a silver reed in the
lightest breeze that blows--and regained his balance immediately. His
breath, redolent as a garden of spice and cloves, was close to his
wife's neck.

"Baby," he said, "you better believe your old man. I been out with
Cutty, Goldie. We had a sucker out!"

She sprang back from his touch, hot tears in her eyes.

"Believe you! I did till I learnt better. I believed you for four
months, sittin' round waiting for you and your goings-on. You ain't been
out with Cutty--you ain't been out with him one night this week. You
been--you--"

Mrs. Trimp's voice rose to a hysterical crescendo. Her hair, yellow as
corn-silk, and caught in a low chignon at her back, escaped its
restraint of pins and fell in a whorl down her shirt-waist. She was
like a young immortal eaten by the corroding acids of earlier
experiences--raw with the vitriol of her deathless destiny.

"You ain't been out with Cutty. You been--"

The piano-salesman in the first-floor back knocked against the closed
folding-door for the stilly night that should have been his by right. A
distant night-stick struck the asphalt, and across Harry Trimp's
features, like filmy clouds across the moon, floated a composite
death-mask of Henry the Eighth and Othello, and all their alimony-paying
kith. His mouth curved into an expression that did not coincide with
pale hair and light eyes.

He slid from his greatcoat, a black one with an astrakan collar and
bought in three payments, and inclined closer to his wife, a
contumelious quirk on his lips.

"Well, whatta you going to do about it, kiddo--huh?"

"I--I'm going to--quit!"

He laughed and let her squirm from his hold, strolled over to the
dresser mirror, pulled his red four-in-hand upward from its knot and
tugged his collar open.

"You're not going to quit, kiddo! You ain't got the nerve!"

He leaned to the mirror and examined the even rows of teeth, and grinned
at himself like a Hallowe'en pumpkin to flash whiter their whiteness.

"Ain't I! Which takes the most nerve, I'd like to know, stickin' to you
and your devilishness or strikin' out for myself like I been raised to
do? I was born a worm, and I ain't never found the cocoon that would
change me into a butterfly. I--I had as swell a job up at Gregory's as a
girl ever had. I'm an expert stenographer, I am! I got a diploma from--"

"Why don't you get your job back, baby? You been up there twice to my
knowin'; maybe the third time'll be a cha