sition, girl. One that'll make Checkers look like
thirty cents. A white proposition, too, Marj. A baby could listen to
it."

"Yes, yes, Blink, but not now. When you get lit up you--you oughtn't
begin to dream about those millionaire propositions, Blink. Try and keep
your wits."

"A baby could listen to this here proposition, Marj. And big money, too,
Marj. It's diamonds for you."

Somehow with her lips she smiled down at him, and did not tug for the
release of her hand. Dallied for the instant instead.

"You're lit up, Blink."

"Some big guns in Wall Street, Marj, are after me, Marj, with a
million-dollar proposition. I--"

"Yes, yes, but wait a minute, Blink. I'll be back." She even lay a pat
on his shoulder and slid past him lightly. "In a minute, Blink."

"Hurry," he said, his smile broken by a swift twitch of feature, and
raising his fresh stein.

Once out of his vision, she veered sharply and in a bath of fear darted
toward the small hallway, with its red bead of gaslight burning on and
flickering against the two panels of colored glass in the dingy brown
door.

Outside, the flakes had ceased and the sinister-looking side street lay
in a white hush, a single line of scraggly footsteps crunched into the
snow of the sidewalk. A clock from a sky-scraping tower rang out eight,
its echoes singing like anvils in the sharp, thin air. On the cross-town
street the shops were full of light and activity, crowds wedging in and
out. Marjorie Clark pulled at her strength and ran.

At the Twenty-second Street corner she paused for the merest moment
for breath and for a quick glance into the dark lane of the diverging
street. The double row of stone houses, blank-faced and shouldering
one another like paper dolls cut from a folded newspaper, stood back
indistinctly against the night, most of the high stoops cushioned
in untrod snow, the fourth of them from the right, lean-looking and
undistinguished, except that the ash-can at its curb was a glorified urn
of snow.

As she stood there the ache in Marjorie Clark's throat threatened to
become articulate. She took up her swift pace again, but onward.

Ten minutes later, within the great heated mausoleum of the Pennsylvania
Terminal, she bought a ticket for Glendale. On track ten the
eight-eighteen had already made its first jerk outward as she made her
dash for it.

In the spick swaddling clothes of new-laid snow, its roadways and garden
beds, macadamized streets and