y up and telling you and----"

She leaned from her chair toward his, and took his hand, touching it,
finding its hard, bony places and the delicate white hollows of flesh
between his coarsened yet shapely fingers; tracing a scarce-seen vein
on the back; exploring a well-beloved yet ill-known country. Carl was
unspeakably disconcerted. He was thinking that, to him, Gertie was set
aside from the number of women who could appeal physically, quite as
positively as though she were some old aunt who had for twenty years
seemed to be the same adult, plump, uninteresting age. Gertie's solid
flesh, the monotony of her voice, the unimaginative fixity of her
round cheeks, a certain increasing slackness about her waist, even the
faint, stuffy domestic scent of her--they all expressed to him her
lack of humor and fancy and venturesomeness. She was crystallized in
his mind as a good friend with a plain soul and sisterly tendencies.
Awkwardly he said:

"You mustn't talk like that.... Gee! Gertie, we'll be in a regular
'scene,' if you don't watch out!... We're just good friends, and you
can always bank on me, same as I would on you."

"But why must we be just friends?"

He wanted to be rude, but he was patient. Mechanically stroking her
hair again, leaning forward most uncomfortably from his chair, he
stammered: "Oh, I've been----Oh, you know; I've wandered around so
much that it's kind of put me out of touch with even my best friends,
and I don't know where I'm at. I couldn't make any alliances----Gee!
that sounds affected. I mean: I've got to sort of start in now all
over, finding where I'm at."

"But why must we be just friends, then?"

"Listen, child. It's hard to tell; I guess I didn't know till now what
it does mean, but there's a girl----Wait; listen. There's a girl--at
first I simply thought it was good fun to know her, but now, Lord!
Gertie, you'd think I was pretty sentimental if I told you what I
think of her. God! I want to see her so much! Right now! I haven't let
myself know how much I wanted her. She's everything. She's sister and
chum and wife and everything."

"It's----But I am glad for you. Will you believe that? And perhaps you
understand how I felt, now. I'm very sorry I let myself go. I hope you
will----Oh, please go now."

He sprang up, only too ready to go. But first he kissed her hand with
a courtly reverence, and said, with a sweetness new to him: "Dear,
will you forgive me if I've ever hurt you? And