ugged 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 God, 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 class, 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-glass 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 anticipation, and the tears dried on her face and left li