imes on the way up he told her that it was a pleasure to have
some one who could "appreciate his honest-t'-God opinions of the
managing editor and S. Herbert Frost."

The Subway, plunging through unvaried darkness, levitated them from the
district of dark loft-buildings and theater-bound taxicabs to a far-out
Broadway, softened with trees and brightened with small apartment-houses
and little shops. They could see a great feathery space of vernal
darkness down over the Hudson at the end of a street. Steel-bound nature
seemed reaching for them wherever in a vacant lot she could get free and
send out quickening odors of fresh garden soil.

"Almost country," said Walter.

An urgent, daring look came into his eyes, under the light-cluster. He
stopped, took her arm. There was an edge of spring madness in his voice
as he demanded, "Wouldn't you like to run away with me to-night? Feel
this breeze on your lips--it's simply plumb-full of mystery. Wouldn't
you like to run away? and we'd tramp the Palisades till dawn and go to
sleep with the May sun glaring down the Hudson. Wouldn't you like to,
wouldn't you?"

She was conscious that, though his head was passionately thrown back,
his faunlike eyes stared into hers, and that his thin lips arched.
Terribly she wanted to say, "Yes!" Actually, Una Golden of Panama and
the _Gazette_ office speculated, for a tenth of a second, whether she
couldn't go. Madness--river-flow and darkness and the stars! But she
said, "No, I'm afraid we couldn't possibly!"

"No," he said, slowly. "Of course--of course I didn't mean we _could_;
but--Goldie, little Goldie that wants to live and rule things, wouldn't
you _like_ to go? _Wouldn't_ you?"

"Yes!... You hurt my arm so!... Oh, don't! We must--"

Her low cry was an appeal to him to save them from spring's scornful,
lusty demand; every throbbing nerve in her seemed to appeal to him; and
it was not relief, but gratitude, that she felt when he said, tenderly,
"Poor kid!... Which way? Come." They walked soberly toward the Golden
flat, and soberly he mused, "Poor kids, both of us trying to be good
slaves in an office when we want to smash things.... You'll be a
queen--you'll grab the throne same as you grab papers offn my desk. And
maybe you'll let me be court jester."

"Why do you say I'll--oh, be a queen? Do you mean literally, in
business, an executive?"

"Hadn't thought just what it did imply, but I suppose it's that."

"But why, _why_? I'm s