man.

Two women in the professional garb of nurses twinkled past, twitting
each to each like sparrows; a man whose face was narrow and dark,
bespeaking in his ancestry a Latin breed, kept close to the shadow of
the buildings; and, with her finger-nails cutting her palms, she stepped
out from her lair directly in his path and clasped her hands tighter to
keep them from trembling.

"You--please!"

He glanced down at her yellowish face, with the daubed-on red standing
out frankly, tossed her a sneer and a foreign expression, and brushed
by. She darted back as though he had struck at her, and panic closed her
in.

A young giant, tall as a Scandinavian out of Valhalla, with wide
shoulders, a wide stride, and heavy-soled, laced-to-the-knee boots that
clattered loudly, ran up the steps of the Electric Institute, and she
flashed across the sidewalk, her arm reaching out.

"You--please!"

He paused, with the street lamp full on his smiling mouth and
wide-apart, smiling eyes, one foot in the act of ascending, after the
manner of tailors' fashion-plates, which are for ever in the casual
attitude of mounting stairs.

"You--please! Please--"

"Aw, little lady, go home and go to bed. This ain't no time and place
for a little thing like you. Here, take this and go home, little girl."

She arrested his arm on its way to his pocket, her breath crowding out
her words, and the stinging red of shame burning through her rouge.

"No, no! For Gawd's sakes, no! It's--my mother--"

He brought his feet down to a level.

"Your mother?"

"Yes; she's sick--maybe dyin'. I--please--she wants to see somebody that
can't--can't--"

"What, little lady?"

"She's sick--dyin' maybe. She wants to see somebody that can't--can't--"

"Take your time, little lady--can't _what_?"

"Can't come."

"Who can't come?"

"He--my young--he's a young man. She's never seen him; and if--please,
if you'd come and act super--just like you was fillin' in at a show; if
you'd act like my young man just for a minute--please! My friend, he
can't come--he can _never_ come; but she--she wants him. You come,
please! You come, please!"

She tugged at his arm, and he descended another step and peered into the
exacerbated anxiety of her face.

"On the level, little lady?"

"Please--just for a minute! For somebody that's sick--maybe dyin'. Just
tell her you're my young man--tell her everything's all
right--everything's comin' all right for all of us, for h