ly. "And I wouldn't have
said that, if I were you. I was going back to-day on the 5:25, but I'm
sick of it all. So are you, or you wouldn't have said what you just
said. Listen. Let's go back home, you and I. The sight of a Navajo
blanket nauseates me. The thought of those prairies makes my eyes ache.
I know that if I have to eat one more meal cooked by that Chink of mine
I'll hang him by his own pigtail. Those rangy western ponies aren't
horseflesh, fit for a man to ride. Why, back home our stables were----
Look here. I want to see a silver tea-service, with a coat-of-arms on
it. I want to dress for dinner, and take in a girl with a white gown and
smooth white shoulders. My sister clips roses in the morning, before
breakfast, in a pink ruffled dress and garden gloves. Would you believe
that, here, on Clark Street, with a whiskey sign overhead, and the
stock-yard smells undernose? O, hell! I'm going home."

"Home?" repeated the blonde lady. "Home?" The sagging lines about her
flaccid chin took on a new look of firmness and resolve. The light of
determination glowed in her eyes.

"I'll beat you to it," she said. "I'm going home, too. I'll be there
to-morrow. I'm dead sick of this. Who cares whether I live or die?
It's just one darned round of grease paint, and sky blue tights, and new
boarding houses and humping over to the theater every night, going on,
and humping back to the room again. I want to wash up some supper dishes
with egg on 'em, and set some yeast for bread, and pop a dishpan full of
corn, and put a shawl over my head and run over to Millie Krause's to get
her kimono sleeve pattern. I'm sour on this dirt and noise. I want to
spend the rest of my life in a place so that when I die they'll put a
column in the paper, with a verse at the top, and all the neighbors'll
come in and help bake up. Here--why, here I'd just be two lines on the
want ad page, with fifty cents extra for 'Kewaskum paper please copy.'"

The man held out his hand. "Good-bye," he said, "and please excuse me if
I say God bless you. I've never really wanted to say it before, so it's
quite extraordinary. My name's Guy Peel."

The white glove, with its too-conspicuous black stitching, disappeared
within his palm.

"Mine's Mercedes Meron, late of the Morning Glory Burlesquers, but from
now on Sadie Hayes, of Kewaskum, Wisconsin. Good-bye and--well--God
bless you, too. Say, I hope you don't think I'm in the habi