"Night!"

Goldie closed the door softly behind her as though tiptoeing away from the buzzing gnats of an eight-hour day. Simultaneously across the hall the ground-gla.s.s door of the Underwriters' Realty Company swung open with a gust, and Mr. Eddie Bopp, clerk, celibate, and aspirant for the beyond of each state, bowed himself directly in Goldie's path.

"Ed-die! Ain't you early to-night, though! Since when are you keeping board-of-directors hours?"

"I been watching for you, Goldie."

Eddie needs no introduction. He solicits coffee orders at your door. The shipping-clerks and dustless-broom agents and lottery-ticket buyers of the world are made of his stuff. Bronx apartment houses, with perambulators and imitation marble columns in the down-stairs foyer, are built for his destiny. He sells you a yard of silk; he travels to Coney Island on hot Sunday afternoons; he bleaches on the bleachers; he bookkeeps; he belongs to a building a.s.sociation and wears polka-dot neckties. He is not above the pink evening edition. Ibsen and eugenics and post impressionism have never darkened the door of his consciousness. He is the safe-and-sane strata in the social mountain; not of the base or of the rarefied heights that carry dizziness.

Yet when Eddie regarded Goldie there was that in his eyes which transported him far above the safe-and-sane strata to the only communal ground that men and socialists admit--the Arcadia of lovers.

"I wasn't going to let you get by me to-night, Goldie. I ain't walked home with you for so long I haven't a rag of an excuse left to give Addie."

Miss Flint colored the faint pink of dawn's first moment.

"I--I got to do some shopping to-night, Eddie. That's why I quit early.

Believe me, Gregory'll make me pay up to-morrow."

"It won't be the first time I shopped with you, Goldie."

"No."

"Remember the time we went down in Tracy's bas.e.m.e.nt for a little alcohol-stove you wanted for your breakfasts? The girl at the counter thought we--we were spliced."

"Yeh!" Miss Flint's voice was faint as the thud of a nut to the ground.

They shot down fifteen fireproof stories in a breath-taking elevator, and then out on the whitest, brightest Broadway in the world, where the dreary trilogy of Wine, Woman, and Song is played from noon to dawn, with woman the cheapest of the three.

"How's Addie?"

"She don't complain, but she gets whiter and whiter--poor kid! I got her some new crutches, Goldie--swell mahogany ones with silver tips. You ought to see her get round on them!"

"I--I been so busy--night-work and--and--"

"She's been asking about you every night, Goldie. It ain't like you to stay away like this."

Their breaths clouded before them in the stinging air, and down the length of the enchanted highway lights sprang out of the gloom and winked at them like naughty eyes.

"What's the matter, Goldie? You ain't mad at me--us--are you?"

Eddie took her pressed-plush elbow in the cup of his hand and looked down at her, trying in vain to capture the bright flame of her glance.

"Nothing's the matter, Eddie. Why should I be mad? I been busy--that's all."

The tide of home-going New York caught them in its six-o'clock vortex.

Shops emptied and street-cars filled. A newsboy fell beneath a car, and Broadway parted like a Red Sea for an overworked ambulance, the mission of which was futile. A lady in a fourteen-hundred-fifty-dollar unborn-lamb coat and a notorious dog-collar of pearls stepped out of a wine-colored limousine into the gold-leaf foyer of a hotel. A ten-story emporium ran an iron grating across its entrance, and ten watchmen reported for night duty.

"Aw, gee! They're closed! Ain't that the limit now! Ain't that the limit! I wanted some pink tulle."

"Poor kid! Don't you care! You can get it tomorrow--you can work Gregory."

"I--I wanted it for tonight."

"What?"

"I wanted it for my yoke."

They turned into the dark aisle of a side street; the wind lurked around the corner to leap at them.

"Oh-h-h-h!"

He held tight to her arm.

"It's some night--ain't it, girlie?"

"I should say so!"

"Poor little kid!"

Eddie's voice was suddenly the lover's, full of that quality which is like unto the ting of a silver bell after the clapper is quiet.

"You're coming home to a good hot supper with me, Goldie--ain't you, Goldie? Addie'll like it."

She withdrew her hand from the curve of his elbow.

"I can't, Eddie--not tonight. I--tell her I'm coming over real soon."

"Oh!"

"It's sure cold, ain't it?"

"Goldie, can't you tell a fellow what's the matter? Can't you tell me why you been dodging me--us--for two weeks? Can't you tell a fellow--huh, Goldie?"

"Geewhillikins, Eddie! Ain't I told you it's nothing? There ain't a girl could be a better friend to Addie than me."

"I know that, Goldie; but--"

"Didn't we work in the same office thick as peas for two whole years before her--accident--even before I knew she had a brother? Ain't I stuck to her right through--ain't I?"

"You know that ain't what I mean, Goldie. You been a swell friend to poor Addie, stayin' with her Sundays when you could be havin'

a swell time and all; but it's me I'm talking about, Goldie.

Sometimes--sometimes I--"

"Aw!"

"I've never talked straight out about it before, Goldie; but you--you remember the night--the night I rigged up like a Christmas tree, and you said I was all the ice-cream in my white pants--the night Addie was run over and they sent for me?"

"Will I ever forget it!"