s to give a soldier!

To the seething kinetic chemistry of such mingling emotions there were
women who stood in the frontal crowds of the sidewalks stifling hysteria,
or ran after in terror at sight of one so personally hers, receding in that
great impersonal wave of olive drab.

And yet the air was martial with banner and with shout. And the ecstasy of
such moments is like a dam against reality, pressing it back. It is in the
pompless watches of the night or of too long days that such dams break,
excoriating.

For the thirty blocks of its course Gertie Slayback followed that wave of
men, half run and half walk. Down from the curb, and at the beck and call
of this or that policeman up again, only to find opportunity for still
another dive out from the invisible roping off of the sidewalk crowds.

From the middle of his line, she could see, sometimes, the tail of Jimmie
Batch's glance roving for her, but to all purports his eye was solely for
his own replica in front of him, and at such times, when he marched, his
back had a little additional straightness that was almost swayback.

Nor was Gertie Slayback crying. On the contrary, she was inclined to
laughter. A little too inclined to a high and brittle sort of dissonance
over which she seemed to have no control.

"'By, Jimmie! So long! Jimmie! You-hoo!"

Tramp. Tramp. Tramp-tramp-tramp.

"You-hoo! Jimmie! So long, Jimmie!"

At Fourteenth Street, and to the solemn stroke of one from a tower, she
broke off suddenly without even a second look back, dodging under the very
arms of the crowd as she ran out from it.

She was one and three-quarter minutes late when she punched the time-clock
beside the Complaints and Adjustment Desk in the Bargain-Basement.

II

SIEVE OF FULFILMENT

How constant a stream is the runnel of men's small affairs!

Dynasties may totter and half the world bleed to death, but one or the
other corner _patisserie_ goes on forever.

At a moment when the shadow of world-war was over the country like a pair
of black wings lowering Mrs. Harry Ross, who swooned at the sight of blood
from a penknife scratch down the hand of her son, but yawned over the
head-line statistics of the casualties at Verdun, lifted a lid from a pot
that exuded immediate savory fumes, prodded with a fork at its content, her
concern boiled down to deal solely with stew.

An alarm-clock on a small shelf edged in scalloped white oilcloth ticked
with spick-and-sp