ation 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 basement 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
u