arms. "Vell, vot you say! Vy don't you speak? By Gott, I
raise your salary!"

"Oh, Mr. Greesheimer!" she cried, half laughing. "It's simply too
wonderful for words!"

"Ha--ha!" He still had her by the arms. "All you young goils could love
me now--eh?--you could take an old fehlah! Ha-ha-ha!" And the next
instant, furious, she felt herself hugged violently, kissed! His lips!
His fat soft body! Ugh! She dug her elbow into him with a stifled cry
and wrenched away. A moment she turned on him eyes ablaze.

"You dirty--beastly--" she gasped for breath, then turned, and seizing
her hat and coat she rushed blindly from the room and through the outer
office. In the elevator crowded with men she felt a queer taste in her
mouth. "That's blood," she thought. "Biting my lip, am I--well, bite
on. I'm not going to cry--I'm not, I'm not--I'll reach that street if
it kills me!"

Meanwhile in his office Greesheimer was still staring, first at the door
and then at the window, and upon his pudgy countenance was a glare of
utter astonishment and honest indignation.

"Mein Gott!" he exploded. "I give her a hug--a hug like a daughter--and
off like a rocket--off she goes!" And in Yiddish and in Hebrew and
Russian and American, Greesheimer expressed himself as he strode swiftly
up and down.

For seven years without a break he had "kept a goil" more fascinating to
his taste than any female in New York. Her name was Sadie, she was a
model in a dressmaker's shop uptown, and she owned him body and soul.
Their marriage had only been put off until he had bridged the dangerous
time in the launching of his business. For Greesheimer had a mother, an
old uncle and a sister and two small nephews to support. But this
Zimmerman contract, "Gott sei danke!" would clear the way for marriage
at once. And as that glorious vision, of relatives all radiant and
Sadie flushed and joyous leaping into his embrace, had burst upon his
dazzled soul, his glance had lit on his employe, and he had hugged her
in his joy! And she--Again did Greesheimer swear! He felt hot angry
blushes rise. And later at his telephone he was saying to a woman
friend who ran an employment bureau:

"I got to have a stenographer. See? Und I don't vant a goil, I vant a
man--a smart young fellah, y'understand. . . . Jewish? Yes! You
betcher! No more Christian goils in mine! Dey have rotten minds--plain
rotten minds!"

But to Ethel, walking blindly, no such explanation occurred. She could