An oath as hot as a live coal dropped from his lips, and
he drew back, strangling. "You--you got it, and you're letting me down
easy. You got it, and it's catching as hell! You got it, you white
devil, and--and you're trying to lie out of it--you--you--"

"Charley! Charley!"

"You got it, and you been letting me eat it off your lips! You devil,
you! You devil, you! You devil, you!"

"Charley, I--"

"I could kill you! Lemme wash my mouth! You got it; and if you got it I
got it! I got it! I got it! I--I--"

He rushed from the table, strangling, stuttering, staggering; and his
face was twisted with fear.

For an hour she sat there, waiting, her hands folded in her lap and her
eyes growing larger in her face. The dish of stew took on a thin coating
of grease and the beer died in the glass. The waiter snickered. After a
while she paid for the meal out of her newly opened wage-envelope and
walked out into the air.

Once on the street, she moaned audibly into her handkerchief. There is
relief in articulation. Her way lay through dark streets where figures
love to slink in the shadows. One threw a taunt at her and she ran. At
the stoop of her rooming-house she faltered, half fainting and breathing
deep from exhaustion, her head thrown back and her eyes gazing upward.

Over the narrow street stars glittered, dozens and myriads of them.

* * * * *

Literature has little enough to say of the heartaches and the heartburns
of the Sara Jukes and the Hattie Krakows and the Eddie Blaneys. Medical
science concedes them a hollow organ for keeping up the circulation. Yet
Mrs. Van Ness's heartbreak over the death of her Chinese terrier, Wang,
claims a first-page column in the morning edition; her heartburn--a
complication of midnight terrapin and the strain of her most recent role
of corespondent--obtains her a _suite de luxe_ in a private sanitarium.

Vivisectionists believe the dog is less sensitive to pain than man; so
the social vivisectionists, in problem plays and best sellers, are
more concerned with the heartaches and heartburns of the classes. But
analysis would show that the sediment of salt in Sara Juke's and Mrs.
Van Ness's tears is equal.

Indeed, when Sara Juke stepped out of the streetcar on a golden Sunday
morning in October, her heart beat higher and more full of emotion than
Mrs. Van Ness could find at that breakfast hour, reclining on her fine
linen pillows, an electric massag