ights; swift, smiling servants; and the languorous well-being
of eating strange, delicious foods. Orchids and the scent of poppies and
spell of the lotos-flower, the bead of wine and lips that yearned;
ecstasy in the Oriental pride of a superb Jewess who was singing to the
demure enchantment of little violins. Her restlessness satisfied, a
momentary pang of distrust healed by the brotherly talk of the
broad-shouldered man who cared for her and nimbly fulfilled her every
whim. An unvoiced desire to keep him from drinking so many highballs; an
enduring thankfulness to him when she was back at the flat; a defiant
joy that he had kissed her good-night--just once, and so tenderly; a
determination to "be good for him," and a fear that he had "spent too
much money on her to-night," and a plan to reason with him about whisky
and extravagance. A sudden hatred of the office to which she would have
to return in the morning, and a stronger, more sardonic hatred of
hearing Mr. S. Herbert Ross pluck out his vest-pocket harp and hymn his
own praise in a one-man choir, cherubic, but slightly fat. A descent
from high gardens of moonlight to the reality of the flat, where
Lawrence was breathing loudly in her sleep; the oily smell of hairs
tangled in her old hair-brush; the sight of the alarm-clock which in
just six hours would be flogging her off to the mill. A sudden,
frightened query as to what scornful disdain Walter Babson would fling
at her if he saw her glorying in this Broadway circus with the heavy Mr.
Schwirtz. A ghostly night-born feeling that she still belonged to
Walter, living or dead, and a wonder as to where in all the world he
might be. A defiant protest that she idealized Walter, that he wasn't so
awfully superior to the Champs du Pom-Pom as this astral body of his was
pretending, and a still more defiant gratitude to Mr. Schwirtz as she
crawled into the tousled bed and Mrs. Lawrence half woke to yawn, "Oh,
that--you--Gold'n? _Gawd!_ I'm sleepy. Wha' time is 't?"

Sec. 2

Una was sorry. She hated herself as what she called a "quitter," but
now, in January, 1910, she was at an _impasse_. She could just stagger
through each day of S. Herbert Ross and office diplomacies. She had been
at Pemberton's for a year and a third, and longer than that with Mrs.
Lawrence at the flat. The summer vacation of 1909 she had spent with
Mrs. Lawrence at a Jersey coast resort. They had been jealous, had
quarreled, and made it up every day