Second Section

I. Great Lady on a White Horse

Morning clatters with the first L train down Allen Street. Daylight rattles through the windows, shaking the old brick houses, splatters the girders of the L structure with bright confetti.

The cats are leaving the garbage cans, the chinches are going back into the walls, leaving sweaty limbs, leaving the grimetender necks of little children asleep. Men and women stir under blankets and bedquilts on mattresses in the corners of rooms, clots of kids begin to untangle to scream and kick.

At the corner of Riverton the old man with the hempen beard who sleeps where nobody knows is putting out his picklestand. Tubs of gherkins, pimentos, melonrind, piccalilli give out twining vines and cold tendrils of dank pepperyfragrance that grow like a marshgarden out of the musky bedsmells and the rancid clangor of the cobbled awakening street.

The old man with the hempen beard who sleeps where nobody knows sits in the midst of it like Jonah under his gourd.

Jimmy Herf walked up four creaky flights and knocked at a white door fingermarked above the knob where the name Sunderland appeared in old English characters on a card neatly held in place by brass thumbtacks. He waited a long while beside a milkbottle, two creambottles, and a copy of the Sunday Times. There was a rustle behind the door and the creak of a step, then no more sound. He pushed a white button in the doorjamb.

“An he said, Margie I’ve got a crush on you so bad, an she said, Come in outa the rain, you’re all wet....” Voices coming down the stairs, a man’s feet in button shoes, a girl’s feet in sandals, pink silk legs; the girl in a fluffy dress

“But you’re not that kind of a girl.”

“How do you know what kind of a girl I am?”

The voices trailed out down the stairs.

Jimmy Herf gave the bell another jab.

“Who is it?” came a lisping female voice through a crack in the door.

“I want to see Miss Prynne please.”

Glimpse of a blue kimono held up to the chin of a fluffy face. “Oh I don’t know if she’s up yet.”

“She said she would be.”

“Look will you please wait a second to let me make my getaway,” she tittered behind the door. “And then come in. Excuse us but Mrs. Sunderland thought you were the rent collector. They sometimes come on Sunday just to fool you.” A smile coyly bridged the crack in the door.

“Shall I bring in the milk?”

“Oh do and sit down in the hall and I’ll call Ruth.” The hall was very dark; smelled of sleep and toothpaste and massagecream; across one corner a cot still bore the imprint of a body on its rumpled sheets. Straw hats, silk eveningwraps, and a couple of men’s dress overcoats hung in a jostling tangle from the staghorns of the hatrack. Jimmy picked a corsetcover off a rockingchair and sat down. Women’s voices, a subdued rustling of people dressing, Sunday newspaper noises seeped out through the partitions of the different rooms.

The bathroom door opened; a stream of sunlight reflected out of a pierglass cut the murky hall in half, out of it came a head of hair like copper wire, bluedark eyes in a brittle-white eggshaped face. Then the hair was brown down the hall above a slim back in a tangerine-colored slip, nonchalant pink heels standing up out of the bathslippers at every step.

“Ou-ou, Jimmee...” Ruth was yodling at him from behind her door. “But you mustn’t look at me or at my room.” A head in curlpapers stuck out like a turtle’s.

“Hullo Ruth.”

“You can come in if you promise not to look.... I’m a sight and my room’s a pigeon.... I’ve just got to do my hair. Then I’ll be ready.” The little gray room was stuffed with clothes and photographs of stage people. Jimmy stood with his back to the door, some sort of silky stuff that dangled from the hook tickling his ears.

“Well how’s the cub reporter?”

“I’m on Hell’s Kitchen.... It’s swell. Got a job yet Ruth?”

“Um-um.... A couple of things may materialize during the week. But they wont. Oh Jimmy I’m getting desperate.” She shook her hair loose of the crimpers and combed out the new mousybrown waves. She had a pale startled face with a big mouth and blue underlids. “This morning I knew I ought to be up and ready, but I just couldn’t. It’s so discouraging to get up when you haven’t got a job.... Sometimes I think I’ll go to bed and just stay there till the end of the world.”

“Poor old Ruth.”

She threw a powderpuff at him that covered his necktie and the lapels of his blue serge suit with powder. “Dont you poor old me you little rat.”

“That’s a nice thing to do after all the trouble I took to make myself look respectable.... Darn your hide Ruth. And the smell of the carbona not off me yet.”

Ruth threw back her head with a shrieking laugh. “Oh you’re so comical Jimmy. Try the whisk-broom.”

Blushing he blew down his chin at his tie. “Who’s the funnylooking girl opened the halldoor?”

“Shush you can hear everything through the partition.... That’s Cassie,” she whispered giggling. “Cassah-ndrah Wilkins ... used to be with the Morgan Dancers. But we oughtnt to laugh at her, she’s very nice. I’m very fond of her.” She let out a whoop of laughter. “You nut Jimmy.” She got to her feet and punched him in the muscle of the arm. “You always make me act like I was crazy.”

“God did that.... No but look, I’m awfully hungry. I walked up.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s after one.”

“Oh Jimmy I dont know what to do about time.... Like this hat?... Oh I forgot to tell you. I went to see Al Harrison yesterday. It was simply dreadful.... If I hadnt got to the phone in time and threatened to call the police....”

“Look at that funny woman opposite. She’s got a face exactly like a llama.”

“It’s on account of her I have to keep my shades drawn all the time ...”

“Why?”

“Oh you’re much too young to know. You’d be shocked Jimmy.” Ruth was leaning close to the mirror running a stick of rouge between her lips.

“So many things shock me, I dont see that it matters much.... But come along let’s get out of here. The sun’s shining outside and people are coming out of church and going home to overeat and read at their Sunday papers among the rubberplants ...”

“Oh Jimmy you’re a shriek ... Just one minute. Look out you’re hooked onto my best shimmy.”

A girl with short black hair in a yellow jumper was folding the sheets off the cot in the hall. For a second under the ambercolored powder and the rouge Jimmy did not recognize the face he had seen through the crack in the door.

“Hello Cassie, this is ... Beg pardon, Miss Wilkins this is Mr. Herf. You tell him about the lady across the airshaft, you know Sappo the Monk.”

Cassandra Wilkins lisped and pouted. “Isn’t she dweadful Mr. Herf.... She says the dweadfullest things.”

“She merely does it to annoy.”

“Oh Mr. Herf I’m so pleased to meet you at last, Ruth does nothing but talk about you.... Oh I’m afwaid I was indiscweet to say that.... I’m dweadfully indiscweet.”

The door across the hall opened and Jimmy found himself looking in the white face of a crookednosed man whose red hair rode in two unequal mounds on either side of a straight part. He wore a green satin bathrobe and red morocco slippers.

“What heow Cassahndrah?” he said in a careful Oxford drawl. “What prophecies today?”

“Nothing except a wire from Mrs. Fitzsimmons Green. She wants me to go to see her at Scarsdale tomorrow to talk about the Gweenery Theater.... Excuse me this is Mr. Herf, Mr. Oglethorpe.” The redhaired man raised one eyebrow and lowered the other and put a limp hand in Jimmy’s.

“Herf, Herf.... Let me see, it’s not a Georgiah Herf? In Atlahnta there’s an old family of Herfs....”

“No I dont think so.”

“Too bad. Once upon a time Josiah Herf and I were boon companions. Today he is the president of the First National Bank and leading citizen of Scranton Pennsylvahnia and I ... a mere mountebank, a thing of rags and patches.” When he shrugged his shoulders the bathrobe fell away exposing a flat smooth hairless chest.

“You see Mr. Oglethorpe and I are going to do the Song of Songs. He weads it and I interpwet it in dancing. You must come up and see us wehearse sometime.”

“Thy navel is like a round goblet which wanteth not liquor, thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies ...”

“Oh dont begin now.” She tittered and pressed her legs together.

“Jojo close that door,” came a quiet deep girl’s voice from inside the room.

“Oh poo-er deah Elaine, she wants to sleep.... So glahd to have met you, Mr. Herf.”

“Jojo!”

“Yes my deah....”

Through the leaden drowse that cramped him the girl’s voice set Jimmy tingling. He stood beside Cassie constrainedly

“All right Jimmy I’m ready.... I wonder if I’ve forgotten anything.”

“I dont care whether you have or not, I’m starving.” Jimmy took hold of her shoulders and pushed her gently towards the door. “It’s two o’clock.”

“Well goodby Cassie dear, I’ll call you up at about six.”

“All wight Wuthy ... So pleased to have met you Mr. Herf.” The door closed on Cassie’s tittering lisp.

“Wow, Ruth that place gives me the infernal jimjams.”

“Now Jimmy dont get peevish because you need food.”

“But tell me Ruth, what the hell is Mr. Oglethorpe? He beats anything I ever saw.”

“Oh did the Ogle come out of his lair?” Ruth let out a whoop of laughter. They came out into grimy sunlight. “Did he tell you he was of the main brawnch, dontcher know, of the Oglethorpes of Georgiah?”

“Is that lovely girl with copper hair his wife?”

“Elaine Oglethorpe has reddish hair. She’s not so darn lovely either.... She’s just a kid and she’s upstage as the deuce already. All because she made a kind of a hit in Peach Blossoms. You know one of these tiny exquisite bits everybody makes such a fuss over. She can act all right.”

“It’s a shame she’s got that for a husband.”

“Ogle’s done everything in the world for her. If it hadnt been for him she’d still be in the chorus ...”

“Beauty and the beast.”

“You’d better look out if he sets his lamps on you Jimmy.”

“Why?”

“Strange fish, Jimmy, strange fish.”

An Elevated train shattered the barred sunlight overhead. He could see Ruth’s mouth forming words.

“Look,” he shouted above the diminishing clatter. “Let’s go have brunch at the Campus and then go for a walk on the Palisades.”

“You nut Jimmy what’s brunch?”

“You’ll eat breakfast and I’ll eat lunch.”

“It’ll be a scream.” Whooping with laughter she put her arm in his. Her silvernet bag knocked against his elbow as they walked.

“And what about Cassie, the mysterious Cassandra?”

“You mustn’t laugh at her, she’s a peach.... If only she wouldn’t keep that horrid little white poodle. She keeps it in her room and it never gets any exercise and it smells something terrible. She has that little room next to mine.... Then she’s got a steady ...” Ruth giggled. “He’s worse than the poodle. They’re engaged and he borrows all her money away from her. For Heaven’s sake dont tell anybody.”

“I dont know anybody to tell.”

“Then there’s Mrs. Sunderland ...”

“Oh yes I got a glimpse of her going into the bathroom—an old lady in a wadded dressing gown with a pink boudoir cap on.”

“Jimmy you shock me.... She keeps losing her false teeth,” began Ruth; an L train drowned out the rest. The restaurant door closing behind them choked off the roar of wheels on rails.

An orchestra was playing When It’s Appleblossom Time in Normandee. The place was full of smokewrithing slants of sunlight, paper festoons, signs announcing Lobsters Arrive Daily, Eat Clams Now, Try Our Delicious French Style Steamed Mussles (Recommended by the Department of Agriculture). They sat down under a redlettered placard Beefsteak Parties Upstairs and Ruth made a pass at him with a breadstick. “Jimmy do you think it’d be immoral to eat scallops for breakfast? But first I’ve got to have coffee coffee coffee ...”

“I’m going to eat a small steak and onions.”

“Not if you’re intending to spend the afternoon with me Mr. Herf.”

“Oh all right. Ruth I lay my onions at your feet.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you kiss me.”

“What ... on the Palisades?” Ruth’s giggle broke into a whoop of laughter. Jimmy blushed crimson. “I never axed you maam, he say-ed.”

Sunlight dripped in her face through the little holes in the brim of her straw hat. She was walking with brisk steps too short on account of her narrow skirt; through the thin china silk the sunlight tingled like a hand stroking her back. In the heavy heat streets, stores, people in Sunday clothes, strawhats, sunshades, surfacecars, taxis, broke and crinkled brightly about her grazing her with sharp cutting glints as if she were walking through piles of metalshavings. She was groping continually through a tangle of gritty saw-edged brittle noise.

At Lincoln Square a girl rode slowly through the traffic on a white horse; chestnut hair hung down in even faky waves over the horse’s chalky rump and over the giltedged saddlecloth where in green letters pointed with crimson, read Danderine. She had on a green Dolly Varden hat with a crimson plume; one hand in a white gauntlet nonchalantly jiggled at the reins, in the other wabbled a goldknobbed riding crop.

Ellen watched her pass; then she followed a smudge of green through a cross-street to the Park. A smell of trampled sunsinged grass came from boys playing baseball. All the shady benches were full of people. When she crossed the curving automobile road her sharp French heels sank into the asphalt. Two sailors were sprawling on a bench in the sun; one of them popped his lips as she passed, she could feel their seagreedy eyes cling stickily to her neck, her thighs, her ankles. She tried to keep her hips from swaying so much as she walked. The leaves were shriveled on the saplings along the path. South and east sunnyfaced buildings hemmed in the Park, to the west they were violet with shadow. Everything was itching sweaty dusty constrained by policemen and Sunday clothes. Why hadn’t

All in green on a white stallion rode the Lady of the Lost Battalion.... Green, green, danderine ... Godiva in the haughty mantle of her hair....

General Sherman in gold interrupted her. She stopped a second to look at the Plaza that gleamed white as motherofpearl.... Yes this is Elaine Oglethorpe’s apartment.... She climbed up onto a Washington Square bus. Sunday afternoon Fifth Avenue filed by rosily dustily jerkily. On the shady side there was an occasional man in a top hat and frock coat. Sunshades, summer dresses, straw hats were bright in the sun that glinted in squares on the upper windows of houses, lay in bright slivers on the hard paint of limousines and taxicabs. It smelled of gasoline and asphalt, of spearmint and talcumpowder and perfume from the couples that jiggled closer and closer together on the seats of the bus. In an occasional storewindow, paintings, maroon draperies, varnished antique chairs behind plate glass. The St. Regis. Sherry’s. The man beside her wore spats and lemon gloves, a floorwalker probably. As they passed St. Patrick’s she caught a whiff of incense through the tall doors open into gloom. Delmonico’s. In front of her the young man’s arm was stealing round the narrow gray flannel back of the girl beside him.

“Jez ole Joe had rotten luck, he had to marry her. He’s only nineteen.”

“I suppose you would think it was hard luck.”

“Myrtle I didn’t mean us.”

“I bet you did. An anyways have you ever seen the girl?”

“I bet it aint his.”

“What?”

“The kid.”

“Billy how dreadfully you do talk.”

Fortysecond Street. Union League Club. “It was a most amusing gathering ... most amusing.... Everybody was there. For once the speeches were delightful, made me think of old times,” croaked a cultivated voice behind her ear. The Waldorf. “Aint them flags swell Billy.... That funny one is cause the Siamese ambassador is staying there. I read about it in the paper this morning.”

When thou and I my love shall come to part, Then shall I press an ineffable last kiss Upon your lips and go ... heart, start, who art ... Bliss, this, miss ... When thou ... When you and I my love ...

Eighth Street. She got down from the bus and went into the basement of the Brevoort. George sat waiting with his back to the door snapping and unsnapping the lock of his briefcase. “Well Elaine it’s about time you turned up.... There aren’t many people I’d sit waiting three quarters of an hour for.”

“George you mustn’t scold me; I’ve been having the time of my life. I haven’t had such a good time in years. I’ve had the whole day all to myself and I walked all the way down from 105th Street to Fiftyninth through the Park. It was full of the most comical people.”

“You must be tired.” His lean face where the bright eyes were caught in a web of fine wrinkles kept pressing forward into hers like the prow of a steamship.

“I suppose you’ve been at the office all day George.”

“Yes I’ve been digging out some cases. I cant rely on anyone else to do even routine work thoroughly, so I have to do it myself.”

“Do you know I had it all decided you’d say that.”

“What?”

“About waiting three quarters of an hour.”

“Oh you know altogether too much Elaine.... Have some pastries with your tea?”

“Oh but I dont know anything about anything, that’s the trouble.... I think I’ll take lemon please.”

Glasses clinked about them; through blue cigarettesmoke faces hats beards wagged, repeated greenish in the mirrors.

“But my de-e-ar it’s always the same old complex. It may be true of men but it says nothing in regard to women,” droned a woman’s voice from the next table.... “Your feminism rises into an insuperable barrier,” trailed a man’s husky meticulous tones. “What if I am an egoist? God knows I’ve suffered for it.” “Fire that purifies, Charley....” George was speaking, trying to catch her eye. “How’s the famous Jojo?”

“Oh let’s not talk about him.”

“The less said about him the better eh?”

“Now George I wont have you sneer at Jojo, for better or worse he is my husband, till divorce do us part.... No I wont have you laugh. You’re too crude and simple to understand him anyway. Jojo’s a very complicated rather tragic person.”

“For God’s sake don’t let’s talk about husbands and wives. The important thing, little Elaine, is that you and I are sitting here together without anyone to bother us.... Look when are we going to see each other again, really see each other, really....”

“We’re not going to be too real about this, are we George?” She laughed softly into her cup.

“Oh but I have so many things to say to you. I want to ask you so many things.”

She looked at him laughing, balancing a small cherry tartlet that had one bite out of it between a pink squaretipped finger and thumb. “Is that the way you act when you’ve got some miserable sinner on the witnessbox? I thought it was more like: Where were you on the night of February thirtyfirst?”

“But I’m dead serious, that’s what you cant understand, or wont.”

A young man stood at the table, swaying a little, looking down at them. “Hello Stan, where the dickens did you come

“Miss Oglethorpe this is Stanwood Emery, the son of the senior partner in our firm.”

“Oh it’s so wonderful to meet you Miss Oglethorpe. I saw you last night, but you didn’t see me.”

“Did you go to the show?”

“I almost jumped over the foots I thought you were so wonderful.”

He had a ruddy brown skin, anxious eyes rather near the bridge of a sharp fragillycut nose, a big mouth never still, wavy brown hair that stood straight up. Ellen looked from one to the other inwardly giggling. They were all three stiffening in their chairs.

“I saw the danderine lady this afternoon,” she said. “She impressed me enormously. Just my idea of a great lady on a white horse.”

“With rings on her finger and bells on her toes, And she shall make mischief wherever she goes.” Stan rattled it off quickly under his breath.

“Music, isnt it?” put in Ellen laughing. “I always say mischief.”

“Well how’s college?” asked Baldwin in a dry uncordial voice.

“I guess it’s still there,” said Stan blushing. “I wish they’d burn it down before I got back.” He got to his feet. “You must excuse me Mr. Baldwin.... My intrusion was infernally rude.” As he turned leaning towards Ellen she smelled his grainy whiskey breath. “Please forgive it, Miss Oglethorpe.”

She found herself holding out her hand; a dry skinny hand squeezed it hard. He strode out with swinging steps bumping into a waiter as he went.

“I cant make out that infernal young puppy,” burst out Baldwin. “Poor old Emery’s heartbroken about it. He’s

“But I don’t want to be the nigger on anybody’s safety-valve.” She laughed and let the lashes fall over her eyes.

“Let’s go out to the country somewhere this evening. I’ve been stifling in the office all day. I hate Sunday anyway.”

“But my rehearsal.”

“You could be sick. I’ll phone for a car.”

“Golly there’s Jojo.... Hello Jojo”; she waved her gloves above her head.

John Oglethorpe, his face powdered, his mouth arranged in a careful smile above his standup collar, advanced between the crowded tables, holding out his hand tightly squeezed into buff gloves with black stripes. “Heow deo you deo, my deah, this is indeed a surprise and a pleajah.”

“You know each other, don’t you? This is Mr. Baldwin.”

“Forgive me if I intrude ... er ... upon a tête à tête.”

“Nothing of the sort, sit down and we’ll all have a highball.... I was just dying to see you really Jojo.... By the way if you havent anything else to do this evening you might slip in down front for a few minutes. I want to know what you think about my reading of the part....”

“Certainly my deah, nothing could give me more pleajah.”

His whole body tense George Baldwin leaned back with his hand clasped behind the back of his chair. “Waiter ...” He broke his words off sharp like metal breaking. “Three Scotch highballs at once please.”

Oglethorpe rested his chin on the silver ball of his cane. “Confidence, Mr. Baldwin,” he began, “confidence between

“You see George, what’s the matter with Jojo is that he read too much Shakespeare in his youth.... But I’ve got to go or Merton will be bawling me out again.... Talk about industrial slavery. Jojo tell him about Equity.”

Baldwin got to his feet. There was a slight flush on his cheekbones. “Wont you let me take you up to the theater,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I never let anyone take me anywhere ... And Jojo you must stay sober to see me act.”

Fifth Avenue was pink and white under pink and white clouds in a fluttering wind that was fresh after the cloying talk and choke of tobaccosmoke and cocktails. She waved the taxistarter off merrily and smiled at him. Then she found a pair of anxious eyes looking into hers seriously out of a higharched brown face.

“I waited round to see you come out. Cant I take you somewhere? I’ve got my Ford round the corner.... Please.”

“But I’m just going up to the theater. I’ve got a rehearsal.”

“All right do let me take you there.”

She began putting a glove on thoughtfully. “All right, but it’s an awful imposition on you.”

“That’s fine. It’s right round here.... It was awfully rude of me to butt in that way, wasn’t it? But that’s another story.... Anyway I’ve met you. The Ford’s name is Dingo, but that’s another story too....”

“Still it’s nice to meet somebody humanly young. There’s nobody humanly young round New York.”

His face was scarlet when he leaned to crank the car. “Oh I’m too damn young.”

The motor sputtered, started with a roar. He jumped round and cut off the gas with a long hand. “We’ll probably get arrested; my muffler’s loose and liable to drop off.”

At Thirtyfourth Street they passed a girl riding slowly Danderine.

“Rings on her fingers,” chanted Stan pressing his buzzer, “And bells on her toes, And she shall cure dandruff wherever it grows.”

II. Longlegged Jack of the Isthmus

Noon on Union Square. Selling out. Must vacate. WE HAVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. Kneeling on the dusty asphalt little boys shine shoes lowshoes tans buttonshoes oxfords. The sun shines like a dandelion on the toe of each new-shined shoe. Right this way buddy, mister miss maam at the back of the store our new line of fancy tweeds highest value lowest price ... Gents, misses, ladies, cutrate ... WE HAVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. Must vacate.

Noon sunlight spirals dimly into the chopsuey joint. Muted music spirals Hindustan. He eats fooyong, she eats chowmein. They dance with their mouths full, slim blue jumper squeezed to black slick suit, peroxide curls against black slick hair.

Down Fourteenth Street, Glory Glory comes the Army, striding lasses, Glory Glory four abreast, the rotund shining, navy blue, Salvation Army band.

Highest value, lowest price. Must vacate. WE HAVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. Must vacate.

From Liverpool, British steamer Raleigh, Captain Kettlewell; 933 bales, 881 boxes, 10 baskets, 8 packages fabrics: 57 boxes, 89 bales, 18 baskets cotton thread: 156 bales felt: 4 bales asbestos: 100 sacks spools....

Joe Harland stopped typing and looked up at the ceiling. The tips of his fingers were sore. The office smelled stalely of paste and manifests and men in shirtsleeves. Through the open window he could see a piece of the dun wall of an airshaft and a man with a green eyeshade staring vacantly out of a window. The towheaded officeboy set a note on the corner of his desk: Mr. Pollock will see

From Glasgow, Dutch steamer Delft, Captain Tromp; 200 bales, 123 boxes, 14 kegs....

Joe Harland roamed about the Battery till he found an empty seat on a bench, then he let himself flop into it. The sun was drowning in tumultuous saffron steam behind Jersey. Well that’s over. He sat a long while staring at the sunset like at a picture in a dentist’s waiting room. Great whorls of smoke from a passing tug curled up black and scarlet against it. He sat staring at the sunset, waiting. That’s eighteen dollars and fifty cents I had before, less six dollars for the room, one dollar and eighty-four cents for laundry, and four dollars and fifty cents I owe Charley, makes seven dollars and eighty-four cents, eleven dollars and eighty four cents, twelve dollars and thirty-four cents from eighteen dollars and fifty cents leaves me six dollars and sixteen cents, three days to find another job if I go without drinks. O God wont my luck ever turn; used to have good enough luck in the old days. His knees were trembling, there was a sick burning in the pit of his stomach.

A fine mess you’ve made of your life Joseph Harland. Forty-five and no friends and not a cent to bless yourself with.

The sail of a catboat was a crimson triangle when it luffed a few feet from the concrete walk. A young man and a young girl ducked together as the slender boom swung across. They both were bronzed with the sun and had yellow weather bleached hair. Joe Harland gnawed his lip to keep back the tears as the catboat shrank into the ruddy murk of the bay. By God I need a drink.

“Aint it a croime? Aint it a croime?” The man in the seat to the left of him began to say over and over again. Joe Harland turned his head; the man had a red puckered face and silver hair. He held the dramatic section of the paper taut between two grimy flippers. “Them young actresses all dressed naked like that.... Why cant they let you alone.”

“Dont you like to see their pictures in the papers?”

“Why cant they let you alone I say.... If you aint got no work and you aint got no money, what’s the good of em I say?”

“Well lots of people like to see their pictures in the paper. Used to myself in the old days.”

“Used to be work in the old days.... You aint got no job now?” he growled savagely. Joe Harland shook his head. “Well what the hell? They ought to leave you alone oughtn’t they? Wont be no jobs till snow shoveling begins.”

“What’ll you do till then?”

The old man didnt answer. He bent over the paper again screwing up his eyes and muttering. “All dressed naked, it’s a croime I’m tellin yez.”

Joe Harland got to his feet and walked away.

It was almost dark; his knees were stiff from sitting still so long. As he walked wearily he could feel his potbelly cramped by his tight belt. Poor old warhorse you need a couple of drinks to think about things. A mottled beery smell came out through swinging doors. Inside the barkeep’s face was like a russet apple on a snug mahogany shelf.

“Gimme a shot of rye.” The whiskey stung his throat hot and fragrant. Makes a man of me that does. Without drinking the chaser he walked over to the free lunch and ate a ham sandwich and an olive. “Let’s have another rye Charley. That’s the stuff to make a man of you. I been laying off it too much, that’s what’s the matter with me. You wouldnt think it to look at me now, would you friend, but they used to call me the Wizard of Wall Street which is only another illustration of the peculiar predominance of luck in human affairs.... Yes sir with pleasure. Well, here’s health and long life and to hell with the jinx.... Hah makes a man of you ... Well I suppose there’s not one of you gentlemen here who hasnt at some time or other taken a plunger, and how many of you hasnt come back sadder and wiser. Another illustration of the peculiar predominance of luck in human affairs. But not so with me; gentlemen for ten years I played the market, for ten years I didn’t

In the crammed subway car the messenger boy was pressed up against the back of a tall blond woman who smelled of Mary Garden. Elbows, packages, shoulders, buttocks, jiggled closer with every lurch of the screeching express. His sweaty Western Union cap was knocked onto the side of his head. If I could have a dame like dat, a dame like dat’d be wort havin de train stalled, de lights go out, de train wrecked. I could have her if I had de noive an de jack. As the train slowed up she fell against him, he closed his eyes, didnt breathe, his nose was mashed against her neck. The train stopped. He was carried in a rush of people out the door.

Dizzy he staggered up into the air and the blinking blocks of lights. Upper Broadway was full of people. Sailors lounged in twos and threes at the corner of Ninetysixth. He ate a ham and a leberwurst sandwich in a delicatessen store. The woman behind the counter had buttercolored hair like the girl in the subway but she was fatter and older. Still chewing the crust of the last sandwich he went up in the elevator to the Japanese Garden. He sat thinking a while with the flicker of the screen in his eyes. Jeze dey’ll tink it funny to see a messengerboy up here in dis suit. I better get de hell outa here. I’ll go deliver my telegrams.

He tightened his belt as he walked down the stairs. Then he slouched up Broadway to 105th Street and east towards Columbus Avenue, noting doors, fire escapes, windows, cornices, carefully as he went. Dis is de joint. The only lights were on the second floor. He rang the second floor bell. The doorcatch clicked. He ran up the stairs. A woman

“Telegram for Santiono.”

“No such name here.”

“Sorry maam I musta rung de wrong bell.”

Door slammed in his nose. His sallow sagging face tightened up all of a sudden. He ran lightly on tiptoe up the stairs to the top landing then up the little ladder to a trapdoor. The bolt ground as he slid it back. He caught in his breath. Once on the cindergritty roof he let the trapdoor back softly into place. Chimneys stood up in alert ranks all about him, black against the glare from the streets. Crouching he stepped gingerly to the rear edge of the house, let himself down from the gutter to the fire escape. His foot grazed a flowerpot as he landed. Everything dark. Crawled through a window into a stuffy womansmelling room, slid a hand under the pillow of an unmade bed, along a bureau, spilled some facepowder, in tiny jerks pulled open the drawer, a watch, ran a pin into his finger, a brooch, something that crinkled in the back corner; bills, a roll of bills. Getaway, no chances tonight. Down the fire escape to the next floor. No light. Another window open. Takin candy from a baby. Same room, smelling of dogs and incense, some kind of dope. He could see himself faintly, fumbling, in the glass of the bureau, put his hand into a pot of cold cream, wiped it off on his pants. Hell. Something fluffysoft shot with a yell from under his feet. He stood trembling in the middle of the narrow room. The little dog was yapping loud in a corner.

The room swung into light. A girl stood in the open door, pointing a revolver at him. There was a man behind her.

“What are you doing? Why it’s a Western Union boy....” The light was a coppery tangle about her hair, picked out her body under the red silk kimono. The young man was wiry and brown in his unbuttoned shirt. “Well what are you doing in that room?”

“Please maam it was hunger brought me to it, hunger an my poor ole muder starvin.”

“Isnt that wonderful Stan? He’s a burglar.” She brandished the revolver. “Come on out in the hall.”

“Yes miss anythin you say miss, but dont give me up to de bulls. Tink o de ole muder starvin her heart out.”

“All right but if you took anything you must give it back.”

“Honest I didn’t have a chanct.”

Stan flopped into a chair laughing and laughing. “Ellie you take the cake.... Wouldnt a thought you could do it.”

“Well didnt I play this scene in stock all last summer?... Give up your gun.”

“No miss I wouldn’t carry no gun.”

“Well I dont believe you but I guess I’ll let you go.”

“Gawd bless you miss.”

“But you must make some money as a messengerboy.”

“I was fired last week miss, it’s only hunger made me take to it.”

Stan got to his feet. “Let’s give him a dollar an tell him to get the hell out of here.”

When he was outside the door she held out the dollarbill to him.

“Jez you’re white,” he said choking. He grabbed the hand with the bill in it and kissed it; leaning over her hand kissing it wetly he caught a glimpse of her body under the arm in the drooping red silk sleeve. As he walked, still trembling, down the stairs, he looked back and saw the man and the girl standing side by side with their arms around each other watching him. His eyes were full of tears. He stuffed the dollarbill into his pocket.

Kid if you keep on bein a softie about women you’re goin to find yourself in dat lil summer hotel up de river.... Pretty soft though. Whistling under his breath he walked to the L and took an uptown train. Now and then he put his hand over his back pocket to feel the roll of bills. He ran up to the third floor of an apartmenthouse that smelled of fried fish and coal gas, and rang three times at a grimy glass door. After a pause he knocked softly.

“Zat you Moike?” came faintly the whine of a woman’s voice.

“No it’s Nicky Schatz.”

A sharpfaced woman with henna hair opened the door. She had on a fur coat over frilly lace underclothes.

“Howsa boy?”

“Jeze a swell dame caught me when I was tidying up a little job and whatjer tink she done?” He followed the woman, talking excitedly, into a dining room with peeling walls. On the table were used glasses and a bottle of Green River whiskey. “She gave me a dollar an tole me to be a good little boy.”

“The hell she did?”

“Here’s a watch.”

“It’s an Ingersoll, I dont call ’at a watch.”

“Well set yer lamps on dis.” He pulled out the roll of bills. “Aint dat a wad o lettuce?... Got in himmel, dey’s tousands.”

“Lemme see.” She grabbed the bills out of his hand, her eyes popping. “Hay ye’re cookoo kid.” She threw the roll on the floor and wrung her hands with a swaying Jewish gesture. “Oyoy it’s stage money. It’s stage money ye simple saphead, you goddam ...”

Giggling they sat side by side on the edge of the bed. Through the stuffy smell of the room full of little silky bits of clothing falling off chairs a fading freshness came from a bunch of yellow roses on the bureau. Their arms tightened round each other’s shoulders; suddenly he wrenched himself away and leaned over her to kiss her mouth. “Some burglar,” he said breathlessly.

“Stan ...”

“Ellie.”

“I thought it might be Jojo;” she managed to force a whisper through a tight throat. “It’ll be just like him to come sneaking around.”

“Ellie I don’t understand how you can live with him among all these people. You’re so lovely. I just dont see you in all this.”

“It was easy enough before I met you.... And honestly Jojo’s all right. He’s just a peculiar very unhappy person.”

“But you’re out of another world old kid.... You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms.”

“Stan your back’s brown all the way down.”

“That’s swimming.”

“So soon?”

“I guess most of it’s left over from last summer.”

“You’re the fortunate youth all right. I never learned how to swim properly.”

“I’ll teach you.... Look next Sunday bright and early we’ll hop into Dingo and go down to Long Beach. Way down at the end there’s never anybody.... You dont even have to wear a bathingsuit.”

“I like the way you’re so lean and hard Stan.... Jojo’s white and flabby almost like a woman.”

“For crissake don’t talk about him now.”

Stan stood with his legs apart buttoning his shirt. “Look Ellie let’s beat it out an have a drink.... God I’d hate to run into somebody now an have to talk lies to ’em.... I bet I’d crown ’em with a chair.”

“We’ve got time. Nobody ever comes home here before twelve.... I’m just here myself because I’ve got a sick headache.”

“Ellie, d’you like your sick headache?”

“I’m crazy about it Stan.”

“I guess that Western Union burglar knew that.... Gosh.... Burglary, adultery, sneaking down fireescapes, cattreading along gutters. Judas it’s a great life.”

Ellen gripped his hand hard as they came down the stairs stepping together. In front of the letterboxes in the shabby hallway he grabbed her suddenly by the shoulders and pressed her head back and kissed her. Hardly breathing they floated down the street toward Broadway. He had his hand under

Somewhere they sat down at a table. An orchestra throbbed. “No Stan I cant drink anything.... You go ahead.”

“But Ellie, arent you feeling swell like I am?”

“Sweller.... I just couldnt stand feeling any better.... I couldnt keep my mind on a glass long enough to drink it.” She winced under the brightness of his eyes.

Stan was bubbling drunk. “I wish earth had thy body as fruit to eat,” he kept repeating. Ellen was all the time twisting about bits of rubbery cold Welsh rabbit with her fork. She had started to drop with a lurching drop like a rollercoaster’s into shuddering pits of misery. In a square place in the middle of the floor four couples were dancing the tango. She got to her feet.

“Stan I’m going home. I’ve got to get up early and rehearse all day. Call me up at twelve at the theater.”

He nodded and poured himself another highball. She stood behind his chair a second looking down at his long head of close ruffled hair. He was spouting verses softly to himself. “Saw the white implacable Aphrodite, damn fine. Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandaled, Jiminy.... Shine as fire of sunset on western waters. Saw the reluctant ... goddam fine sapphics.”

Once out on Broadway again she felt very merry. She stood in the middle of the street waiting for the uptown car. An occasional taxi whizzed by her. From the river on the warm wind came the long moan of a steamboat whistle. In

“I’ll tell yer Jim it’s Irene Castle that makes the hit wid me.... To see her dance the onestep juss makes me hear angels hummin.”

“Naw she’s too skinny.”

“But she’s made the biggest hit ever been made on Broadway.”

Ellen got off the car and walked east along the desolate empty pavements of 105th Street. A fetor of mattresses and sleep seeped out from the blocks of narrow-windowed houses. Along the gutters garbagecans stank sourly. In the shadow of a doorway a man and girl swayed tightly clamped in each other’s arms. Saying good night. Ellen smiled happily. Greatest hit on Broadway. The words were an elevator carrying her up dizzily, up into some stately height where electric light signs crackled scarlet and gold and green, where were bright roofgardens that smelled of orchids, and the slow throb of a tango danced in a goldgreen dress with Stan while handclapping of millions beat in gusts like a hailstorm about them. Greatest hit on Broadway.

She was walking up the scaling white stairs. Before the door marked Sunderland a feeling of sick disgust suddenly choked her. She stood a long time her heart pounding with the key poised before the lock. Then with a jerk she pushed the key in the lock and opened the door.

“Strange fish, Jimmy, strange fish.” Herf and Ruth Prynne sat giggling over plates of paté in the innermost

“All the ham actors in the world live up at Mrs. Sunderland’s.”

“What’s the latest news from the Balkans?”

“Balkans is right...”

Beyond Ruth’s black straw hat with red poppies round the crown Jimmy looked at the packed tables where faces decomposed into a graygreen blur. Two sallow hawkfaced waiters elbowed their way through the seesawing chatter of talk. Ruth was looking at him with dilated laughing eyes while she bit at a stalk of celery.

“Whee I feel so drunk,” she was spluttering. “It went straight to my head.... Isnt it terrible?”

“Well what were these shocking goingson at 105th Street?”

“O you missed it. It was a shriek.... Everybody was out in the hall, Mrs. Sunderland with her hair in curlpapers, and Cassie was crying and Tony Hunter was standing in his door in pink pyjamas....”

“Who’s he?”

“Just a juvenile.... But Jimmy I must have told you about Tony Hunter. Peculiar poissons Jimmy, peculiar poissons.”

Jimmy felt himself blushing, he bent over his plate. “Oh is that’s what’s his trouble?” he said stiffly.

“Now you’re shocked, Jimmy; admit that you’re shocked.”

“No I’m not; go ahead, spill the dirt.”

“Oh Jimmy you’re such a shriek.... Well Cassie was sobbing and the little dog was barking, and the invisible Costello was yelling Police and fainting into the arms of an unknown man in a dress suit. And Jojo was brandishing a revolver, a little nickel one, may have been a waterpistol for all I know.... The only person who looked in their right senses was Elaine Olgethorpe.... You know the titianhaired vision that so impressed your infant mind.”

“Honestly Ruth my infant mind wasnt as impressed as all that.”

“Well at last the Ogle got tired of his big scene and cried out in ringing tones, Disarm me or I shall kill this woman. And Tony Hunter grabbed the pistol and took it into his room. Then Elaine Oglethorpe made a little bow as if she were taking a curtaincall, said Well goodnight everybody, and ducked into her room cool as a cucumber.... Can you picture it?” Ruth suddenly lowered her voice, “But everybody in the restaurant is listening to us.... And really I think its very disgusting. But the worst is yet to come. After the Ogle had banged on the door a couple of times and not gotten any answer he went up to Tony and rolling his eyes like Forbes Robertson in Hamlet put his arm round him and said Tony can a broken man crave asylum in your room for the night.... Honestly I was just so shocked.”

“Is Oglethorpe that way too?”

Ruth nodded several times.

“Then why did she marry him?”

“Why that girl’d marry a trolleycar if she thought she could get anything by it.”

“Ruth honestly I think you’ve got the whole thing sized up wrong.”

“Jimmy you’re too innocent to live. But let me finish the tragic tale.... After those two had disappeared and locked the door behind them the most awful powwow you’ve ever imagined went on in the hall. Of course Cassie had been having hysterics all along just to add to the excitement. When I came back from getting her some sweet spirits of ammonia in the bathroom I found the court in session. It was a shriek. Miss Costello wanted the Oglethorpes thrown out at dawn and said she’d leave if they didn’t and Mrs. Sunderland kept moaning that in thirty years of theatrical experience she’d never seen a scene like that, and the man in the dress suit who was Benjamin Arden ... you know he played a character part in Honeysuckle Jim ... said he thought people like Tony Hunter ought to be in jail. When I went to bed it was still going on. Do you wonder that I

Joe Harland stood in his hall bedroom with his hands in his pockets staring at the picture of The Stag at Bay that hung crooked in the middle of the verdegris wall that hemmed in the shaky iron bed. His clawcold fingers moved restlessly in the bottoms of his trousers pockets. He was talking aloud in a low even voice: “Oh, it’s all luck you know, but that’s the last time I try the Merivales. Emily’d have given it to me if it hadn’t been for that damned old tightwad. Got a soft spot in her heart Emily has. But none of em seem to realize that these things aren’t always a man’s own fault. It’s luck that’s all it is, and Lord knows they used to eat out of my hand in the old days.” His rising voice grated on his ears. He pressed his lips together. You’re getting batty old man. He stepped back and forth in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. Three steps. Three steps. He went to the washstand and drank out of the pitcher. The water tasted of rank wood and sloppails. He spat the last mouthful back. I need a good tenderloin steak not water. He pounded his clenched fists together. I got to do something. I got to do something.

He put on his overcoat to hide the rip in the seat of his trousers. The frayed sleeves tickled his wrists. The dark stairs creaked. He was so weak he kept grabbing the rail for fear of falling. The old woman pounced out of a door on him in the lower hall. The rat had squirmed sideways on her head as if trying to escape from under the thin gray pompadour.

“Meester Harland how about you pay me tree veeks rent?”

“I’m just on my way out to cash a check now, Mrs. Budkowitz. You’ve been so kind about this little matter.... And perhaps it will interest you to know that I have

“I vait tree veeks ... I not vait any more.”

“But my dear lady I assure you upon my honor as a gentleman...”

Mrs. Budkowitz began to jerk her shoulders about. Her voice rose thin and wailing like the sound of a peanut wagon. “You pay me tat fifteen dollar or I rent te room to somebody else.”

“I’ll pay you this very evening.”

“Vat time?”

“Six o’clock.”

“Allright. Plis you give me key.”

“But I cant do that. Suppose I was late?”

“Tat’s vy I vant te key. I’m trough vit vaiting.”

“All right take the key..... I hope you understand that after this insulting behavior it will be impossible for me to remain longer under your roof.”

Mrs. Budkowitz laughed hoarsely. “Allright ven you pay me fifteen dollar you can take avay your grip.” He put the two keys tied together with string into her gray hand and slammed the door and strode down the street.

At the corner of Third Avenue he stopped and stood shivering in the hot afternoon sunlight, sweat running down behind his ears. He was too weak to swear. Jagged oblongs of harsh sound broke one after another over his head as an elevated past over. Trucks grated by along the avenue raising a dust that smelled of gasoline and trampled horsedung. The dead air stank of stores and lunchrooms. He began walking slowly uptown towards Fourteenth Street. At a corner a crinkly warm smell of cigars stopped him like a hand on his shoulder. He stood a while looking in the little shop watching the slim stained fingers of the cigarroller shuffle the brittle outside leaves of tobacco. Remembering Romeo and Juliet Arguelles Morales he sniffed deeply. The slick tearing of tinfoil, the careful slipping off of the band, the tiny ivory penknife for the end that slit delicately as flesh, the smell of the wax match, the long inhaling of bitter

He walked west along Fourteenth and without stopping to think and lose his nerve went down into a small basement stationery store, strode through unsteadily to the back, and stood swaying in the doorway of a little office where sat at a rolltop desk a blueeyed baldheaded fat man.

“Hello Felsius,” croaked Harland.

The fat man got to his feet bewildered. “God it aint Mr. Harland is it?”

“Joe Harland himself Felsius ... er somewhat the worse for wear.” A titter died in his throat.

“Well I’ll be ... Sit right down Mr. Harland.”

“Thank you Felsius.... Felsius I’m down and out.”

“It must be five years since I’ve seen you Mr. Harland.”

“A rotten five years it’s been for me.... I suppose its all luck. My luck wont ever change on this earth again. Remember when I’d come in from romping with the bulls and raise hell round the office? A pretty good bonus I gave the office force that Christmas.”

“Indeed it was Mr. Harland.”

“Must be a dull life storekeeping after the Street.”

“More to my taste Mr. Harland, nobody to boss me here.”

“And how’s the wife and kids?”

“Fine, fine; the oldest boy’s just out of highschool.”

“That the one you named for me?”

Felsius nodded. His fingers fat as sausages were tapping uneasily on the edge of the desk.

“I remember I thought I’d do something for that kid someday. It’s a funny world.” Harland laughed feebly. He felt a shuddery blackness stealing up behind his head. He clenched his hands round his knee and contracted the muscles of his arms. “You see Felsius, it’s this way.... I find myself for the moment in a rather embarrassing situation

“Mr. Harland I cant do it.” Felsius got to his feet. “I’m sorry but principles is principles.... I’ve never borrowed or lent a cent in my life. I’m sure you understand that....”

“All right, dont say any more.” Harland got meekly to his feet. “Let me have a quarter.... I’m not so young as I was and I haven’t eaten for two days,” he mumbled, looking down at his cracked shoes. He put out his hand to steady himself by the desk.

Felsius moved back against the wall as if to ward off a blow. He held out a fiftycent piece on thick trembling fingers. Harland took it, turned without a word and stumbled out through the shop. Felsius pulled a violet bordered handkerchief out of his pocket, mopped his brow and turned to his letters again.

We take the liberty of calling the trade’s attention to four new superfine Mullen products that we feel the greatest confidence in recommending to our customers as a fresh and absolutely unparalleled departure in the papermanufacturer’s art ...

They came out of the movie blinking into bright pools of electric glare. Cassie watched him stand with his feet apart and eyes absorbed lighting a cigar. McAvoy was a stocky man with a beefy neck; he wore a single-button coat, a checked vest and a dogshead pin in his brocade necktie.

“That was a rotton show or I’m a Dutchman,” he was growling.

“But I loved the twavel pictures, Morris, those Swiss peasants dancing; I felt I was wight there.”

“Damn hot in there.... I’d like a drink.”

“Now Morris you promised,” she whined.

“Oh I just meant sodawater, dont get nervous.” “Oh that’d be lovely. I’d just love a soda.”

“Then we’ll go for a walk in the Park.”

She let the lashes fall over her eyes “Allwight Morris,” she whispered without looking at him. She put her hand a little tremulously through his arm.

“If only I wasn’t so goddam broke.”

“I dont care Morris.”

“I do by God.”

At Columbus Circle they went into a drugstore. Girls in green, violet, pink summer dresses, young men in straw hats were three deep along the sodafountain. She stood back and admiringly watched him shove his way through. A man was leaning across the table behind her talking to a girl; their faces were hidden by their hatbrims.

“You juss tie that bull outside, I said to him, then I resigned.”

“You mean you were fired.”

“No honest I resigned before he had a chance.... He’s a stinker d’you know it? I wont take no more of his lip. When I was walkin outa the office he called after me.... Young man lemme tell ye sumpen. You wont never make good till you learn who’s boss around this town, till you learn that it aint you.”

Morris was holding out a vanilla icecream soda to her. “Dreamin’ again Cassie; anybody’d think you was a snowbird.” Smiling brighteyed, she took the soda; he was drinking coca-cola. “Thank you,” she said. She sucked with pouting lips at a spoonful of icecream. “Ou Morris it’s delicious.”

The path between round splashes of arclights ducked into darkness. Through slant lights and nudging shadows came a smell of dusty leaves and trampled grass and occasionally a rift of cool fragrance from damp earth under shrubberies.

“Oh I love it in the Park,” chanted Cassie. She stifled a belch. “D’you know Morris I oughnt to have eaten that icecweam. It always gives me gas.”

Morris said nothing. He put his arm round her and held her tight to him so that his thigh rubbed against hers as they walked. “Well Pierpont Morgan is dead.... I wish he’d left me a couple of million.”

“Oh Morris wouldn’t it be wonderful? Where’d we live? On Central Park South.” They stood looking back at the glow of electric signs that came from Columbus Circle. To the left they could see curtained lights in the windows of a whitefaced apartmenthouse. He looked stealthily to the right and left and then kissed her. She twisted her mouth out from under his.

“Dont.... Somebody might see us,” she whispered breathless. Inside something like a dynamo was whirring, whirring. “Morris I’ve been saving it up to tell you. I think Goldweiser’s going to give me a specialty bit in his next show. He’s stagemanager of the second woad company and he’s got a lot of pull up at the office. He saw me dance yesterday.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he’d fix it up for me to see the big boss Monday.... Oh but Morris it’s not the sort of thing I want to do, it’s so vulgar and howid.... I want to do such beautiful things. I feel I’ve got it in me, something without a name fluttering inside, a bird of beautiful plumage in a howid iron cage.”

“That’s the trouble with you, you’ll never make good, you’re too upstage.” She looked up at him with streaming eyes that glistened in the white powdery light of an arclamp.

“Oh don’t cry for God’s sake. I didnt mean anythin.”

“I’m not upstage with you Morris, am I?” She sniffed and wiped her eyes.

“You are kinda, that’s what makes me sore. I like my little girl to pet me an love me up a little. Hell Cassie life aint all beer an sourkraut.” As they walked tightly pressed one to another they felt rock under their feet. They were on a little hill of granite outcrop with shrubbery all round. The lights from the buildings that hemmed in the end of the

“Take that redhaired girl up at 105th Street.... I bet she wouldnt be upstage when she was alone with a feller.”

“She’s a dweadful woman, she dont care what kind of a wep she has.... Oh I think you’re howid.” She began to cry again.

He pulled her to him roughly, pressed her to him hard with his spread hands on her back. She felt her legs tremble and go weak. She was falling through colored shafts of faintness. His mouth wouldnt let her catch her breath.

“Look out,” he whispered pulling himself away from her. They walked on unsteadily down the path through the shrubbery. “I guess it aint.”

“What Morris?”

“A cop. God it’s hell not havin anywhere to go. Cant we go to your room?”

“But Morris they’ll all see us.”

“Who cares? They all do it in that house.”

“Oh I hate you when you talk that way.... Weal love is all pure and lovely.... Morris you don’t love me.”

“Quit pickin on me cant you Cassie for a minute...? Goddam it’s hell to be broke.”

They sat down on a bench in the light. Behind them automobiles slithered with a constant hissing scuttle in two streams along the roadway. She put her hand on his knee and he covered it with his big stubby hand.

“Morris I feel that we are going to be very happy from now on, I feel it. You’re going to get a fine job, I’m sure you are.”

“I aint so sure.... I’m not so young as I was Cassie. I aint got any time to lose.”

“Why you’re terribly young, you’re only thirtyfive Morris.... And I think that something wonderful is going to happen. I’m going to get a chance to dance.”

“Why you ought to make more than that redhaired girl.”

“Elaine Oglethorpe.... She doesnt make so much. But

“I want money. Once you got money you can do what you like.”

“But Morris dont you believe that you can do anything if you just want to hard enough? I believe that.” He edged his free arm round her waist. Gradually she let her head fall on his shoulder. “Oh I dont care,” she whispered with dry lips. Behind them limousines, roadsters, touringcars, sedans, slithered along the roadway with snaky glint of lights running in two smooth continuous streams.

The brown serge smelled of mothballs as she folded it. She stooped to lay it in the trunk; a layer of tissuepaper below rustled when she smoothed the wrinkles with her hand. The first violet morning light outside the window was making the electriclight bulb grow red like a sleepless eye. Ellen straightened herself suddenly and stood stiff with her arms at her sides, her face flushed pink. “It’s just too low,” she said. She spread a towel over the dresses and piled brushes, a handmirror, slippers, chemises, boxes of powder in pellmell on top of them. Then she slammed down the lid of the trunk, locked it and put the key in her flat alligatorskin purse. She stood looking dazedly about the room sucking a broken fingernail. Yellow sunlight was obliquely drenching the chimneypots and cornices of the houses across the street. She found herself staring at the white E.T.O. at the end of her trunk. “It’s all too terribly disgustingly low,” she said again. Then she grabbed a nailfile off the bureau and scratched out the O. “Whee,” she whispered and snapped her fingers. After she had put on a little bucketshaped black hat and a veil, so that people wouldn’t see she’d been crying, she piled a lot of books, Youth’s Encounter, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Golden Ass, Imaginary Conversations, Aphrodite, Chansons de Bilitis and the Oxford Book of French Verse in a silk shawl and tied them together.

There was a faint tapping at the door. “Who’s that,” she whispered.

“It just me,” came a tearful voice.

Ellen unlocked the door. “Why Cassie what’s the matter?” Cassie rubbed her wet face in the hollow of Ellen’s neck. “Oh Cassie you’re gumming my veil.... What on earth’s the matter?”

“I’ve been up all night thinking how unhappy you must be.”

“But Cassie I’ve never been happier in my life.”

“Aren’t men dweadful?”

“No.... They are much nicer than women anyway.”

“Elaine I’ve got to tell you something. I know you dont care anything about me but I’m going to tell you all the same.”

“Of course I care about you Cassie.... Dont be silly. But I’m busy now.... Why dont you go back to bed and tell me later?”

“I’ve got to tell you now.” Ellen sat down on her trunk resignedly. “Elaine I’ve bwoken it off with Morris.... Isn’t it tewible?” Cassie wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her lavender dressinggown and sat down beside Ellen on the trunk.

“Look dear,” said Ellen gently. “Suppose you wait just a second, I’m going to telephone for a taxi. I want to make a getaway before Jojo’s up. I’m sick of big scenes.” The hall smelled stuffily of sleep and massagecream. Ellen talked very low into the receiver. The gruff man’s voice at the garage growled pleasantly in her ears. “Sure right away miss.” She tiptoed springily back into the room and closed the door.

“I thought he loved me, honestly I did Elaine. Oh men are so dweadful. Morris was angwy because I wouldn’t live with him. I think it would be wicked. I’d work my fingers to the bone for him, he knows that. Havent I been doing it two years? He said he couldnt go on unless he had me weally, you know what he meant, and I said our love was so beautiful it could go on for years and years. I could love him for

“Dont worry about that Cassie, he’ll come back all right.”

“No but you’re so material, Elaine. I mean spiwitually our union is bwoken forever. Cant you see there was this beautiful divine spiwitual thing between us and it’s bwoken.” She began to sob again with her face pressed into Ellen’s shoulder.

“But Cassie I dont see what fun you get out of it all?”

“Oh you dont understand. You’re too young. I was like you at first except that I wasnt mawied and didnt wun awound with men. But now I want spiwitual beauty. I want to get it through my dancing and my life, I want beauty everywhere and I thought Morris wanted it.”

“But Morris evidently did.”

“Oh Elaine you’re howid, and I love you so much.”

Ellen got to her feet. “I’m going to run downstairs so that the taximan wont ring the bell.”

“But you cant go like this.”

“You just watch me.” Ellen gathered up the bundle of books in one hand and in the other carried the black leather dressingcase. “Look Cassie will you be a dear and show him the trunk when he comes up to get it.... And one other thing, when Stan Emery calls up tell him to call me at the Brevoort or at the Lafayette. Thank goodness I didnt deposit my money last week.... And Cassie if you find any little odds and ends of mine around you just keep em.... Goodby.” She lifted her veil and kissed Cassie quickly on the cheeks.

“Oh how can you be so bwave as to go away all alone like this.... You’ll let Wuth and me come down to see you wont you? We’re so fond of you. Oh Elaine you’re going to have a wonderful career, I know you are.”

“And promise not to tell Jojo where I am.... He’ll

She found the taxidriver in the hall looking at the names above the pushbuttons. He went up to fetch her trunk. She settled herself happily on the dusty buff seat of the taxi, taking deep breaths of the riversmelling morning air. The taxidriver smiled roundly at her when he had let the trunk slide off his back onto the dashboard.

“Pretty heavy, miss.”

“It’s a shame you had to carry it all alone.”

“Oh I kin carry heavier’n ’at.”

“I want to go to the Hotel Brevoort, Fifth Avenue at about Eighth Street.”

When he leaned to crank the car the man pushed his hat back on his head letting ruddy curly hair out over his eyes. “All right I’ll take you anywhere you like,” he said as he hopped into his seat in the jiggling car. When they turned down into the very empty sunlight of Broadway a feeling of happiness began to sizzle and soar like rockets inside her. The air beat fresh, thrilling in her face. The taxidriver talked back at her through the open window.

“I thought yous was catchin a train to go away somewhere, miss.”

“Well I am going away somewhere.”

“It’d be a foine day to be goin away somewhere.”

“I’m going away from my husband.” The words popped out of her mouth before she could stop them.

“Did he trow you out?”

“No I cant say he did that,” she said laughing.

“My wife trun me out tree weeks ago.”

“How was that?”

“Locked de door when I came home one night an wouldnt let me in. She’d had the lock changed when I was out workin.”

“That’s a funny thing to do.”

“She says I git slopped too often. I aint goin back to her an I aint goin to support her no more.... She can put me in jail if she likes. I’m troo. I’m gettin an apartment on

“Matrimony isnt much is it?”

“You said it. What leads up to it’s all right, but gettin married is loike de mornin after.”

Fifth Avenue was white and empty and swept by a sparkling wind. The trees in Madison Square were unexpectedly bright green like ferns in a dun room. At the Brevoort a sleepy French nightporter carried her baggage. In the low whitepainted room the sunlight drowsed on a faded crimson armchair. Ellen ran about the room like a small child kicking her heels and clapping her hands. With pursed lips and tilted head she arranged her toilet things on the bureau. Then she hung her yellow nightgown on a chair and undressed, caught sight of herself in the mirror, stood naked looking at herself with her hands on her tiny firm appleshaped breasts.

She pulled on her nightgown and went to the phone. “Please send up a pot of chocolate and rolls to 108 ... as soon as you can please.” Then she got into bed. She lay laughing with her legs stretched wide in the cool slippery sheets.

Hairpins were sticking into her head. She sat up and pulled them all out and shook the heavy coil of her hair down about her shoulders. She drew her knees up to her chin and sat thinking. From the street she could hear the occasional rumble of a truck. In the kitchens below her room a sound of clattering had begun. From all around came a growing rumble of traffic beginning. She felt hungry and alone. The bed was a raft on which she was marooned alone, always alone, afloat on a growling ocean. A shudder went down her spine. She drew her knees up closer to her chin.

III. Nine Day’s Wonder

The sun’s moved to Jersey, the sun’s behind Hoboken.

Covers are clicking on typewriters, rolltop desks are closing; elevators go up empty, come down jammed. It’s ebbtide in the downtown district, flood in Flatbush, Woodlawn, Dyckman Street, Sheepshead Bay, New Lots Avenue, Canarsie.

Pink sheets, green sheets, gray sheets, FULL MARKET REPORTS, FINALS ON HAVRE DE GRACE. Print squirms among the shopworn officeworn sagging faces, sore fingertips, aching insteps, strongarm men cram into subway expresses. SENATORS 8, GIANTS 2, DIVA RECOVERS PEARLS, $800,000 ROBBERY.

It’s ebbtide on Wall Street, floodtide in the Bronx.

The sun’s gone down in Jersey.

“Godamighty,” shouted Phil Sandbourne and pounded with his fist on the desk, “I don’t think so.... A man’s morals arent anybody’s business. It’s his work that counts.”

“Well?”

“Well I think Stanford White has done more for the city of New York that any other man living. Nobody knew there was such a thing as architecture before he came.... And to have this Thaw shoot him down in cold blood and then get away with it.... By gad if the people of this town had the spirit of guineapigs they’d——”

“Phil you’re getting all excited over nothing.” The other man took his cigar out of his mouth and leaned back in his swivel chair and yawned.

“Oh hell I want a vacation. Golly it’ll be good to get out in those old Maine woods again.”

“What with Jew lawyers and Irish judges ...” spluttered Phil.

“Aw pull the chain, old man.”

“A fine specimen of a public-spirited citizen you are Hartly.”

Hartly laughed and rubbed the palm of his hand over his bald head. “Oh that stuff’s all right in winter, but I cant go it in summer.... Hell all I live for is three weeks’ vacation anyway. What do I care if all the architects in New York get bumped off as long as it dont raise the price of commutation to New Rochelle.... Let’s go eat.” As they went down in the elevator Phil went on talking: “The only other man I ever knew who was really a born in the bone architect was ole Specker, the feller I worked for when I first came north, a fine old Dane he was too. Poor devil died o cancer two years ago. Man, he was an architect. I got a set of plans and specifications home for what he called a communal building.... Seventyfive stories high stepped back in terraces with a sort of hanging garden on every floor, hotels, theaters, Turkish baths, swimming pools, department stores, heating plant, refrigerating and market space all in the same buildin.”

“Did he eat coke?”

“No siree he didnt.”

They were walking east along Thirtyfourth Street, sparse of people in the sultry midday. “Gad,” burst out Phil Sandbourne, suddenly. “The girls in this town get prettier every year. Like these new fashions, do you?”

“Sure. All I wish is that I was gettin younger every year instead of older.”

“Yes about all us old fellers can do is watch em go past.”

“That’s fortunate for us or we’d have our wives out after us with bloodhounds.... Man when I think of those mighthavebeens!”

As they crossed Fifth Avenue Phil caught sight of a girl in a taxicab. From under the black brim of a little hat with a red cockade in it two gray eyes flash green black into his. He swallowed his breath. The traffic roars dwindled into

The burglaralarm across the street had rung on steadily. Jimmy’s sleep had been strung on it in hard knobs like beads on a string. Knocking woke him. He sat up in bed with a lurch and found Stan Emery, his face gray with dust, his hands in the pockets of a red leather coat, standing at the foot of the bed. He was laughing swaying back and forth on the balls of his feet.

“Gosh what time is it?” Jimmy sat up in bed digging his knuckles into his eyes. He yawned and looked about with bitter dislike, at the wallpaper the dead green of Poland Water bottles, at the split green shade that let in a long trickle of sunlight, at the marble fireplace blocked up by an enameled tin plate painted with scaly roses, at the frayed blue bathrobe on the foot of the bed, at the mashed cigarette-butts in the mauve glass ashtray.

Stan’s face was red and brown and laughing under the chalky mask of dust. “Eleven thirty,” he was saying.

“Let’s see that’s six hours and a half. I guess that’ll do. But Stan what the hell are you doing here?”

“You havent got a little nip of liquor anywhere have you Herf? Dingo and I are extraordinarily thirsty. We came all the way from Boston and only stopped once for gas and water. I havent been to bed for two days. I want to see if I can last out the week.”

“Kerist I wish I could last out the week in bed.”

“What you need’s a job on a newspaper to keep you busy Herfy.”

“What’s going to happen to you Stan ...” Jimmy twisted himself round so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed “... is that you’re going to wake up one morning and find yourself on a marble slab at the morgue.”

The bathroom smelled of other people’s toothpaste and of chloride disinfectant. The bathmat was wet and Jimmy folded it into a small square before he stepped gingerly out of his slippers. The cold water set the blood jolting through him. He ducked his head under and jumped out and stood shaking himself like a dog, the water streaming into his eyes and ears. Then he put on his bathrobe and lathered his face.

he hummed off key as he scraped his chin with the safety-razor. Mr. Grover I’m afraid I’m going to have to give up the job after next week. Yes I’m going abroad; I’m going to do foreign correspondent work for the A. P. To Mexico for the U. P. To Jericho more likely, Halifax Correspondent of the Mudturtle Gazette. It was Christmas in the harem and the eunuchs all were there.

He doused his face with listerine, bundled his toilet things into his wet towel and smarting ran back up a flight of

“Good morning Mrs. Maginnis.”

“It’s goin to be powerful hot today, Mr. Herf.”

“I guess it is all right.”

Stan was lying on the bed reading La Revolte des Anges. “Darn it, I wish I knew some languages the way you do Herfy.”

“Oh I dont know any French any more. I forget em so much quicker than I learn em.”

“By the way I’m fired from college.”

“How’s that?”

“Dean told me he thought it advisable I shouldnt come back next year ... felt that there were other fields of activity where my activities could be more actively active. You know the crap.”

“That’s a darn shame.”

“No it isnt; I’m tickled to death. I asked him why he hadnt fired me before if he felt that way. Father’ll be sore as a crab ... but I’ve got enough cash on me not to go home for a week. I dont give a damn anyway. Honest havent you got any liquor?”

“Now Stan how’s a poor wageslave like myself going to have a cellar on thirty dollars a week?”

“This is a pretty lousy room.... You ought to have been born a capitalist like me.”

“Room’s not so bad.... What drives me crazy is that paranoiac alarm across the street that rings all night.”

“That’s a burglar alarm isn’t it?”

“There cant be any burglars because the place is vacant. The wires must get crossed or something. I dont know when it stopped but it certainly drove me wild when I went to bed this morning.”

“Now James Herf you dont mean me to infer that you come home sober every night?”

“A man’d have to be deaf not to hear that damn thing, drunk or sober.”

“Well in my capacity of bloated bondholder I want you to come out and eat lunch. Do you realize that you’ve been playing round with your toilet for exactly one hour by the clock?”

They went down the stairs that smelled of shavingsoap and then of brasspolish and then of bacon and then of singed hair and then of garbage and coalgas.

“You’re damn lucky Herfy, never to have gone to college.”

“Didnt I graduate from Columbia you big cheese, that’s more than you could do?”

The sunlight swooped tingling in Jimmy’s face when he opened the door.

“That doesnt count.”

“God I like sun,” cried Jimmy, “I wish it’d been real Colombia....”

“Do you mean Hail Columbia?”

“No I mean Bogota and the Orinoco and all that sort of thing.”

“I knew a darn good feller went down to Bogota. Had to drink himself to death to escape dying of elephantiasis.”

“I’d be willing to risk elephantiasis and bubonic plague and spotted fever to get out of this hole.”

“City of orgies walks and joys ...”

“Orgies nutten, as we say at a hun’an toitytoird street.... Do you realize that I’ve lived all my life in this goddam town except four years when I was little and that I was born here and that I’m likely to die here?... I’ve a great mind to join the navy and see the world.”

“How do you like Dingo in her new coat of paint?”

“Pretty nifty, looks like a regular Mercedes under the dust.”

“I wanted to paint her red like a fire engine, but the garageman finally persuaded me to paint her blue like a cop.... Do you mind going to Mouquin’s and having an absinthe cocktail.”

“Absinthe for breakfast.... Good Lord.”

They drove west along Twenty-third Street that shone with sheets of reflected light off windows, oblong glints off delivery wagons, figureeight-shaped flash of nickel fittings.

“How’s Ruth, Jimmy?”

“She’s all right. She hasnt got a job yet.”

“Look there’s a Daimlier.”

Jimmy grunted vaguely. As they turned up Sixth Avenue a policeman stopped them.

“Your cut out,” he yelled.

“I’m on my way to the garage to get it fixed. Muffler’s coming off.”

“Better had.... Get a ticket another time.”

“Gee you get away with murder Stan ... in everything,” said Jimmy. “I never can get away with a thing even if I am three years older than you.”

“It’s a gift.”

The restaurant smelled merrily of fried potatoes and cocktails and cigars and cocktails. It was hot and full of talking and sweaty faces.

“But Stan dont roll your eyes romantically when you ask about Ruth and me.... We’re just very good friends.”

“Honestly I didnt mean anything, but I’m sorry to hear it all the same. I think it’s terrible.”

“Ruth doesn’t care about anything but her acting. She’s so crazy to succeed, she cuts out everything else.”

“Why the hell does everybody want to succeed? I’d like to meet somebody who wanted to fail. That’s the only sublime thing.”

“It’s all right if you have a comfortable income.”

“That’s all bunk.... Golly this is some cocktail. Herfy I think you’re the only sensible person in this town. You have no ambitions.”

“How do you know I havent?”

“But what can you do with success when you get it? You cant eat it or drink it. Of course I understand that people who havent enough money to feed their faces and all that should scurry round and get it. But success ...”

“The trouble with me is I cant decide what I want most, so my motion is circular, helpless and confoundedly discouraging.”

“Oh but God decided that for you. You know all the time, but you wont admit it to yourself.”

“I imagine what I want most is to get out of this town, preferably first setting off a bomb under the Times Building.”

“Well why don’t you do it? It’s just one foot after another.”

“But you have to know which direction to step.”

“That’s the last thing that’s of any importance.”

“Then there’s money.”

“Why money’s the easiest thing in the world to get.”

“For the eldest son of Emery and Emery.”

“Now Herf it’s not fair to cast my father’s iniquities in my face. You know I hate that stuff as much as you do.”

“I’m not blaming you Stan; you’re a damn lucky kid, that’s all. Of course I’m lucky too, a hell of a lot luckier than most. My mother’s leftover money supported me until I was twentytwo and I still have a few hundreds stowed away for that famous rainy day, and my uncle, curse his soul, gets me new jobs when I get fired.”

“Baa baa black sheep.”

“I guess I’m really afraid of my uncles and aunts.... You ought to see my cousin James Merivale. Has done everything he was told all his life and flourished like a green bay tree.... The perfect wise virgin.”

“Ah guess youse one o dem dere foolish virgins.”

“Stan you’re feeling your liquor, you’re beginning to talk niggertalk.”

“Baa baa.” Stan put down his napkin and leaned back laughing in his throat.

The smell of absinthe sicklytingling grew up like the magician’s rosebush out of Jimmy’s glass. He sipped it wrinkling his nose. “As a moralist I protest,” he said. “Whee it’s amazing.”

“What I need is a whiskey and soda to settle those cocktails.”

“I’ll watch you. I’m a working man. I must be able to tell between the news that’s fit and the news that’s not fit.... God I dont want to start talking about that. It’s all so criminally silly.... I’ll say that this cocktail sure does knock you for a loop.”

“You neednt think you’re going to do anything else but drink this afternoon. There’s somebody I want to introduce you to.”

“And I was going to sit down righteously and write an article.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh a dodaddle called Confessions of a Cub Reporter.”

“Look is this Thursday?”

“Yare.”

“Then I know where she’ll be.”

“I’m going to light out of it all,” said Jimmy somberly, “and go to Mexico and make my fortune.... I’m losing all the best part of my life rotting in New York.”

“How’ll you make your fortune?”

“Oil, gold, highway robbery, anything so long as it’s not newspaper work.”

“Baa baa black sheep baa baa.”

“You quit baaing at me.”

“Let’s get the hell out of here and take Dingo to have her muffler fastened.”

Jimmy stood waiting in the door of the reeking garage. The dusty afternoon sunlight squirmed in bright worms of heat on his face and hands. Brownstone, redbrick, asphalt flickering with red and green letters of signs, with bits of paper in the gutter rotated in a slow haze about him. Two carwashers talking behind him:

“Yep I was making good money until I went after that lousy broad.”

“I’ll say she’s a goodlooker, Charley. I should worry.... Dont make no difference after the first week.”

Stan came up behind him and ran him along the street by the shoulders. “Car wont be fixed until five o’clock. Let’s

“No.”

“It’s a long time between drinks.”

“Baa, baa,” Stan was bleating under his breath as they stormed into the café. “Ellie here are the black sheep,” he shouted laughing. His face froze suddenly stiff. Opposite Ellen at the table sat her husband, one eyebrow lifted very high and the other almost merging with the eyelashes. A teapot sat impudently between them.

“Hello Stan, sit down,” she said quietly. Then she continued smiling into Oglethorpe’s face. “Isnt that wonderful Jojo?”

“Ellie this is Mr. Herf,” said Stan gruffly.

“Oh I’m so glad to meet you. I used to hear about you up at Mrs. Sunderland’s.”

They were silent. Oglethorpe was tapping on the table with his spoon. “Why heow deo you deo Mr. Herf,” he said with sudden unction. “Dont you remember how we met?”

“By the way how’s everything up there Jojo?”

“Just topping thanks. Cassahndrah’s beau has left her and there’s been the most appalling scandal about that Costello creature. It seems that she came home foxed the other night, to the ears my deah, and tried to take the taxi driver into her room with her, and the poor boy protesting all the time that all he wanted was his fare.... It was appalling.”

Stan got stiffly to his feet and walked out.

The three of them sat without speaking. Jimmy tried to keep from fidgeting in his chair. He was about to get up when something velvetsoft in her eyes stopped him.

“Has Ruth got a job yet, Mr. Herf?” she asked.

“No she hasnt.”

“It’s the rottenest luck.”

“Oh it’s a darn shame. I know she can act. The trouble

“Oh the stage is a nasty dirty game, isn’t it Jojo?”

“The nawstiest, my deah.”

Jimmy couldn’t keep his eyes off her; her small squarely shaped hands, her neck molded with a gold sheen between the great coil of coppery hair and the bright blue dress.

“Well my deah ...” Oglethorpe got to his feet.

“Jojo I’m going to sit here a little longer.”

Jimmy was staring at the thin triangles of patent leather that stuck out from Oglethorpe’s pink buff spats. Cant be feet in them. He stood up suddenly.

“Now Mr. Herf couldnt you keep me company for fifteen minutes? I’ve got to leave here at six and I forgot to bring a book and I cant walk in these shoes.”

Jimmy blushed and sat down again stammering: “Why of course I’d be delighted.... Suppose we drink something.”

“I’ll finish my tea, but why dont you have a gin fizz? I love to see people drink gin fizzes. It makes me feel that I’m in the tropics sitting in a jujube grove waiting for the riverboat to take us up some ridiculous melodramatic river all set about with fevertrees.”

“Waiter I want a gin fizz please.”

Joe Harland had slumped down in his chair until his head rested on his arms. Between his grimestiff hands his eyes followed uneasily the lines in the marbletop table. The gutted lunchroom was silent under the sparse glower of two bulbs hanging over the counter where remained a few pies under a bellglass, and a man in a white coat nodding on a tall stool. Now and then the eyes in his gray doughy face flicked open and he grunted and looked about. At the last table over were the hunched shoulders of men asleep, faces crumpled like old newspapers pillowed on arms. Joe Harland sat up straight and yawned. A woman blobby under a raincoat

“Hay yous how about a little soivice?” The woman’s voice shrilled in Harland’s ears like the screech of chalk on a blackboard.

“Well what d’ye want?” snarled the man behind the counter. The woman started sobbing. “He asts me what I want.... I aint used to bein talked to brutal.”

“Well if there’s anythin you want you kin juss come an git it.... Soivice at this toime o night!”

Harland could smell her whiskey breath as she sobbed. He raised his head and stared at her. She twisted her flabby mouth into a smile and bobbed her head towards him.

“Mister I aint accustomed to bein treated brutal. If my husband was aloive he wouldn’t have the noive. Who’s the loikes o him to say what toime o night a lady ought to have soivice, the little shriveled up shrimp.” She threw back her head and laughed so that her hat fell off backwards. “That’s what he is, a little shriveled up shrimp, insultin a lady with his toime o night.”

Some strands of gray hair with traces of henna at the tips had fallen down about her face. The man in the white coat walked over to the table.

“Look here Mother McCree I’ll trow ye out o here if you raise any more distoirbance.... What do you want?”

“A nickel’s woirt o doughnuts,” she sniveled with a sidelong leer at Harland.

Joe Harland shoved his face into the hollow of his arm again and tried to go to sleep. He heard the plate set down followed by her toothless nibbling and an occasional sucking noise when she drank the coffee. A new customer had come in and was talking across the counter in a low growling voice.

“Mister, mister aint it terrible to want a drink?” He raised his head again and found her eyes the blurred blue

“God knows.”

“Virgin an Saints it’d be noice to have a bed an a pretty lace shimmy and a noice feller loike you darlin ... mister.”

“Is that all?”

“Oh mister if my poor husband was aloive, he wouldn’t let em treat me loike they do. I lost my husband on the General Slocum might ha been yesterday.”

“He’s not so unlucky.”

“But he doid in his sin without a priest, darlin. It’s terrible to die in yer sin ...”

“Oh hell I want to sleep.”

Her voice went on in a faint monotonous screech setting his teeth on edge. “The Saints has been agin me ever since I lost my husband on the General Slocum. I aint been an honest woman.” ... She began to sob again. “The Virgin and Saints an Martyrs is agin me, everybody’s agin me.... Oh wont somebody treat me noice.”

“I want to sleep.... Cant you shut up?”

She stooped and fumbled for her hat on the floor. She sat sobbing rubbing her swollen redgrimed knuckles into her eyes.

“Oh mister dont ye want to treat me noice?”

Joe Harland got to his feet breathing hard. “Goddam you cant you shut up?” His voice broke into a whine. “Isnt there anywhere you can get a little peace? There’s nowhere you can get any peace.” He pulled his cap over his eyes, shoved his hands down into his pockets and shambled out of the lunchroom. Over Chatham Square the sky was brightening redviolet through the latticework of elevated tracks. The lights were two rows of bright brass knobs up the empty Bowery.

A policeman passed swinging his nightstick. Joe Harland felt the policeman’s eyes on him. He tried to walk fast and briskly as if he were going somewhere on business.

“Well Miss Oglethorpe how do you like it?”

“Like what?”

“Oh you know ... being a nine days’ wonder.”

“Why I don’t know at all Mr. Goldweiser.”

“Women know everything but they wont let on.”

Ellen sits in a gown of nilegreen silk in a springy armchair at the end of a long room jingling with talk and twinkle of chandeliers and jewelry, dotted with the bright moving black of evening clothes and silveredged colors of women’s dresses. The curve of Harry Goldweiser’s nose merges directly into the curve of his bald forehead, his big rump bulges over the edges of a triangular gilt stool, his small brown eyes measure her face like antennæ as he talks to her. A woman nearby smells of sandalwood. A woman with orange lips and a chalk face under an orange turban passes talking to a man with a pointed beard. A hawk-beaked woman with crimson hair puts her hand on a man’s shoulder from behind. “Why how do you do, Miss Cruikshank; it’s surprising isn’t it how everybody in the world is always at the same place at the same time.” Ellen sits in the armchair drowsily listening, coolness of powder on her face and arms, fatness of rouge on her lips, her body just bathed fresh as a violet under the silk dress, under the silk underclothes; she sits dreamily, drowsily listening. A sudden twinge of men’s voices knotting about her. She sits up cold white out of reach like a lighthouse. Men’s hands crawl like bugs on the unbreakable glass. Men’s looks blunder and flutter against it helpless as moths. But in deep pitblackness inside something clangs like a fire engine.

George Baldwin stood beside the breakfast table with a copy of the New York Times folded in his hand. “Now Cecily,” he was saying “we must be sensible about these things.”

“Cant you see that I’m trying to be sensible?” she said in

“George I cant stand it any more that’s all.” She pressed her quaking lips hard together.

“But my dear you exaggerate....”

“How exaggerate?... It means our life has been a pack of lies.”

“But Cecily we’re fond of each other.”

“You married me for my social position, you know it.... I was fool enough to fall in love with you. All right, It’s over.”

“It’s not true. I really loved you. Dont you remember how terrible you thought it was you couldnt really love me?”

“You brute to refer to that.... Oh it’s horrible!”

The maid came in from the pantry with bacon and eggs on a tray. They sat silent looking at each other. The maid swished out of the room and closed the door. Mrs. Baldwin put her forehead down on the edge of the table and began to cry. Baldwin sat staring at the headlines in the paper. Assassination of Archduke Will Have Grave Consequences. Austrian Army Mobilized. He went over and put his hand on her crisp hair.

“Poor old Cecily,” he said.

“Dont touch me.”

She ran out of the room with her handkerchief to her face. He sat down, helped himself to bacon and eggs and toast and began to eat; everything tasted like paper. He stopped eating to scribble a note on a scratchpad he kept in his breast pocket behind his handkerchief: See Collins vs. Arbuthnot, N.Y.S.C. Appel. Div.