houlder with the exhaustion of a
child after a tantrum.

"You won't leave me alone nights no more, Harry?"

"Thu--thu--thu--such a little Goldie-eyes!"

"I can't stand for the worry of the board no more, Harry. McCaskys are
gettin' ugly. I ain't got a decent rag to my back, neither."

"I'm going to take a shipping-room job next week, honey, and get back in
harness. Bill's going to fix me up. There ain't nothin' in this rotten
game, and I'm going to get out."

"Sure?"

"Sure, Goldie."

"You ain't been drinking, Harry?"

"Sure I ain't. Me and Cutty had a rube out, I tell you."

"You'll keep straight, won't you, Harry? You're killin' me, boy, you
are."

"Come, dry your face, baby."

He reached to his hip-pocket for his handkerchief, and with it a sparse
shower of red and green and pink and white and blue confetti showered to
the floor like snow through a spectrum. Goldie slid from his embrace
and laughed--a laugh frapped with the ice of scorn and chilled as her
own chilled heart.

"Liar!" she said, and trembled as she stood.

His lips curled again into the expression that so ill-fitted his
albinism.

"You little cat! You can bluff me!"

"I knew you was up at the Crescent Cotillon! I felt it in my bones. I
knew you was up there when I read on the bill-boards that the Red
Slipper was dancing there. I knew where you was every night while I been
sittin' here waitin'! I knew--I knew--"

The piano-salesman rapped against the folding-doors thrice, with
distemper and the head of a cane. At that instant the lower half of Mr.
Trimp's face protruded suddenly into a lantern-jawed facsimile of a
blue-ribbon English bull; his hand shot out and hurled the chair that
stood between them half-way across the room, where it fell on its side
against the wash-stand and split a rung.

"You--you little devil, you!"

The second-floor front beat a tattoo of remonstrance; but there was a
sudden howling as of boiling surf in Mr. Trimp's ears, and the hot ember
of an oath dropped from his lips.

"You little devil! You been hounding me with the quit game for eight
months. Now you gotta quit!"

"I--I--"

"There ain't a man livin' would stand for your long face and naggin'!
If you don't like my banking-hours and my game and the company I keep
you quit, kiddo! Quit! Do you hear?"

"Will--I--quit? Well--"

"Yeh; I been up to the Crescent Confetti--every night this week, just
like you say! I been round live wires, where ther