tband with sheer untried handkerchief.

"Come on, Phonzie."

"Coming, madam."

In the up-town Subway, bound for the up-town flat, he leaned to her with
his small blond mustache raised in a smile.

"Where's the book, madam?"

"Forgot it," she replied, without shame.

* * * * *

Out of three hundred and eighty dollars cash, a bit of black and gold
brocade flung adroitly over the imitation hearth, a cot masquerading
under a Mexican afghan of many colors, a canary in a cage, a potted
geranium, a shallow chair with a threadbare head-rest, a lamp, a rug, a
two-burner gas-stove, Madam Moores had evolved Home.

And why not? The Petit Trianon was built that a queen might there find
rest from marble halls. The Borghese women in their palaces live behind
drawn shades, but Italian peasants sit in their low doorways and sing as
they rock and suckle.

In Madam Moores's two-flights-up flat the windows were flung open to the
moist air of spring, which flowed in cool as water between crisp muslin
curtains, stirring them. In the sudden flare of electric light the
canary unfolded its head from a sheaf of wing, cheeped, and fell to
picking up seed from the bottom of its cage.

Mr. Alphonse Michelson collapsed into the shallow chair beside the table
and relaxed his head against the threadbare dent in the upholstery.

"Whoops! home never was like this!"

"Is him tired?"

"Dead."

"Smoke?"

"Yep."

"There."

"Ah!"

"Now him all comfy and I go fix poor tired bad boy him din-din."

More native than mother-tongue is Mother's tongue. Whom women love
they would first destroy with gibberish. To Mr. Michelson's linguistic
credit, however, he shifted in his chair in unease.

"What did you say?"

"What him want for din-din?"

He slung one slim leg atop the other, slumping deeper to the luxury of
his chair. "Dinner?"

"Yes, din-din."

"Say, those were swell chicken livers smothered in onions you served the
other night, madam. Believe me, those were some livers!"

No, reader, Romance is not dead. On the contrary, he has survived the
frock-coat and learned to chew a clove.

A radiance as soft as the glow from a pink-shaded lamp flowed over Madam
Moores's face.

"Livers him going to have and biscuits made in my own ittsie bittsie
oven. Eh?"

"Swell."

She divested herself of her wraps, fluffing her mahogany-colored hair
where the hat had restricted it, lighted a tiny stove off in the