over all your fool, girly-girly notions now. Women always are like
that. I remember the first missus was, too.... And maybe a few other
skirts, though I guess I hadn't better tell no tales outa school on
little old Eddie Schwirtz, eh? Ha, ha!... Course you high-strung virgin
kind of shemales take some time to learn to get over your choosey,
finicky ways. But, Lord love you! I don't mind that much. Never could
stand for these rough-necks that claim they'd rather have a good,
healthy walloping country wench than a nice, refined city lady. Why, I
_like_ refinement! Yes, sir, I sure do!... Well, it sure was some trip.
Guess we won't forget it in a hurry, eh? Sure is nice to rub up against
some Southern swells like we did that night at the Avocado Club. And
that live bunch of salesmen. Gosh! Say, I'll never forget that Jock
Sanderson. He was a comical cuss, eh? That story of his--"

"No," said Una, "I'll never forget the trip."

But she tried to keep the frenzy out of her voice. The frenzy was dying,
as so much of her was dying. She hadn't realized a woman can die so many
times and still live. Dead had her heart been at Pemberton's, yet it had
secreted enough life to suffer horribly now, when it was again being
mauled to death.

And she wanted to spare this man.

She realized that poor Ed Schwirtz, puttering about their temporary room
in a side-street family hotel, yawning and scratching his head, and
presumably comfortable in suspenders over a woolen undershirt--she
realized that he treasured a joyous memory of their Savannah diversions.

She didn't want to take joy away from anybody who actually had it, she
reflected, as she went over to the coarse-lace hotel curtains, parted
them, stared down on the truck-filled street, and murmured, "No, I can't
ever forget."

Part III

MAN AND WOMAN

CHAPTER XVI

For two years Una Golden Schwirtz moved amid the blank procession of
phantoms who haunt cheap family hotels, the apparitions of the
corridors, to whom there is no home, nor purpose, nor permanence. Mere
lodgers for the night, though for score on score of tasteless years they
use the same alien hotel room as a place in which to take naps and store
their trunks and comb their hair and sit waiting--for nothing. The men
are mysterious. They are away for hours or months, or they sit in the
smoking-room, glancing up expectant of fortunes that never come. But the
men do have friends; they are permitted familiarities