He dropped on the step just below her and mopped his forehead. Neither of them could say anything. He took off his horn-rimmed eye-gla.s.ses, carefully inserted the point of a pencil through the loop, swung them in a buzzing circle, and started to put them on again.

"Oh, keep them _off_!" she snapped. "You look so high-brow with them!"

"Y-yuh; why, s-sure!"

She felt very superior.

He feverishly ran a finger along the upper rim of his left ear, sprang up, stooped to take her hand, glared into her eyes till she shrank--and then a nail-cleaner, a common, ten-cent file, fell out of his inner pocket and clinked on the stone step.

"Oh, d.a.m.n!" he groaned.

"I really think it _is_ going to rain," she said.

They both laughed.

He plumped down beside her, uncomfortably wedged between her and the rail. He caught her hand, intertwined their fingers so savagely that her knuckles hurt. "Look here," he commanded, "you don't really think it's going to rain any such a darn thing! I've come fourteen billion hot miles up here for just fifteen minutes--yes, and you wanted to see me yourself, too! And now you want to talk about the history of recent rains."

In the bitter-sweet spell of his clasp she was oblivious of street, children, sky. She tried to withdraw her hand, but he squeezed her fingers the more closely and their two hands dropped on her thin knee, which tingled to the impact.

"But--but what did you want to see me about?" Her superiority was burnt away.

He answered her hesitation with a trembling demand. "I can't talk to you here! Can't we go some place-- Come walk toward the river."

"Oh, I daren't really, Walter. My mother feels so--so fidgety to-night and I must go back to her.... By and by."

"But would you like to go with me?"

"Yes!"

"Then that's all that matters!"

"Perhaps--perhaps we could go up on the roof here for just a few minutes. Then I must send you home."

"Hooray! Come on."

He boldly lifted her to her feet, followed her up the stairs. On the last dark flight, near the roof, he threw both arms about her and kissed her. She was amazed that she did not want to kiss him back, that his abandon did not stir her. Even while she was shocked and afraid, he kissed again, and she gave way to his kiss; her cold mouth grew desirous.

She broke away, with shocked pride--shocked most of all at herself, that she let him kiss her thus.

"You quiver so to my kiss!" he whispered, in awe.

"I don't!" she denied. "It just doesn't mean anything."

"It does, and you know it does. I had to kiss you. Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart, we are both so lonely! Kiss me."

"No, no!" She held him away from her.

"Yes, I tell you!"

She encircled his neck with her arm, laid her cheek beside his chin, rejoiced boundlessly in the man roughness of his chin, of his coat-sleeve, the man scent of him--scent of tobacco and soap and hair.

She opened her lips to his. Slowly she drew her arm from about his neck, his arm from about her waist.

"Walter!" she mourned, "I did want you. But you must be good to me--not kiss me like that--not now, anyway, when I'm lonely for you and can't resist you.... Oh, it wasn't wrong, was it, when we needed each other so? It wasn't wrong, was it?"

"Oh no--no!"

"But not--not again--not for a long while. I want you to respect me.

Maybe it wasn't wrong, dear, but it was terribly dangerous. Come, let's stand out in the cool air on the roof for a while and then you must go home."

They came out on the flat, graveled roof, round which all the glory of the city was blazing, and hand in hand, in a confidence delicately happy now, stood worshiping the spring.

"Dear," he said, "I feel as though I were a robber who had gone crashing right through the hedge around your soul, and then after that come out in a garden--the sweetest, coolest garden.... I _will_ try to be good to you--and for you." He kissed her finger-tips.

"Yes, you did break through. At first it was just a kiss and the--oh, it was _the_ kiss, and there wasn't anything else. Oh, do let me live in the little garden still."

"Trust me, dear."

"I will trust you. Come. I must go down now."

"Can I come to see you?"

"Yes."

"Goldie, listen," he said, as they came down-stairs to her hallway. "Any time you'd like to marry me--I don't advise it, I guess I'd have good intentions, but be a darn poor hand at putting up shelves--but any time you'd like to marry me, or any of those nice conventional things, just lemme know, will you? Not that it matters much. What matters is, I want to kiss you good-night."

"No, what matters is, I'm not going to let you!... Not to-night....

Good-night, dear."

She scampered down the hall. She tiptoed into the living-room, and for an hour she brooded, felt faint and ashamed at her bold response to his kiss, yet wanted to feel his sharp-ridged lips again. Sometimes in a bitter frankness she told herself that Walter had never even thought of marriage till their kiss had fired him. She swore to herself that she would not give all her heart to love; that she would hold him off and make him value her precious little store of purity and tenderness. But pa.s.sion and worry together were lost in a prayer for him. She knelt by the window till her own individuality was merged with that of the city's million lovers.

- 3

Like sickness and war, the office grind absorbs all personal desires.

Love and ambition and wisdom it turns to its own purposes. Every day Una and Walter saw each other. Their hands touched as he gave her papers to file; there was affection in his voice when he dictated, and once, outside the office door, he kissed her. Yet their love was kept suspended. They could not tease each other and flirt raucously, like the telephone-girl and the elevator-starter.

Every day he begged her to go to dinner with him, to let him call at the flat, and after a week she permitted him to come.

- 4

At dinner, when Una told her mother that a young gentleman at the office--in fact, Mr. Babson, the editor whose dictation she took--was going to call that evening, Mrs. Golden looked pleased, and said: "Isn't that nice! Why, you never told mother he was interested in you!"

"Well, of course, we kind of work together--"

"I do hope he's a nice, respectful young man, not one of these city people that flirt and drink c.o.c.ktails and heaven knows what all!"

"Why, uh--I'm sure you'll like him. Everybody says he's the cleverest fellow in the shop."