htn't
to go out with him.... But I will!... What nonsense! Why shouldn't I
have dinner with him.... Oh, I mustn't--I'm a typist and he's a boss....
But I will!"

Glancing down the quiet stretches of the office, to the windows looking
to westward, she saw that the sky was a delicate primrose. In a
loft-building rearing out of the low structures between her and the
North River, lights were springing out, and she--who ought to have known
that they marked weary, late-staying people like herself, fancied that
they were the lights of restaurants for gay lovers. She dismissed her
problem, forgot the mother who was waiting with a demand for all of
Una's youth, and settled down to a happy excitement in the prospect of
going out with Walter; of knowing him, of feeling again that smile.

He came prancing out with his copies of the article before she had
finished. "Some copyist, eh?" he cried. "Say, hustle and finish. Gee!
I've been smoking cigarettes to-day till my mouth tastes like a
fish-market. Want to eat and forget my troubles."

With her excitement dulled to a matter-of-fact hungriness, she trotted
beside him to a restaurant, one of the string of Vance eating-places, a
food-mill which tried to achieve originality by the use of imitation
rafters, a plate-rack aligned with landscape plates, and varnished black
tables for four instead of the long, marble tables which crowded the
patrons together in most places of the sort. Walter verbosely called her
attention to the mottoes painted on the wood, the individual table
lights in pink shades. "Just forget the eats, Miss Golden, and you can
imagine you're in a regular restaurant. Gosh! this place ought to
reconcile you to dining with the crazy Babson. I can't imagine a liaison
in a place where coffee costs five cents."

He sounded boisterous, but he took her coat so languidly, he slid so
loosely into his chair, that she burned with desire to soothe away his
office weariness. She forgot all reserve. She burst out: "Why do you
call yourself 'crazy'? Just because you have more energy than anybody
else in the office?"

"No," he said, grimly, snatching at the menu, "because I haven't any
purpose in the scheme of things."

Una told herself that she was pleased to see how the scrawny waitress
purred at Walter when he gave his order. Actually she was feeling
resentfully that no saw-voiced, galumphing Amazon of a waitress could
appreciate Walter's smile.

In a Vance eating-place, or