"Why, say, listen! Listen! You can have it. I didn't know you wanted it
as bad as that. Why, you can have it. I want you to take it. Here."

She shoved it across the table. Sarah reached out for it quickly. She
rolled it up in a tight bundle and whisked off with it without a
backward glance at Josie or at Hahn. She was still sobbing as she went
down the stairs.

The two stood staring at each other ludicrously. Hahn spoke first.

"I'm sorry, Josie. That was nice of you, giving it to her like that."

But Josie did not seem to hear. At least she paid no attention to his
remark. She was staring at him with that dazed and wide-eyed look of
one upon whom a great truth has just dawned. Then, suddenly, she began
to laugh. She laughed a high, shrill laugh that was not so much an
expression of mirth as of relief.

Sid Hahn put up a pudgy hand in protest. "Josie! Please! For the love of
Heaven don't _you_ go and get it. I've had to do with one hysterical
woman to-day. Stop that laughing! Stop it!"

Josie stopped, not abruptly, but in a little series of recurring
giggles. Then these subsided and she was smiling. It wasn't at all her
usual smile. The bitterness was quite gone from it. She faced Sid Hahn
across the table. Her palms were outspread, as one who would make things
plain. "I wasn't hysterical. I was just laughing. I've been about
seventeen years earning that laugh. Don't grudge it to me."

"Let's have the plot," said Hahn.

"There isn't any. You see, it's just--well, I've just discovered how it
works out. After all these years! She's had everything she wanted all
her life. And me, I've never had anything. Not a thing. She's travelled
one way, and I've travelled in the opposite direction, and where has it
brought us? Here we are, both fighting over an old black velvet rag.
Don't you see? Both wanting the same--" She broke off, with the little
twisted smile on her lips again. "Life's a strange thing, Mr. Hahn."

"I hope, Josie, you don't claim any originality for that remark,"
replied Sid Hahn dryly.

"But," argued the editor, "you don't call this a cheerful story, I
hope."

"Well, perhaps not exactly boisterous. But it teaches a lesson, and all
that. And it's sort of philosophical and everything, don't you think?"

The editor shuffled the sheets together decisively, so that they formed
a neat sheaf. "I'm afraid I didn't make myself quite clear. It's
entertaining, and all that, but--ah--in view of our presen