"I was tuning up that evening to tell you, Goldie--while we were sitting there on your stoop, with the street-light in our eyes, and you screechin' every time a June-bug b.u.mbled in your face!"

"Gawd, how I hate bugs! There was one in Miss Gregory's--"

"I was going to tell you that night, Goldie, that there was only one girl--one girl for me--and--"

"Yeh; and while we were sittin' there gigglin' and screechin' at June-bugs poor Addie was provin' that a street-car fender has got it all over a mangling-machine."

"Yes; it's like she says about herself--she was payin' her initiation fee for life membership into the Society of Cripples with a perfectly good hip and a bit of spine."

"Poor Addie! Gawd, how she loved to dance! She used to spend every noon-hour eatin' marshmallows and learning me new steps."

The wind soughed in their ears, and Goldie's skirts blew backward like sails.

"You haven't got a better friend than Addie right now, girlie! She always says our little flat is yours. The three of us, Goldie--the three of us could--"

"It's swell for a girl that ain't got none of her own blood to have a friend like that. Swell, lemme tell you!"

"Goldie!"

"Yes."

"It's like I said--I've never talked right out before, but I got a feelin' you're slippin' away from me like a eel, girlie. You know--aw, you know I ain't much on the elocution stuff; but if it wasn't for Addie and her accident right now--I'd ask you outright--I would. You know what I mean!"

"I don't know anything, Eddie; I'm no mind-reader!"

"Aw, cut it out, Goldie! You know I'm tied up right now and can't say some of the things I was going to say that night on the stoop. You know what I mean--with Addie's doctor's bills and chair and crutches, and all."

"Sure I do, Eddie. You've got no right to think of anything."

She turned from him so that her profile was like a white cameo mounted on black velvet.

"You just give me a little time, Goldie, and I'll be on my feet, all righty. I just want some kind of understanding between us--that's all."

"Oh--you--I--"

"I got Joe's job cinched if he goes over to the other firm in March; and by that time, Goldie, you and me and Addie, on eighty per, could--why, we--"

She swayed back from his close glance and ran up the first three steps of her rooming-house. Her face was struck with fear suddenly, as with a white flame out of the sky.

"'Sh-h-h-h-h-h!" she said. "You mustn't!"

He reached for her hand, caught it and held it--but like a man who feels the rope sliding through his fingers and sees his schooner slipping out to sea--slipping out to sea.

"Lemme go, Eddie! I gotta go--it's late!"

"I _know_, Goldie. They been guyin' me at the office about you pa.s.sin'

me up; and it's right--ain't it? It's--It's him--" She shook her head and tugged for the freedom of her hand. Tears crowded into her eyes like water to the surface of a tumbler just before the overflow. "It's _him_--ain't it, Goldie?"

"Well, you won't give--give a girl a chance to say anything. If you'd have given me time I was comin' over and tell you, and--and tell--"

"Goldie!"

"I was--I was--"

"It's none of my business, girlie; but--but he ain't fit for you. He--"

"There you go! The whole crowd of you make me--"

"He ain't fit for no girl, Goldie! Listen to me, girlie! He's just a regular ladykiller! He can't keep a job no more'n a week for the life of him! I used to know him when I worked at Delaney's. Listen to me, Goldie! This here new minin' scheme he's in ain't even on the level! It ain't none of my business; but, good G.o.d, Goldie, just because a guy's good-lookin' and a swell dresser and--"

She sprang from his grasp and up the three remaining steps. In the sooty flare of the street lamp she was like Jeanne d'Arc heeding the vision or a suffragette declaiming on a soap-box and equal rights.

"You--the whole crowd of you make me sick! The minute a fellow graduates out of the sixty-dollar-clerk cla.s.s, and can afford a twenty-dollar suit, without an extra pair of pants thrown in, the whole pack of you begin to yowl and yap at his heels like--"

"Goldie! Goldie, listen--"

"Yes, you do! But I ain't caring. I know him, and I know what I want.

We're goin' to get married when we're good and ready, and we ain't apologizing to no one! I don't care what the whole pack of you have to say, except Addie and you; and--and--I--oh--"

Goldie turned and fled into the house, slamming the front door after her so that the stained-gla.s.s panels rattled--then up four flights, with the breath soughing in her throat and the fever of agitation racing through her veins.

Her oblong box of a room at the top of the long flights was cold with a cavern damp and musty with the must that is as indigenous to rooming-houses as chorus-girls to the English peerage or insomnia to black coffee.

Even before she lighted her short-armed gas-jet, however, a sweet, insidious, hothouse fragrance greeted her faintly through the must, as the memory of mignonette clings to old lace. Goldie's face softened as if a choir invisible was singing her ragtime from above her skylight.

She lighted her fan of gas with fingers that trembled in a pleasant frenzy of antic.i.p.ation, and the tears dried on her face and left little paths down her cheeks.

A fan of pink roses, fretted with maidenhair fern and caught with a sash of pink tulle, lay on her coa.r.s.e cot coverlet, as though one of her dreams had ventured out of its long night.

What a witch is love!

Pink leaped into Goldie's cheeks, and into her eyes the light that pa.s.seth understanding. Life dropped its dun-colored cloak and stood suddenly garlanded in pink, wire-stemmed roses.

She buried her face in their fragrance. She kissed a cool bud, the heart of which was closed. She unwrapped the pink tulle sash with fingers that were addled--like a child's at the gold cord of a candy-box--and held the filmy streamer against her bosom in the outline of a yoke.

In Mrs. McCasky's boarding-house the onward march of night was as regular as a Swiss watch with an American movement.

At nine o'clock Mr. McCasky's tin bucket grated along the hall wall, down two flights of banisters, across the street, and through the knee-high swinging-doors of Joe's place.

At ten o'clock the Polinis, on the third-floor back, let down their folding-bed and shivered the chandelier in Major Florida's second-floor back.

At eleven o'clock Mr. McCasky's tin bucket grated unevenly along the hall wall, down two flights of banisters, across the street, and through the knee-high swinging-doors of Joe's place.

At twelve o'clock the electric piano in Joe's place ceased to clatter through the night like coal pouring into an empty steel bin, and Mrs.

McCasky lowered the hall light from a blob the size of a cranberry to a French pea.

At one o'clock the next to the youngest Polini infant lifted its voice to the skylight, and Mr. Trimp's night-key waltzed round the front-door lock, scratch-scratching for its hole.