about some
papers--"

"Oh yes, sure! Lemme tell you, a lady can't be none too careful about
her reputation with one of them skinny, dark devils like a Dago snooping
around."

"Why, you're absolutely ridiculous! Besides, how do you know Mr. Babson
is bad? Has he ever hurt anybody in the office?"

"No, but they say--"

"'They say'!"

"Now don't you go and get peeved after you and me been such good
friends, Miss Golden. I don't know that this Babson fellow ever done
anything worse than eat cracker-jack at South Beach, but I was just
telling you what they all say--how he drinks and goes with a lot of
totties and all; but--but he's all right if you say so, and--honest t'
Gawd, Miss Golden, listen, honest, I wouldn't knock him for nothing if I
thought he was your fellow! And," in admiration, "and him an editor!
Gee!"

Una tried to see herself as a princess forgiving her honest servitor.
But, as a matter of fact, she was plain angry that her romance should be
dragged into the nastiness of office gossip. She resented being a
stenographer, one who couldn't withdraw into a place for dreams. And she
fierily defended Walter in her mind; throbbed with a big, sweet pity for
her nervous, aspiring boy whose quest for splendor made him seem wild to
the fools about them.

When, just at five-thirty, Walter charged up to her again, she met him
with a smile of unrestrained intimacy.

"If you're going to be home at _all_ this evening, let me come up just
for fifteen minutes!" he demanded.

"Yes!" she said, breathlessly. "Oh, I oughtn't to, but--come up at
nine."

Sec. 2

Una had always mechanically liked children; had ejaculated, "Oh, the
pink little darling!" over each neighborhood infant; had pictured
children of her own; but never till that night had the desire to feel
her own baby's head against her breast been a passion. After dinner she
sat on the stoop of her apartment-house, watching the children at play
between motors on the street.

"Oh, it would be wonderful to have a baby--a boy like Walter must have
been--to nurse and pet and cry over!" she declared, as she watched a
baby of faint, brown ringlets--hair that would be black like Walter's.
Later she chided herself for being so bold, so un-Panamanian; but she
was proud to know that she could long for the pressure of a baby's lips.
The brick-walled street echoed with jagged cries of children; tired
women in mussed waists poked their red, steamy necks out of window