drop of blood on the marblecounter and the fowl hung in white, plucked window display withgarnitures of pink tissue paper about the ankles and even the danglingheads wrapped so that the dead eyes might not give offense. 

It was a widely different Sara from the water lugger of those sweatyRussian days. Such commonplaces of environment as elevator service, water at the turning of a tap, potatoes dug and delivered to herdumbwaiter, had softened Sara and, it is true, vanquished, along withthe years, some of the wing flash of vitality from across her face. Sowas the tough fiber of her skin vanquished to almost a creaminess, andher hair, due perhaps to the warm water always on tap, had taken ona sheen, and even through its grayness grew out hardily and was welltrained to fall in soft scallops over the singed place. 

Yes, all in all, life had sweetened Sara, and, except for the occasionallook of crucifixion somewhere back in her eyes, had roly-polied herinto new rotundities of hip and shelf of bosom, and even to whatmischievously promised to be a scallop of second chin. 

Sara Turkletaub, daughter of a ne'er-do-well who had died before herbirth with the shadow of an unproved murder on him; Sara, who had runswiftly barefoot for the first dozen summers of her life, and married, without dower or approval, the reckless son of old Turkletaub, thepeddler; Sara, who once back in the dim years, when a bull had got loosein the public square, had jerked him to a halt by swinging herself fromhis horns, and later, standing by, had helped hold him for the emergencyof an un-kosher slaughter, not even paling at the slitting noises of theknife. 

Mosher Turkletaub, who had peddled new feet for stockings and calico forthe sacques the peasant women wore in the fields, reckoning no longer indozens of rubles but in dozens of thousands! Indeed, Turkletaub Brotherscould now afford to owe the bank one hundred thousand dollars! Mosherdwelling thus, thighs gone flabby, in a seven-story apartment house witha liveried lackey to swing open the front door and another to shoot himupward in a gilded elevator. 

It was to laugh!

And Sara and Mosher with their son, their turbulent Nikolai, now anaccredited Doctor of Law and practicing before the bar of the city ofNew York!

It was upon that realization, most of all, that Sara could surge tears, quickly and hotly, and her heart seem to hurt of fullness. 

Of Nikolai, the black. Nicholas, now:

It was not without reason that Sara had cried terrible tears over him, and that much, but not all, of the struggle was gone from her face. Her boy could be as wayward as the fling to his fierce black head, andsickeningly often Mosher, with a nausea at the very pit of him, hadwielded the lash. 

Once even Nicholas in his adolescent youth, handsomely dark, had stoodin Juvenile Court, ringleader of a neighborhood gang of children on aforay into the strange world of some packets of cocaine purloined fromthe rear of a vacated Chinese laundry. 

Bitterly had Mosher stood in the fore of that court room, thumbing hishat, his heart gangrening, and trying in a dumbly miserable sort of wayto press down, with his hand on her shoulder, some of the heaving ofSara's enormous tears. 

There had followed a long, bitter evening of staying the father's lashfrom descending, and finally, after five hours with his mother in hislittle room, her wide bosom the sea wall against which the boilingwaywardness of him surged, his high head came down like a black swan'sand apparently, at least so far as Mosher knew, Sara had won again. 

And so it was that with the bulwark of this mother and a father whospared not the wise rod even at the price of the sickness it costhim, Nicholas came cleanly through these difficult years of the longmidchannel of his waywardness. 

At twenty-one he was admitted to the bar of the city of New York, although an event so perilous followed it by a year or two that thescallops of strong hair that came down over the singed place of Sara'sbrow whitened that year; although Mosher, who was beginning to curveslightly of the years as he walked, as if a blow had been struck himfrom behind, never more than heard the wind before the storm. 

Listen in on the following:

The third year that Nicholas practiced law, junior member in the BroadStreet firm of Leavitt & Dilsheimer, he took to absenting himself fromdinner so frequently, that across the sturdy oak dining table, laid outin a red-and-white cloth, gold-band china not too thick of lip, and acut-glass fern dish with cunningly contrived cotton carnations stuck inamong the growing green, Sara, over rich and native foods, came more andmore to regard her husband through a clutch of fear. 

"I tell you, Mosher, something has come over the boy. It ain't like himto miss _gefülte_-fish supper three Fridays in succession. "

"All right, then, because he has a few more or less _gefülte_-fishsuppers in his life, let it worry you! If that ain't a woman everytime. "

"_Gefülte_ fish! If that was my greatest worry. But it's not so easy toprepare, that you should take it so much for granted. _Gefülte_ fish, hesays, just like it grew on trees and didn't mean two hours' chopping onmy feet. "

"Now, Sara, was that anything to fly off at? Do I ever so much as eattwo helpings of it in Gussie's house? That's how I like yours better!"

"Gussie don't chop up her onions fine enough. A hundred times I tell herand a hundred times she does them coarse. Her own daughter-in-law, agirl that was raised in luxury, can cook better as Gussie. I tell you, Mosher, I take off my hat to those Berkowitz girls. And if you shouldask me, Ada is a finer one even than Leo's Irma. "

The sly look of wiseacre wizened up Mosher's face. 

"Ada!" she says. "The way you pronounce that girl's name, Sara, it'slike every tooth in your mouth was diamond filled out of Berkowitz'sjewelry firm. "

Quite without precedent Sara's lips began to quiver at this pleasantry. 

"I'm worried, Mosher, " she said, putting down a forkful of untasted foodthat had journeyed twice toward her lips. "I don't say he--Nicky--Idon't say he should always stay home evenings when Ada comes oversometimes with Leo and Irma, but night after night--three times wholenights--I--Mosher, I'm afraid. "

In his utter well-being from her warming food, Mosher drank deeply and, if it must be admitted, swishingly, through his mustache, inhalingcopiously the draughts of Sara's coffee. 

Do not judge from the mustache cup with the gilt "Papa" inscribed, thatSara's home did not meticulously reflect the newer McKinley period, soto speak, of the cut-glass-china closet, curio cabinet, brass bedstead, velour upholstery, and the marbelette Psyche. 

They had furnished newly three years before, the year the businessalmost doubled, Sara and Gussie simultaneously, the two of them poringwith bibliophiles' fervor over Grand Rapids catalogic literature. 

Bravely had Sara, even more so than Gussie, sacrificed her old regime tothe dealer. Only a samovar remained. A red-and-white pressed-glass punchbowl, purchased out of Nicholas's--aged fourteen--pig-bank savings. Anenlarged crayon of her twins from a baby picture. A patent rocker whichshe kept in the kitchen. (It fitted her so for the attitude of peeling. )Two bisque plaques, with embossed angels. Another chair capable ofmetamorphosis into a ladder. And Mosher's cup. 

From this Mosher drank with gusto. His mustache, to Sara so thrillinglyAmerican, without its complement of beard, could flare so above therelishing sounds of drinking. It flared now and Mosher would share noneof her concern. 

"You got two talents, Sara. First, for being my wife; and second, forwasting worry like it don't cost you nothing in health or trips toCold Springs in the Catskills for the baths. Like it says in Nicky'sShakespeare, a boy who don't sow his wild oats when he's young will someday do 'em under another name that don't smell so sweet. "

"I--It ain't like I can talk over Nicky with you, Mosher, like anotherwoman could with her husband. Either you give him right or right awayyou get so mad you make it worse with him than better. "

"Now, Sara--"

"But only this morning that Mrs. Lessauer I meet sometimes at Epstein'sfish store--you know the rich sausage-casings Lessauers--she says to methis morning, she says with her sweetness full of such a meanness, likeit was knives in me--'Me and my son and daughter-in-law was coming outof a movie last night and we saw your son getting into a taxicab withsuch a blonde in a red hat!' The way she said it, Mosher, like a catlicking its whiskers--'such a blonde in a red hat'!"

"I wish I had one dollar in my pocket for every blond hat with red hairher Felix had before he married. "

"But it's the second time this week I hear it, Mosher. The samedescription of such a--a nix in a red hat. Once in a cabaret show Gussiesays she heard it from a neighbor, and now in and out from taxicabs withher. Four times this week he's not been home, Mosher. I can't help it, I--I get crazy with worry. "

A sudden, almost a simian old-age seemed to roll, like a cloud that canthunder, across Sara's face. She was suddenly very small and no littleold. Veins came out on her brow and upon the backs of her hands, andMosher, depressed with an unconscious awareness, was looking into thetired, cold, watery eyes of the fleet woman who had been his. 

"Why, Sara!" he said, and came around the table to let her head wilt inunwonted fashion against his coat. "Mamma!"

"I'm tired, Mosher. " She said her words almost like a gush of warm bloodfrom the wound of her mouth. "I'm tired from keeping up and holding in. I have felt so sure for these last four years that we have saved himfrom his--his wildness--and now, to begin all over again, I--I 'ain'tgot the fight left in me, Mosher. "

"You don't have to have any fight in you, Mamma. 'Ain't you got ahusband and a son to fight for you?"

"Sometimes I think, except for the piece of my heart I left lying backthere, that there are worse agonies than even massacres. I've struggledso that he should be good and great, Mosher, and now, after four yearsalready thinking I've won--maybe, after all, I haven't. "

"Why, Sara! Why, Mamma! Shame! I never saw you like this before. Youain't getting sick for another trip to the Catskills, are you? Maybe youneed some baths--"

"Sulphur water don't cure heart sickness. "

"Heart sickness, nonsense! You know I don't always take sides withNicky, Mamma. I don't say he hasn't been a hard boy to raise. But a man, Mamma, is a man! I wouldn't think much of him if he wasn't. You 'ain'tgot him to your apron string in short pants any more. Whatever troubleswe've had with him, women haven't been one of them. Shame, Mamma, thefirst time your grown-up son of a man cuts up maybe a little nonsensewith the girls! Shame!"

"Girls! No one would want more than me he should settle himself down toa fine, self-respecting citizen with a fine, sweet girl like Ad--"

"Believe me, and I ain't ashamed to say it, I wasn't an angel, neither, every minute before I was married. "

"My husband brags to me about his indiscretioncies. "

"_Na, na_, Mamma, right away when I open my mouth you make out acase against me. I only say it to show you how a mother maybe don'tunderstand as well as a father how natural a few wild oats can be. "

"L-Leo didn't have 'em. "

"Leo ain't a genius. He's just a good boy. "

"I--I worry so!"

"Sara, I ask you, wouldn't I worry, too, if there was a reason? Godforbid if his nonsense should lead to really something serious, thenit's time to worry. "

Sara Turkletaub dried her eyes, but it was as if the shadow ofcrucifixion had moved forward in them. 

"If just once, Mosher, Nicky would make it easy for me, like Leo did forGussie. When Leo's time comes he marries a fine girl like Irma Berkowitzfrom a fine family, and has fine children, without Gussie has to cry hereyes out first maybe he's in company that--that--"

"I don't say, Sara, we didn't have our hard times with your boy. But wegot results enough that we shouldn't complain. Maybe you're right. Witha boy like Leo, a regular good business head who comes into the firmwith us, it ain't been such a strain for Gussie and Aaron as for us witha genius. But neither have they got the smart son, the lawyer of thefamily, for theirs. _We_ got a temperament in ours, Sara. Ain't thatsomething to be proud of?"

She laid her cheek to his lapel, the freshet of her tears past staying. 

"I--I know it, Mosher. It ain't--often I give way like this. "

"We got such results as we can be proud of, Sara. A genius of a lawyerson on his way to the bench. Mark my word if I ain't right, on his wayto the bench!"

"Yes, yes, Mosher. "

"Well then, Sara, I ask you, is it nice to--"

"I know it, Papa. I ought to be ashamed. Instead of me fighting you togo easy with the boy, this time it's you fighting me. If only he--he wasthe kind of boy I could talk this out with, it wouldn't worry me so. When it comes to--to a girl--it's so different. It's just that I'mtired, Mosher. If anything was to go wrong after all these years ofstruggling for him--alone--"

"Alone! Alone! Why, Sara! Shame! Time after time for punishing him I wasa sick man!"

"That's it! That's why so much of it was alone. I don't know why Ishould say it all to-night after--after so many years of holding in. "

"Say what?"

"You meant well, God knows a father never meant better, but it wasn'tthe way to handle our boy's nature with punishments, and a quick temperlike yours. Your way was wrong, Mosher, and I knew it. That's why somuch of it was--alone--so much that I had to contend with I was afraidto tell you, for fear--for fear--"

"Now, now, Mamma, is that the way to cry your eyes out about nothing? Idon't say I'm not sometimes hasty--"

"Time and time again--keeping it in from you--after the Chinese laundrythat night after you--you whipped him so--you never knew the months ofnights with him afterward--when I found out he liked that--stuff! Mealone with him--"

"Sara, is now time to rake up such ten-year-old nonsense!"

"It's all coming out in me now, Mosher. The strain. You never knew. Thattime you had to send me to the Catskills for the baths. You thoughtit was rheumatism. I knew what was the matter with me. Worry. Thenights--Mosher. He liked it. I found it hid away in the toes of hisgymnasium shoes and in the mouth to his bugle. He--liked that stuff, Mosher. You didn't know that, did you?"

"Liked what?"

"It. The--the stuff from the Chinese laundry. Even after the JuvenileCourt, when you thought it was all over after the whipping that night. He'd snuff it up. I found him twice on his bed after school. Alldruggy-like--half sleeping and half laughing. The gang at school he wasin with--learned him--"

"You mean--?"

"It ain't so easy to undo with a day in Juvenile Court such a habit likethat. You thought the court was the finish. My fight just began then!"

"Why, Sara!"

"You remember the time he broke his kneecap and how I fighted thedoctors against the hypodermic and you got so mad because I wouldn't lethim have it to ease the pain. I knew why it was better he should sufferthan have it. _I knew!_ It was a long fight I had with him alone, Mosher. He liked that--stuff. "

"That--don't--seem possible. "

"And that wasn't the only lead-pipe case that time, neither, Mosher. Twice I had to lay out of my own pocket so you wouldn't know, and talkto him 'til sometimes I thought I didn't have any more tears leftinside of me. Between you and your business worries that year of thegarment-workers' strike--and our boy--I--after all that I haven't gotthe strength left. Now that he's come out of it big, I can't begin overagain. I haven't got what he would call the second wind for it. Ifanything should keep him now from going straight ahead to make him countas a citizen, I wouldn't have the strength left to fight it, Mosher. Wouldn't!"

And so Sara Turkletaub lay back with the ripple writing of stormy hightides crawling out in wrinkles all over her face and her head, that hehad never seen low, wilting there against his breast. 

He could not be done with soothing her, his own face suddenly aspuckered as an old shoe, his chin like the toe curling up. 

"Mamma, Mamma, I didn't know! God knows I never dreamt--"

"I know you didn't, Mosher. I ain't mad. I'm only tired. I 'ain't gotthe struggle left in me. This feeling won't last in me, I'll be allright, but I'm tired, Mosher--so tired. "

"My poor Sara!"

"And frightened. Such a blonde in a red hat. Cabarets. Taxicabs. Nightafter night. Mosher, hold me. I'm frightened. "

Cheek to cheek in their dining room of too-carved oak, twin shadow-boxedpaintings of Fruit and Fish, the cut-glass punch bowl with the hooked-oncups, the cotton palm, casually rigid velour drapes, the elusive floorbell, they huddled, these two, whose eyes were branded with the scarsof what they had looked upon, and a slow, a vast anger began to rise inMosher, as if the blood in his throat were choking him, and a surge ofit, almost purple, rose out of his collar and stained his face. 

"Loafer! Low-life! No-'count! His whole body ain't worth so much as yourlittle finger. I'll learn him to be a worry to you with this all-nightbusiness. By God! I'll learn my loafer of a son to--"

On the pistol shot of that, Sara's body jumped out of its rigidity, allher faculties coiled to spring. 

"He isn't! You know he isn't! 'Loafer'! Shame on you! Whatever else heis, he's not a loafer. Boys will be boys--you say so yourself. 'Loafer'!You should know once what some parents go through with real _loafers_for sons--"

"No child what brings you such worry is anything else than a loafer!"

"And I say 'no'! The minute I so much as give you a finger in findingfault with that boy, right away you take a hand!"

"I'll break his--"

"You don't know yet a joke when you hear one. I wanted to get you mad! Iget a little tired and I try to make myself funny. "

"There wasn't no funniness in the way your eyes looked when you--"

"I tell you I didn't mean one word. No matter what uneasiness that childhas brought me, always he has given me more in happiness. Twice more. That's what he's been. Twice of everything to make up for--for onlybeing half of my twins. "

"Then what the devil is--"

"I don't envy Gussie her Leo and his steady ways. Didn't you sayyourself for a boy like ours you got to pay with a little uneasiness?"

"Not when that little uneasiness is enough to make his mother sick. "

"Sick! If I felt any better I'd be ashamed of having so much health! Ifyou get mad with him and try to ask him where he stays every night isall that can cause me worry. It's natural a handsome boy like oursshould sow what they call his wild oat. With such a matzos face likepoor Leo, from where he broke his nose, I guess it ain't so easy for himto have his wild oat. Promise me, Mosher, you won't ask one question orget mad at him. His mother knows how to handle her boy so he don't evenknow he's handled. "

"I'll handle him--"

"See now, just look at yourself once in the glass with your eyes full ofred. That's why I can't tell you nothing. Right away you fly to pieces. I say again, you don't know how to handle your son. Promise me you won'tsay nothing to him or let on, Mosher. Promise me. "

"That's the way with you women. You get a man crazy and then--"

"I tell you it's just my nonsense. "

"If I get mad you're mad, and if I don't get mad you're mad! Go do mesomething to help me solve such a riddle like you. "

"It's because me and his aunt Gussie are a pair of matchmaking oldwomen. That the two cousins should marry the two sisters, Irma and Ada, we got it fixed between us! Just as if because we want it that way it'sgot to happen that way!"

"A pair of geeses, the two of you!"

"I wouldn't let on to Gussie, but Ada, the single one, has got Leo'sIrma beat for looks. Such a complexion! And the way she comes over tosew with me afternoons! A young girl like that! An old woman like me!You see, Mosher? See?"

"See, she asks me. What good does it do me if I see or I don't see whenhis mother gets her mind made up?"

"But does Nicky so much as look at her? That night at Leo's birthday Iwas ashamed the way he right away had an engagement after supper, whenshe sat next to him and all through the meal gave him the white meat offher own plate. Why, the flowered chiffon dress that girl had on cost tendollars a yard if it cost a cent. Did Nicky so much as look at her? No. "

"Too many birthdays in this family. "

"I notice you eat them when they are set down in front of you!"

"Eat what?"

"The birthdays. "

"Ha! That's fine! A new dish. Boiled birthdays with horseradish sauce. "

"All right, then, the birthday _parties_. Don't be so exactly with me. Many a turn in his grave you yourself have given the man who made thedictionary. I got other worries than language. If I knew where heis--to-night--"

Rather contentedly, while Sara cleared and tidied, Mosher snapped openhis evening paper, drawing his spectacles down from the perch of hisforehead. 

"You women, " he said, breathing out with the male's easy surcease fromresponsibility--"you women and your worries. If you 'ain't got 'em, youmake 'em. "

"Heigh-ho!" sighed out Sara, presently, having finished, and divinginto her open workbasket for the placidity her flying needle could socunningly simulate. "Heigh-ho!"

But inside her heart was beating over and over again to itself, rapidly:

"If--only-I--knew--where--he--is--to--night--if--only--I--knew--where--he--is--to--night. "

II

This is where he was:

In the Forty-fifth-Street flat of Miss Josie Drew, known at varioustimes and places as Hattie Moore, Hazel Derland, Mrs. Hazel, and--Butwhat does it matter. 

At this writing it was Josie Drew of whom more is to be said of thanfor. 

Yet pause to consider the curve of her clay. Josie had not molded hernose. Its upward fling was like the brush of a perfumed feather dusterto the senses. Nor her mouth. It had bloomed seductively, long beforeher lip stick rushed to its aid and abetment, into a cherry at thebottom of a glass for which men quaffed deeply. There was somethingrather terrifyingly inevitable about her. Just as the tide is playthingof the stars, so must the naughty turn to Josie's ankle have beencomplement to the naughty turn of her mind. 

It is not easy for the woman with a snub nose and lips molded with ahard pencil to bleed the milk of human kindness over the frailties ofthe fruity chalice that contained Miss Drew. She could not know, forinstance, if her own gaze was merely owlish and thin-lashed, thechallenge of eyes that are slightly too long. Miss Drew did. Simplydrooping hers must have stirred her with a none-too-nice sense ofherself, like the swell of his biceps can bare the teeth of a gladiator. 

That had been the Josie Drew of eighteen. 

At thirty she penciled the droop to her eyebrows a bit and had a notalways successful trick of powdering out the lurking caves under hereyes. There was even a scar, a peculiar pocking of little shotted spotsas if glass had ground in, souvenir of one out of dozens of such nightsof orgies, this particular one the result of some unmentionable jealousyshe must have coaxed to the surface. 

She wore it plastered over with curls. It was said that in rage itturned green. But who knows? It was also said that Josie Drew's correctname was Josie Rosalsky. But again who knows? Her past was vivid withthe heat lightning of the sharp storms of men's lives. At nineteen shehad worn in public restaurants a star-sapphire necklace, originallydesigned by a soap magnate for his wife, of these her birthstones. 

At twenty her fourteen-room apartment faced the Park, but was on theground floor because a vice-president of a bank, a black-broadclothlittle pelican of a man, who stumped on a cane and had a pink tin roofto his mouth, disliked elevators. 

At twenty-three and unmentionably enough, a son of a Brazilian coffeeking, inflamed with the deviltry of debauch, had ground a wine tumbleragainst her forehead, inducing the pock marks. At twenty-seven it wasthe fourth vice-president of a Harlem bank. At twenty-nine an interim. Startling to Josie Drew. Terrifying. Lean. For the first time in eightyears her gasoline expenditures amounted to ninety cents a month insteadof from forty to ninety dollars. And then not at the garage, but at thecorner drug store. Cleaning fluid for kicked-out glove and slipper tips. 

The little jangle of chatelaine absurdities which she invariablyaffected--mesh bag, lip stick, memorandum (for the traffic in telephonenumbers), vanity, and cigarette case were gold--filled. There remaineda sapphire necklace, but this one faithfully copied to the wink of thestars and the pearl clasp by the Chemic Jewel Company. Much of theindoor appeal of Miss Drew was still the pink silkiness of her, alittle stiffened from washing and ironing, it is true, but there was aflesh-colored arrangement of intricate drape that was rosily kind toher. Also a vivid yellow one of a later and less expensive period, allheavily slashed in Valenciennes lace. This brought out a bit of viragothrough her induced blondness, but all the same it italicized her, justas the crescent of black court plaster exclaimed at the whiteness of herback. 

She could spend an entire morning fluffing at these things, pressingout, with a baby electric iron and a sleeve board, a crumple of chiffonto new sheerness, getting at spots with cleaning fluid. Under alcoholicduress Josie dropped things. There was a furious stain down theyellow, from a home brew of canned lobster á la Newburg. The stainshe eliminated entirely by cutting out the front panel and wearing itskimpier. 

In these first slanting years, in her furnished flat of upright, mandolin-attachment piano, nude plaster-of-Paris Bacchante holdinga cluster of pink-glass incandescent grapes, divan mountainous withscented pillows, she was about as obvious as a gilt slipper that hasstarted to rub, or a woman's kiss that is beery and leaves a redimprint. 

To Nicholas Turkletaub, whose adolescence had been languid and who hadnever known a woman with a fling, a perfume, or a moue (there had beenonly a common-sense-heeled co-ed of his law-school days and the ratherplump little sister-in-law of Leo's), the dawn of Josie cleft opensomething in his consciousness, releasing maddened perceptions thatstung his eyeballs. He sat in the imitation cheap frailty of herapartment like a young bull with threads of red in his eyeballs, hishead, not unpoetic with its shag of black hair, lowered as if to bash atthe impotence of the thing she aroused in him. 

Also, a curious thing had happened to Josie. Something so jaded inher that she thought it long dead, was stirring sappily, as if withspringtime. 

Maybe it was a resurgence of sense of power after months of terror thatthe years had done for her. 

At any rate, it was something strangely and deeply sweet. 

"Nicky-boy, " she said, sitting on the couch with her back against thewall, her legs out horizontally and clapping her rubbed gilt slipperstogether--"Nicky-boy must go home ten o'clock to-night. Josie-girltired. "

Her mouth, like a red paper rose that had been crushed there, was alwaysbunched to baby talk. 

"Come here, " he said, and jerked her so that the breath jumped. 

"Won't, " she said, and came. 

His male prowess was enormous to him. He could bend her back almostdouble with a kiss, and did. His first kisses that he spent wildly. Hecould have carried her off like Persephone's bull, and wanted to, soswift his mood. His flare for life and for her leaped out like a flame, and something precious that had hardly survived sixteen seemed to stirin the early grave of her heart. 

"Oh, Nicky-boy! Nicky-boy!" she said, and he caught that she wasyearning over him. 

"Don't say it in down curves like that. Say it up. Up. "

She didn't get this, but, with the half-fearful tail of her eye forthe clock, let him hold her quiescent, while the relentlessly slidingmoments ticked against her unease. 

"I'm jealous of every hour you lived before I met you. "

"Big-bad-eat-Josie-up-boy!"

"I want to kiss your eyes until they go in deep--through you--I don'tknow--until they hurt--deep--I--want--to hurt you--"

"Oh! Oh! Josie scared!"

"You're like one of those orange Angora kittens. Yellow. Soft. Deep. "

"I Nicky's pussy. "

"I can see myself in your eyes. Shut me up in them. "

"Josie so tired. "

"Of me?"

"Nicky so--so strong. "

"My poor pussy! I didn't mean--"

"Nicky-boy, go home like good Nicky. "

"I don't want ever to go home. "

"Go now, Josie says. "

"You mean never. "

"Now!"

He kissed his "No, No, " down against each of her eyelids. 

"You must, " she said this time, and pushed him off. 

For a second he sat quite still, the black shine in his eyes seeming togive off diamond points. 

"You're nervous, " he said, and jerked her back so that the breath jumpedagain. 

The tail of her glance curved to the gilt clock half hidden behind alitter of used highball glasses, and then, seeing that his quicklysuspicious eye followed hers:

"No, " she said, "not nervous. Just tired--and thirsty. "

He poured her a high drink from a decanter, and held it so that, whileshe sipped, her teeth were magnified through the tumbler, and he thoughtthat adorable and tilted the glass higher against her lips, and when shechoked soothed her with a crush of kisses. 

"You devil, " he said, "everything you do maddens me. "

There was a step outside and a scraping noise at the lock. It was onlya vaudeville youth, slender as a girl, who lived on the floor above, feeling unsteadily, and a bit the worse for wear, for the lock that musteventually fit his key. 

But on that scratch into the keyhole, Josie leaped up in terror, so thatNicholas went staggering back against the Bacchante, shattering to afine ring of crystal some of the pink grapes, and on that instant sheclicked out the remaining lights, shoving him, with an unsuspected andcatamount strength, into an adjoining box of a kitchenette. 

There an uncovered bulb burned greasily over a small refrigerator, thatstood on a table and left only the merest slit of walking space. It wasthe none too fastidious kitchen of a none too fastidious woman. A pairof dress shields hung on the improvised clothesline of a bit of twine. A clump of sardines, one end still shaped to the tin, cloyed in its ownoil, crumbily, as if bread had been sopped in, the emptied tin itself, with the top rolled back with a patent key, filled now with old beer. Obviously the remaining contents of a tumbler had been flung in. Cigarette stubs floated. A pasteboard cylindrical box, labeled "SodiumBi-carbonate, " had a spoon stuck in it. A rubber glove drooped deadlyover the sink edge. 

On the second that he stood in that smelling fog, probably for no longerthan it took the swinging door to settle, something of sickness rushedover Nicholas. The unaired odors of old foods. Those horrific things onthe line. The oil that had so obviously been sopped up with bread. Theold beer, edged in grease. Something of sickness and a panoramic flashof things absurdly, almost unreasonably irrelevant. 

Snow, somewhere back in his memory. A frozen silence of it that wasclean and thin to the smell. The ridges in the rattan with which hisfather had whipped him the night after the Chinese laundry. The finewhite head of the dean of the law school. His mother baking for Fridaynight in a blue-and-white gingham apron that enveloped her. Redcurls--some one's--somewhere. The string of tiny Oriental pearls thatrose and fell with the little pouter-pigeon swell of a bosom. Prettyperturbation. His cousin's sister-in-law, Ada. A small hole in apink-silk stocking, peeping like a little rising sun above the heel of arubbed gilt slipper. Josie's slipper. 

Something seemed suddenly to rise in Nicholas, with the quickcapillarity of water boiling over. 

The old familiar star-spangled red over which Sara had time after timelaid sedative hand against his seeing, sprang out. The pit of hispassion was bottomless, into which he was tumbling with the icy laughterof breaking glass. 

Then he struck out against the swinging door so that it ripped outwardwith a sough of stale air, striking Josie Drew, as she approached itfrom the room side, so violently that her teeth bit down into her lipsand the tattling blood began to flow. 

"Nicky! It's a mistake. I thought--my sister--It got so late--youwouldn't go. Go now! The key--turning--Nervous--silly--mistake. Go--"

He laughed, something exhilarant in his boiling over, and even in hersudden terror of him she looked at his bare teeth and felt the unnicebeauty of the storm. 

"Nicky, " she half cried, "don't be--foolish! I--"

And then he struck her across the lip so that her teeth cut in again. 

"There is some one coming here to-night, " he said, with his smile stillvery white. 

She sat on the couch, trying to bravado down her trembling. 

"And what if there is? He'll beat you up for this! You fool! I've triedto explain a dozen times. You know, or if you don't you ought to, thatthere's a--friend. A traveling salesman. Automobile accessories. Longtrips, but good money. Good money. And here you walk in a few weeks agoand expect to find the way clear! Good boy, you like some one to goahead of you with a snow cleaner, don't you? Yes, there's some one duein here off his trip to-night. What's the use trying to tell Nicky-boywith his hot head. He's got a hot head, too. Go, and let me clear theway for you, Nicky. For good if you say the word. But I have to knowwhere I'm at. Every girl does if she wants to keep her body and soultogether. You don't let me know where I stand. You know you've got mearound your little finger for the saying, but you don't say. Only gonow, Nicky-boy. For God's sake, it's five minutes to eleven and he's duein on that ten-forty-five. Nicky-boy, go, and come back to me at sixto-morrow night. I'll have the way clear then, for good. Quit blinkingat me like that, Nicky. You scare me! Quit! When you come back to-morrowevening there won't be any more going home for Josie's Nicky-boy. Nicky, go now. He's hotheaded, too. Quit blinking, Nicky--for God'ssake--Nicky--"

It was then Nicholas bent back her head as he did when he kissed herthere on the swan's arch to her neck, only this time his palm wasagainst her forehead and his other between her shoulder blades. 

"I could kill you, " he said, and laughed with his teeth. "I could bendback your neck until it breaks. "

"Ni--i--Nic--ky--"

"And I want to, " he said through the star-spangled red. "I want you tocrack when I twist. I'm going to twist--twist--"

And he did, shoving back her hair with his palm, and suddenly bared, almost like a grimace, up at him, was the glass-shotted spot wherethe wine tumbler had ground in, greenish now, like the flanges of hernostrils. 

Somewhere--down a dear brow was a singed spot like that--singed with theflame of pain--

"Nicky, for God's sake--you're--you're spraining my neck! Let go! Nicky. God! if you hadn't let go just when you did. You had me croaking. Nicky-boy--kiss me now and go! Go! To-morrow at six--clear foryou--always--only go--please, boy--my terrible--my wonderful. To-morrowat six. "

Somehow he was walking home, the burn of her lips still against his, loathsome and gorgeous to his desires. He wanted to tear her out by theroots from his consciousness. To be rollickingly, cleanly free of her. His teeth shone against the darkness as he walked, drenched to the skinof his perspiration and one side of his collar loose, the buttonholeslit. 

Rollickingly free of her and yet how devilishly his shoes could clat onthe sidewalk. 

To-morrow at six. To-morrow at six. To-morrow at six. 

 * * * * *

It was some time after midnight when he let himself into the uptownapartment. He thought he heard his mother, trying to be swift, paddingdown the hallway as if she had been waiting near the door. That wouldhave angered him. 

The first of these nights, only four weeks before (it seemed years), he had come in hotly about four o'clock and gone to bed. About five hethought he heard sounds, almost like the scratch of a little dog athis door. He sprang up and flung it open. The flash of his mother'sgray-flannelette wrapper turned a corner of the hall. She must havebeen crying out there and wanting him to need her. None the less it hadangered him. These were men's affairs. 

But in his room to-night the light burned placidly on the little tablenext to the bed, a glass of milk on a plate beside it. The bed wasturned back, snowy sheets forming a cool envelope for him to slipin between. The room lay sedatively in shadow. A man's room. Books, uncurving furniture, photographs of his parents taken on theirtwenty-fifth anniversary standing on the chiffonier in a double leatherframe that opened like a book. Face down on the reading table beside theglass of milk, quite as he must have left it the night before, exceptwhere Sara had lifted it to dust under, a copy of Bishop's _New CriminalLaw_, already a prognosis, as it were, of that branch of the law he wasultimately and brilliantly to bend to fuller justice. 

Finally, toward morning Nicholas slept, and at ten o'clock of arain-swept Sunday forenoon awoke, as he knew he must, to the grip of ablinding headache, so called for want of a better noun to interpret thekind of agony which, starting somewhere around his eyes, could prickeach nerve of his body into a little flame, as if countless matches hadbeen struck. 

As a youngster these attacks had not been infrequent, usually after afit of crying. The first, in fact, had followed the burning of the cat;a duet of twin spasms then, howled into Sara's apron, And once after hehad fished an exhausted comrade out of an ice hole in Bronx Park. Theyhad followed the lead-pipe affairs and the Chinese-laundry episode withdreadful inevitability. But it had been five years since the last--thenight his mother had fainted with terror at what she had found concealedin the toes of his gymnasium shoes. 

Incredible that into his manhood should come the waving specter of thoseearly passions. 

At eleven o'clock, after she heard him up and moving about, his mothercarried him his kiss and his coffee, steaming black, the way he likedit. She had wanted to bring him an egg--in fact, had prepared one, tojust his liking of two minutes and thirty seconds--but had thoughtbetter of it, and wisely, because he drank the coffee at a quick gulpand set down the cup with his mouth wry and his eyes squeezed tight. From the taste of it he remembered horridly the litter of tall glassesbeside the gilt clock. 

With all her senses taut not to fuss around him with little jerks andpullings, Sara jerked and pulled. Too well she knew that furrow betweenhis eyes and wanted unspeakably to tuck him back into bed, lower theshades, and prepare him a vile mixture good for exactly everything thatdid not ail him. But Sara could be wise even with her son. So insteadshe flung up the shade, letting him wince at the clatter, dragged offthe bedclothes into a tremendous heap on the chair, beat up the pillows, and turned the mattress with a single-handed flop. 

"The Sunday-morning papers are in the dining room, son. "

"Uhm!"

He was standing in his dressing gown at the rain-lashed window, strumming. Lean, long, and, to Sara, godlike, with the thick shock ofhis straight hair still wet from the shower. 

"Mrs. Berkowitz telephoned already this morning with such a grandcompliment for you, son. Her brother-in-law, Judge Rosen, says you'rethe brains of your firm even if you are only the junior partner yet, andyour way looks straight ahead for big things. "

"Uhm! Who's talking out there so incessantly, mother?"

"That's your uncle Aaron. He came over for Sunday-morning breakfast withyour father. You should see the way he tracked up my hall with his wetshoes. I'm sending him right back home with your father. They shouldclutter up your aunt Gussie's house with their pinochle and ashes. I had'em last Sunday. She don't need to let herself off so easy every week. It's enough if I ask them all over here for supper to-night. Not?"

"Don't count on me, dear. I won't be home for supper. "

There was a tom-tom to the silence against her beating ear drums. 

"All right, son, " she said, pulling her lips until they smiled at him, "with Leo and Irma that'll only make six of us, then. "

He kissed her, but so tiredly that again it was almost her irresistiblewoman's impulse to drag down that fiercely black head to the beatingwidth of her bosom and plead from him drop by drop some of the bitterwelling of pain she could see in his eyes. 

"Nicky, " she started to cry, and then, at his straightening back fromher, "come out in the dining room after I pack off the men. I got mywork to do. That nix of a house girl left last night. Such sass, too!I'm better off doing my work alone. "

Sara, poor dear, could not keep a servant, and, except for theinstigation of her husband and son, preferred not to. Cooks rebelledat the exactitude of her household and her disputative reign of thekitchen. 

"I'll be out presently, mother, " he said, and flung himself down in theleather Morris chair, lighting his pipe and ostensibly settling down tothe open-faced volume of _Criminal Law_. 

Sara straightened a straight chair. She knew, almost as horridly asif she had looked in on it, the mucky thing that was happening; theintuitive sixth sense of her hovered over him with great wings thatwanted to spread. Josie Drew was no surmise with her. The blond head andthe red hat were tatooed in pain on her heart and she trembled in a bathof fear, and, trembling, smiled and went out. 

Sitting there while the morning ticked on, head thrown back, eyesclosed, and all the little darting nerves at him, the dawn of NicholasTurkletaub's repugnance was all for self. The unfrowsy room, and himselffresh from his own fresh sheets. His mother's eyes with that clean-skyquality in them. The affectionate wrangling of those two decent voicesfrom the dining room. Books! His books, that he loved. His tastiestdream of mother, with immensity and grandeur in her eyes, listeningfrom a privileged first-row bench to the supreme quality of his mercy. _Judge_--Turkletaub!

But tastily, too, and undeniably against his lips, throughout theseconjurings, lay the last crushy kiss of Josie Drew. That swany arch toher neck as he bent it back. He had kissed her there. Countlessly. 

He tried to dwell on his aversions for her. She had once used anexpletive in his presence that had sickened him, and, noting its effect, she had not reiterated. The unfastidious brunette roots to her lighthair. That sink with the grease-rimmed old beer! But then: her eyeswhere the brows slid down to make them heavy-lidded. That bit of bluevein in the crotch of her elbow. That swany arch. 

Back somewhere, as the tidy morning wore in, the tranced, the maddeningrepetition began to tick itself through:

"Six o'clock. Six o'clock. "

He rushed out into the hallway and across to the parlor pinkly lit withvelours, even through the rainy day, and so inflexibly calm. Sara mighthave measured the distance between the chairs, so regimental theystood. The pink-velour curlicue divan with the two pink, gold-tasseledcushions, carelessly exact. The onyx-topped table with the pink-velourdrape, also gold-tasseled. The pair of equidistant and immaculate chinacuspidors, rose-wreathed. The smell of Sunday. 

"Nicky, that you?"

It was his mother, from the dining room. 

"Yes, mother, " and sauntered in. 

There were two women sitting at the round table, shelling nuts. One ofthem his mother, the other Miss Ada Berkowitz, who jumped up, spillinghulls. 

Nicholas, in the velveteen dressing gown with the collar turned up, started to back out, Mrs. Turkletaub spoiling that. 

"You can come in, Nicky. Ada'll excuse you. I guess she's seen a man inhis dressing gown before; the magazine advertisements are full withthem in worse and in less. And on Sunday with a headache from all weekworking so hard, a girl can forgive. He shouldn't think with his head somuch, I always tell him, Ada. "

"I didn't know he was here, " said Miss Berkowitz, already thinking interms of what she might have worn. 

"I telephoned over for Ada, Nicky. They got an automobile and she don'tneed to get her feet wet to come over to a lonesome old woman on arainy Sunday, to spend the day and learn me how to make those deliciousstuffed dates like she fixed for her mother's card party last week. Drawup a chair, Nicky, and help. "

She was casual, she was matter-of-fact, she was bent on the businessof nut cracking. They crashed softly, never so much as bruised by hercarefully even pressure. 

"Thanks, " said Nicholas, and sat down, not caring to, but with goodenough grace. He wanted his coat, somehow, and fell to strumming thetable top. 

"Don't, Nicky; you make me nervous. "

"Here, " said Miss Berkowitz, and gave him a cracker and a handful ofnuts. The little crashings resumed. 

Ada had very fair skin against dark hair, slightly too inclined to curl. There was quite a creamy depth to her--a wee pinch could raise a bruise. The kind of whiteness hers that challenged the string of tiny Orientalpearls she wore at her throat. Her healthily pink cheeks and her littleround bosom were plump, and across the back of each of her hands werefour dimples that flashed in and out as she bore down on the cracker. She was as clear as a mountain stream. 

"A trifle too plumpy, " he thought, but just the same wished he had wethis military brushes. 

"Ada has just been telling me, Nicky, about her ambition to be aninterior decorator for the insides of houses. I think it is grandthe way some girls that are used to the best of everything preparethemselves for, God forbid, they should ever have to make their ownlivings. I give them credit for it. Tell Nicky, Ada, about the drawingyou did last week that your teacher showed to the class. "

"Oh, " said Ada, blushing softly, "Mr. Turkletaub isn't interested inthat. "

"Yes, I am, " said Nicholas, politely, eating one of the meats. 

"You mean the Tudor dining room--"

No, no! You know, the blue-and-white one you said you liked best ofall. "

"It was a nursery, " began Ada, softly. "Just one of those blue-and-whitedarlingnesses for somebody's little darling. "

"For somebody's little darling, " repeated Mrs. Turkletaub, silently. Shehad the habit, when moved, of mouthing people's words after them. 

"My idea was--Oh, it's so silly to be telling it again, Mrs. Turkletaub!"

"Silly! I think it's grand that a girl brought up to the best shouldwant to make something of herself. Don't you, Nick?"

"H-m-m!"

"Well, my little idea was white walls with little Delft-blue bordersof waddling duckies; white dotted Swiss curtains in the brace of sunnysouthern-exposure windows, with little Delft-blue borders of morewaddling duckies; and dear little nursery rhymes painted in blue on theheadboard to keep baby's dreams sweet. "

"--baby's dreams sweet! I ask you, is that cute, Nick? Baby's dreams sheeven interior decorates. "

"My--instructor liked that idea, too. He gave me 'A' on the drawing. "

"He should have given you the whole alphabet. And tell him about thechairs, Ada. Such originality. "

"Oh, Mrs. Turkletaub, that was just a--a little--idea--"

"The modesty of her! Believe me, if it was mine, I'd call it a big one. Tell him. "

"Mummie and daddie chairs I call them. "

Sara (mouthing): "Mummie and daddie--"

"Two white-enamel chairs to stand on either side of the crib so whenmummie and daddie run up in their evening clothes to kiss baby goodnight--Oh, I just mean two pretty white chairs, one for mummie and onefor daddie. " Little crash. 

"I ask you, Nicky, is that poetical? 'So when mummie and daddie run upto kiss baby good night. ' I remember once in Russia, Nicky, all theevening clothes we had was our nightgowns, but when you and your littletwin brother were two and a half years old, one night I--"

"Mrs. Turkletaub, did you have twins?"

"Did I have twins, Nicky, she asks me. She didn't know you were twins. A red one I had, as red as my black one is black. You see my Nicky howblack and mad-looking he is even when he's glad; well, just so--"

"Now, mother!"

"Just so beautiful and fierce and red was my other beautiful baby. Youdidn't know, Ada, that a piece of my heart, the red of my blood, I leftlying out there. Nicky--she didn't know--"

She could be so blanched and so stricken when the saga of her motherhoodcame out in her eyes, the pallor of her face jutting out her featureslike lonely landmarks on waste land, that her husband and her son hadlearned how to dread for her and spare her. 

"Now, mother!" said Nicholas, and rose to stand behind her chair, holding her poor, quavering chin in the cup of his hand. "Come, onerainy Sunday is enough. Let's not have an indoor as well as an outdoorstorm. Come along. Didn't I hear Miss Ada play the piano one eveningover at Leo's? Up-see-la! Who said you weren't my favorite dancingpartner?" and waltzed her, half dragging back, toward the parlor. "Come, some music!"

There were the usual demurrings from Ada, rather prettily pink, and Mrs. Turkletaub, with the threat of sobs swallowed, opening the upright pianoto dust the dustless keyboard with her apron, and Nicholas, his saggingpipe quickly supplied with one of the rose-twined cuspidors forash receiver, hunched down in the pink-velour armchair of enormousupholstered hips. 

The "Turkish Patrol" was what Ada played, and then, "Who Is Sylvia?" andsang it, as frailly as a bird. 

At one o'clock there was dinner, that immemorial Sunday meal of roastchicken with its supplicating legs up off the platter; dressing to begouged out; sweet potatoes in amber icing; a master stroke of Mrs. Turkletaub's called "_matzos klose_, " balls of unleavened bread, sizzling, even as she served them, in a hot butter bath and light-brownonions; a stuffed goose neck, bursting of flavor; cheese pie twice thedepth of the fork that cut in; coffee in large cups. More crackingof nuts, interspersed with raisins. Ada, cunningly enveloped in amuch-too-large apron, helping Mrs. Turkletaub to clear it all away. 

Smoking there in his chair beside the dining-room window, rain theunrelenting threnody of the day, Nicholas, fed, closed his eyes to therhythm of their comings and goings through the swinging door that led tothe kitchen. Comings--and--goings--his mother who rustled so cleanly ofstarch--Ada--clear--yes, that was it--clear as a mountain stream. Theirsmall laughters--comings--goings--

It was almost dusk when he awoke, the pink-shaded piano lamp alreadylighted in the parlor beyond, the window shade at his side drawn and anAfghan across his knees. It was snug there in the rosied dusk. The womenwere in the kitchen yet, or was it again? Again, he supposed, lookingat his watch. He had slept three hours. Presently he rose and saunteredout. There was coffee fragrance on the air of the large white kitchen, his mother hunched to the attitude of wielding a can opener, and at thesnowy oilclothed table, Ada, slicing creamy slabs off the end of a cubeof Swiss cheese. 

"Sleepyhead, " she greeted, holding up a sliver for him to nibble. 

And his mother: "That was a good rest for you, son? You feel better?"

"Immense, " he said, hunching his shoulders and stretching his hands downinto his pockets in a yawny well-being. 

"I wish, then, you would put another leaf in the table for me. There'sfour besides your father coming over from Aunt Gussie's. I just wish youwould look at Ada. For a girl that don't have to turn her hand at home, with two servants, and a laundress every other week, just look how handyshe is with everything she touches. "

The litter of Sunday-night supper, awaiting its transfer to thedining-room table, lay spread in the faithful geometry of the cold, hebdomadal repast. A platter of ruddy sliced tongue; one of noondayremnants of cold chicken; ovals of liverwurst; a mound of potato saladcrisscrossed with strips of pimento; a china basket of the stuffeddates, all kissed with sugar; half of an enormously thick cheese cake;two uncovered apple pies; a stack of delicious raisin-stuffed curlicues, known as _"schneken, "_ pickles with a fern of dill across them (Ada'stouch, the dill); a dish of stuffed eggs with a toothpick stuck in eachhalf (also Ada's touch, the toothpicks). 

She moved rather pussily, he thought, sometimes her fair cheeksquivering slightly to the vibration of her walk, as if they had jelled. And, too, there was something rather snug and plump in the way herlittle hands with the eight dimples moved about things, laying the slabsof Swiss cheese, unstacking cups. 

"No, only seven cups, Ada. Nicky--ain't going to be home to supper. "

"Oh, " she said, "excuse me! I--I--thought--silly--" and looked up at himto deny that it mattered. 

"Isn't that what you said this morning, Nicky?" Poor Sara, she almostfailed herself then because her voice ended in quite a dry click in herthroat. 

He stood watching the resumed unstacking of the cups, each with itscrisp little grate against its neighbor. 

"One, " said Ada, "two-three-four-five-six--seven!"

He looked very long and lean and his darkly nervous self, except that hedilly-dallied on his heels like a much-too-tall boy not wanting to lookfoolish. 

"If Miss Ada will provide another cup and saucer, I think I'll stayhome. "

"As you will, " said Sara, disappearing into the dining room with themound of salad and the basket of sugar-kissed dates. 

She put them down rather hastily when she got there, because, sillilyenough, she thought, for the merest instant, she was going to faint. 

 * * * * *

The week that Judge Turkletaub tried his first case in Court of GeneralSessions--a murder case, toward which his criminal-law predilectionseemed so inevitably to lead him, his third child, a little daughterwith lovely creamy skin against slightly too curly hair, was lying, justtwo days old, in a blue-and-white nursery with an absurd border of blueducks waddling across the wallpaper. 

Ada, therefore, was not present at this inaugural occasion of his firsttrial. But each of the two weeks of its duration, in a first-row benchof the privileged, so that her gaze was almost on a dotted line with herson's, sat Sara Turkletaub, her hands crossed over her waistline, herbosom filling and waning and the little jet folderols on her bonnetblinking. Tears had their way with her, prideful, joyful at her son'snew estate, sometimes bitterly salt at the life in the naked his eyesmust look upon. 

Once, during the recital of the defendant, Sara almost seemed to bleedher tears, so poignantly terrible they came, scorching her eyes of apain too exquisite to be analyzed, yet too excruciating to be endured. 

III

Venture back, will you, to the ice and red of that Russian dawn when onthe snow the footsteps that led toward the horizon were the color ofblood, and one woman, who could not keep her eyes ahead, moaned asshe fled, prayed, and even screamed to return to her dead in thebullet-riddled horse trough. 

Toward the noon of that day, a gray one that smelled charred, a fugitivegroup from a distant village that was still burning faltered, as it toofled toward the horizon, in the blackened village of Vodna, because alitter had to be fashioned for an old man whose feet were frozen, and amother, whose baby had perished at her breast, would bury her dead. 

Huddled beside the horse trough, over a poor fire she had kindled ofcharred wood, Hanscha, the midwife (Hanscha, the drunk, they called her, fascinatedly, in the Pale of generations of sober women), spied Mosher'sflung coat and reached for it eagerly, with an eye to tearing it intostrips to wrap her tortured feet. 

A child stirred as she snatched it, wailing lightly, and the instinct ofher calling, the predominant motive, Hanscha with her fumy breath warmedit closer to life and trod the one hundred and eight miles to the portwith it strapped to her back like a pack. 

Thus it was that Schmulka, the red twin, came to America and for thefirst fourteen years of his life slept on a sour pallet in a sourtenement he shared with Hanscha, who with filthy hands brought childreninto the filthy slums. 

Jason, she called him, because that was the name of the ship thatcarried them over. A rolling tub that had been horrible with the criesof cattle and seasickness. 

At fourteen he was fierce and rebellious and down on the Juvenile Courtrecords for truancy, petty trafficking in burned-out opium, vandalism, and gang vagrancy. 

In Hanscha's sober hours he was her despair, and she could be horriblein her anger, once the court reprimanding her and threatening to takeJason from her because of welts found on his back. 

It was in her cups that she was proud of him, and so it behooved Jasonto drink her down to her pallet, which he could, easily. 

He was handsome. His red hair had darkened to the same bronze of thesamovar and he was straight as the drop of an apple from the branch. Hewas reckless. Could turn a pretty penny easily, even dangerously, andspend it with a flip for a pushcart bauble. 

Once he brought home a plaster-of-Paris Venus--the Melos one with thebeautiful arch to her torso of a bow that instant after the arrow hasflown. Hanscha cuffed him for the expenditure, but secretly her oldheart, which since childhood had subjected her to strange, ratherepileptical, sinking spells, and had induced the drinking, warmed herwith pride in his choice. 

Hanscha, with her veiny nose and the dreadful single hair growing out ofa mole on her chin, was not without her erudition. She had read for themidwifery, and back in the old days could recite the bones in the body. 

She let the boy read nights, sometimes even to dropping another coininto the gas meter. Some of the books were the lewd penny ones of theBowery bookstands, old medical treatises, too, purchased three for aquarter and none too nice reading for the growing boy. But there he hadalso found a _Les Miserables_ and _The Confessions of St. Augustine_, which last, if he had known it, was a rare edition, but destined for theash pit. 

Once he read Hanscha a bit of poetry out of a furiously stained oldvolume of verse, so fragrantly beautiful, to him, this bit, that itwound around him like incense, the perfume of it going deeply andstinging his eyes to tears:

 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting! The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar. Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy. Shades of the prison house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows He sees it in his joy; The youth who daily farther, from the East Must travel, still is Nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. 

But Hanscha was drunk and threw some coffee-sopped bread at him, and sohis foray into poetry ended in the slops of disgust. 

A Miss Manners, a society social worker who taught povertysweet forbearance every Tuesday from four until six, wore aforty-eight-diamond bar pin on her under bodice (on Tuesday fromfour until six), and whose gray-suède slippers were ever so slightlyblackened from the tripping trip from front door to motor and back, tookhim up, as the saying is, and for two weeks Jason disported himself onthe shorn lawns of the Manners summer place at Great Neck, where thesurf creamed at the edge of the terrace and the smell of the sea setsomething beating against his spirit as if it had a thousand imprisonedwings. 

There he developed quite a flair for the law books in Judge Manners'sladdered library. Miss Manners found him there, reading, on stomach andelbows, his heels waving in the air. 

Judge Manners talked with him and discovered a legal turn of mind, andthere followed some veranda talk of educating and removing him from hisenvironment. But that very afternoon Jason did a horrid thing. It was nomore than he had seen about him all his life. Not as much. He kissed thelittle pig-tailed daughter of the laundress and pursued her as she ranshrieking to her mother's apron. That was all, but his defiant head andthe laundress's chance knowledge of his Juvenile Court record did forhim. 

At six o'clock that evening, with a five-dollar bill of which he made aspitball for the judge's departing figure down the station platform, hewas shipped back to Hanscha. Secretly he was relieved. Life was easierin the tenement under the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge. The piece of itsarch which he could see from his window was even beautiful, a curve of astone into some beyond. 

That night he fitted down into the mold his body had worn on the pallet, sighing out satisfaction. 

Environment had won him back. 

On the other hand, in one of those red star-spangled passions ofrebellion against his fetid days, he blindly cut Hanscha with the edgeof a book which struck against her brow as he hurled it. She had beendrunk and had asked of him, at sixteen, because of the handsomenessthat women would easily love in him, to cadet the neighborhood of GrandStreet, using her tenement as his refuge of vice and herself as sharerof spoils. 

The corner of the book cut deeply and pride in her terror of him cameout redly in her bloodshot eyes. 

In the short half term of his high-school training he had already forgedahead of his class when he attained the maturity of working papers. Hewas plunging eagerly--brilliantly, in fact--into a rapid translationof the _Iliad_, fired from the very first line by the epic of thehexametered anger of Achilles, and stubbornly he held out against theworking papers. 

But to Hanscha they came with the inevitability of a summons ratherthan an alternative, and so for a year or two he brought home ratherprecocious wages from his speed in a canning factory. Then he stoked hisway to Sydney and back, returning fiery with new and terrible oaths. 

One night Hanscha died. He found her crumpled up in the huddle of herskirts as if she had dropped in her tracks, which she had, in one of theepileptic heart strictures. 

It was hardly a grief to him. He had seen red with passion at heratrociousness too often, and, somehow, everything that she stood for hadbeen part of the ache in him. 

Yet it is doubtful if, released of her, he found better pasture. Biggerpastures, it is true, in what might be called an upper stratum of thelower East Side, although at no time was he ever to become party to anyof its underground system of crime. 

Inevitably, the challenge of his personality cleared the way for him. Atnineteen he had won and lost the small fortune of thirty-three hundreddollars at a third-class gambling resort where he came in time to becroupier. 

He dressed flashily, wore soft collars, was constantly swapping sportyscarfpins for sportier ones, and was inevitably the center, seldom part, of a group. 

Then one evening at Cooper Union, which stands at the head of theBowery, he enrolled for an evening course in law, but never entered theplace again. 

Because the next night, in a Fourteenth Street cabaret with adjacentgambling rooms, he met one who called herself Winnie Ross, the beginningof a heart-sickening end. 

There is so little about her to relate. She was the color of cloyedhoney when the sugar granules begin to show through. Pale, pimply in afashion the powder could cover up, the sag of her facial muscles showedplainly through, as if weary of doling out to the years their hushmoney, and she was quite obviously down at the heels. Literally so, because when she took them off, her shoes lopped to the sides and couldnot stand for tipsiness. 

She was Jason's first woman. She exhaled a perfume, cheap, tickling, chewed some advertised tablets that scented her kisses, and her throat, when she threw up her head, had an arch and flex to it that weremysteriously graceful. 

Life had been swift and sheer with Winnie. She was very tired and, paradoxically enough, it gave her one of her last remaining charms. Hereyelids were freighted with weariness, were waxy white of it, and theycould flutter to her cheeks, like white butterflies against white, andlay shadows there that maddened Jason. 

She called him Red, although all that remained now were the lightsthrough his browning hair, almost like the flashings of a lantern down arailroad track. 

She pronounced it with a slight trilling of the R, and if it was left inher of half a hundred loves to stir on this swift descent of her lifeline, she did over Jason. Partly because he was his winged-Hermes self, and partly because--because--it was difficult for her rather faggedbrain to rummage back. 

Thus the rest may be told:

Entering her rooms one morning, a pair of furiously garish ones over amusical-instrument store on the Bowery, he threw himself full length onthe red-cotton divan, arms locked under his always angry-looking head, and watching her, through low lids, trail about the room at the businessof preparing him a surlily demanded cup of coffee. Her none tooimmaculate pink robe trailed a cotton-lace tail irritatingly about herheels, which slip-slopped as she walked, her stockings, without benefitof support, twisting about her ankles. 

She was barometer for his moods, which were elemental, and had learnedto tremble with a queer exaltation of fear before them. 

"My Red-boy blue to-day, " she said, stooping as she passed and wantingto kiss him. 

He let his lids drop and would have none of her. They were curiouslyblue, she thought, as if of unutterable fatigue, and then quicklyappraised that his luck was still letting him in for the walloping nowof two weeks' duration. His diamond-and-opal scarfpin was gone, and thegold cuff links replaced with mother-of-pearl. 

She could be violently bitter about money, and when the flame of hispersonality was not there to be reckoned with, ten times a day sheejected him, with a venom that was a psychosis, out of her furthertoleration. Not so far gone was Winnie but that she could count on thetwist of her body and the arch of her throat as revenue getters. 

At first Jason had been lavish, almost with a smack of some of the olddays she had known, spending with the easy prodigality of the gambler inluck. There was a near-seal coat from him in her cupboard of near-silks, and the flimsy wooden walls of her rooms had been freshly papered inroses. 

Then his luck had turned, and to top his sparseness with her this newsullenness which she feared and yet which could be so delicious toher--reminiscently delicious. 

She gave him coffee, and he drank it like medicine out of a thick-lippedcup painted in roses. 

"My Red-boy blue, " she reiterated, trying to ingratiate her arms abouthis neck. "Red-boy tells Winnie he won't be back for two whole days andthen brings her surprise party very next day. Red-boy can't stay awayfrom Winnie. "

"Let go. "

"Red-boy bring Winnie nothing? Not little weeny, weeny nothing?" drawinga design down his coat sleeve, her mouth bunched. 

Suddenly he jerked her so that the breath jumped in a warm fan of itagainst her face. 

"You're the only thing I've got in the world, Win. My luck's gone, butI've got you. Tell me I've got you. "

He could be equally intense over which street car to take, and she knewit, but somehow it lessened for her none of the lure of his nervosity, and with her mind recoiling from his pennilessness her body inclined. 

"Tell me, Winnie, that I have you. "

"You know you have, " she said, and smiled, with her head back so thather face foreshortened. 

"I'm going far for you Winnie. Gambling is too rotten--and too easy. Iwant to build bridges for you. Practice law. Corner Wall Street. "

This last clicked. 

"Once, " she said, lying back, with her pupils enlarging with thefleeting memories she was not always alert enough to clutch--"once--oncewhen I lived around Central Park--a friend of mine--vice-president hewas--Well, never mind, he was my friend--it was nothing for him to turnover a thousand or two a week for me in Wall Street. "

This exaggeration was gross, but it could feed the flame of his passionfor her like oil. 

"I'll work us up and out of this! I've got better stuff in me. I want towind you in pearls--diamonds--sapphires. "

"I had a five-thousand-dollar string once--of star sapphires. "

"Trust me, Winnie. Help me by having confidence in me. I'm glad my luckis welching. It will be lean at first, until I get on my legs. Butit's not too late yet. Win, if only I have some one to stand by me. Tobelieve--to fight with and for me! Get me, girl? Believe in me. "

"Sure. Always play strong with the cops, Red. It's the short cut toready money. Ready money, Red. That's what gets you there. Don't askany girl to hang on if it's shy. That's where I spun myself dirt many atime, hanging on after it got shy. Ugh! That's what did for me--hangingon--after it got shy. "

"No. No. You don't understand. For God's sake try to get me, Winnie. Fight up with me. It'll be lean, starting, but I'll finish strong foryou. "

"Don't lean on me. I'm no wailing wall. What's it to me all yourhighfaluting talk. You've been as slab-sided in the pockets as a cat allmonth. Don't have to stand it. I've got friends--spenders--"

There had been atrocious scenes, based on his jealousies of her, whichsome imp in her would lead her to provoke, notwithstanding that even asshe spoke she regretted, and reached back for the words, "I mean--"

"I know what you mean, " he said, quietly, permitting her to lie backagainst him and baring his teeth down at her. 

She actually thought he was smiling. 

"I'm not a dead one by a long shot, " she said, kindling with what wasprobably her desire to excite him. 

"No?"

"No. I can still have the best. The very best. If you want to know it, a political Indian with a car as long as this room, not mentioning anynames, is after me--"

She still harbored the unfortunate delusion that he was smiling. 

"You thought I was up at Ossining this morning, didn't you?" he asked, lazily for him. He went there occasionally to visit a friend in thestate prison who had once served him well in a gambling raid and was nowdoing a short larceny term there. 

"You said you were--"

"I _said_ I was. Yes. But I came back unexpectedly, didn't I?"

"Y-yes, Red?"

"Look at me!"

She raised round and ready-to-be-terrified eyes. 

"Murphy was here last night!" he cracked at her, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang, like so many pistol shots. 

"Why, Red--I--You--"

"Don't lie. Murphy was here last night! I saw him leave this morning asI came in. "

It was hazard, pure and simple. Not even a wild one, because alltoo easily he could kiss down what would be sure to be only herhalf-flattered resentment. 

But there was a cigar stub on the table edge, and certain of heradjustments of the room when he entered had been rather quick. He couldbe like that with her, crazily the slave of who knows what beauty hefound in her; jealous of even an unaccountable inflection in her voice. There had been unmentionable frenzies of elemental anger between themand she feared and exulted in these strange poles of his nature. 

"Murphy was here last night!"

It had happened, in spite of a caution worthy of a finer finesse thanhers, and suddenly she seemed to realize the quality of her fear for himto whom she was everything and who to her was not all. 

"Don't, Red, " she said, all the bars of her pretense down and dodgingfrom his eyes rather than from any move he made toward her. "Don't, Red. Don't!" And began to whimper in the unbeautifulness of fear, becomingstrangely smaller as her pallor mounted. 

He was as terrible and as swarthy and as melodramatic as Othello. 

"Don't, Red, " she called still again, and it was as if her voice came tohim from across a bog. 

He was standing with one knee dug into the couch, straining her headback against the wall, his hand on her forehead and the beautifulflexing arch of her neck rising ... Swanlike. 

"Watch out!" There was a raw nail in the wall where a picture had hung. Murphy had kept knocking it awry and she had removed it. "Watch out, Red! No-o--no--"

Through the star-spangled red he glimpsed her once where the hair sweptoff her brow, and for the moment, to his blurred craziness, it was as ifthrough the red her brow was shotted with little scars and pock marksfrom glass, and a hot surge of unaccountable sickness fanned theenormous silence of his rage. 

With or without his knowing it, that raw nail drove slowly home to therear of Winnie's left ear, upward toward the cerebellum as he tilted andtilted, and the convex curve of her neck mounted like a bow stretchedoutward. 

 * * * * *

There was little about Jason's trial to entitle it to more than aback-page paragraph in the dailies. He sat through those days, thatwere crisscrossed with prison bars, much like those drowned figuresencountered by deep-sea divers, which, seated upright in death, arepressed down by the waters of unreality. 

It is doubtful if he spoke a hundred words during the lean, celled weeksof his waiting, and then with a vacuous sort of apathy and solely uponadvice of counsel. Even when he took the stand, undramatically, hisvoice, without even a plating of zest for life, was like some old drumwith the parchment too tired to vibrate. 

Women, however, cried over him and the storm in his eyes and thecuriously downy back of his neck where the last of his youth stillmarked him. 

To Sara, from her place in the first row, on those not infrequentoccasions when his eyes fumbled for hers, he seemed to drown in hergaze--back--somewhere--

On a Friday at high noon the jury adjourned, the judge charging it witha solemnity that rang up to wise old rafters and down into one woman'sthirsty soul like life-giving waters. 

In part he told the twelve men about to file out, "If there has beenanything in my attitude during the recital of the defendant's story, which has appeared to you to be in the slightest manner prejudiced oneway or another, I charge you to strike such mistaken impressions fromyour minds. 

"I have tried honestly to wash the slate of my mind clean to take downfaithfully the aspects of this case which for two weeks has occupiedthis jury. 

"If you believe the defendant guilty of the heinous crime in question, do not falter in your use of the power with which the law has vestedyou. 

"If, on the other hand and to the best of your judgment, there has beenin the defendant's life extenuating circumstances, er--a limitationof environment, home influence, close not the avenues of your fairjudgment. 

"Did this man in the kind of er--a--frenzy he describes and to whichwitnesses agree he was subject, deliberately strain back the Rosswoman's head until the nail penetrated?

"If so, remember the law takes knowledge only of self-defense. 

"On the other hand, ask of yourselves well, did the defendant, in thefrenzy which he claims had hold of him when he committed this unusualcrime, know that the nail was there?

"_Would Winnie Ross have met her death if the nail had not been there?_

"Gentlemen, in the name of the law, solemnly and with a fear of God inyour hearts, I charge you. "

It was a quick verdict. Three hours and forty minutes. 

"Not guilty. "

In the front row there, with the titillating folderols on her bonnet andher hand at her throat as if she would tear it open for the mystery ofthe pain of the heartbeat in it, Sara Turkletaub heard, and, hearing, swooned into the pit of her pain and her joy. 

Her son, with brackets of fatigue out about his mouth, was standing overher when she opened her eyes, the look of crucifixion close to the frontof them. 

"Mother, " he said, pressing her head close to his robes of state andholding a throat-straining quiver under his voice, "I--I shouldn't havelet you stay. It was too--much for you. "

It took her a moment for the mist to clear. 

"I--Son--did somebody strike? Hit? Strange. I--I must have been hurt. Son, am I bleeding?" And looked down, clasping her hand to the bosom ofher decent black-silk basque. 

"Son, I--It was a good verdict, not? I--couldn't have stood it--if--ifit wasn't. I--Something--It was good, not?"

"Yes, mother, yes. "

"Don't--don't let that boy get away, son. I think--those tempers--I canhelp--him. You see, I know--how to handle--Somehow I--"

"Yes, mother, only now you must sit quietly--"

"Promise me, son, you won't let him get away without I see him?"

"Yes, dear, only please now--a moment--quiet--"

You see, the judge was very tired, and, looking down at the spot whereher hand still lay at her bosom as if to press down a hurt, the red ofher same obsession shook and shook him. 

Somehow it seemed to him, too, that her dear heart was bleeding. 

THE END