ush a growler of beer and some wienies--"

"No! I've got to go out again."

"Can't you stop just long enough to have a little celebration? I--I been
kind of lonely last few days, little sister. You been away so much, and
I'm too broke to go out and look up the boys now."

He was peering at her with a real wistfulness, but in the memory of
Mamie Magen, the lame woman of the golden heart, Una could not endure
his cackling enthusiasm about the job he would probably never get.

"No, I'm sorry--" she said, and closed the door. From the walk she saw
him puzzled and anxious at the window. His face was becoming so ruddy
and fatuous and babyish. She was sorry for him--but she was not big
enough to do anything about it. Her sorrow was like sympathy for a
mangy alley cat which she could not take home.

She had no place to go. She walked for hours, planlessly, and dined at
a bakery and lunch-room in Harlem. Sometimes she felt homeless, and
always she was prosaically footsore, but now and then came the
understanding that she again had a chance.

CHAPTER XIX

So, toward the end of 1912, when she was thirty-one years old, Mrs. Una
Golden Schwirtz began her business career, as confidential secretary to
Mr. Truax, of Truax & Fein.

Her old enemy, routine, was constantly in the field. Routine of taking
dictation, of getting out the letters, prompting Mr. Truax's memory as
to who Mrs. A was, and what Mr. B had telephoned, keeping plats and
plans and memoes in order, making out cards regarding the negotiations
with possible sellers of suburban estates. She did not, as she had
hoped, always find this routine one jolly round of surprises. She was
often weary, sometimes bored.

But in the splendor of being independent again and of having something
to do that seemed worth while she was able to get through the details
that never changed from day to day. And she was rewarded, for the whole
job was made fascinating by human contact. She found herself
enthusiastic about most of the people she met at Truax & Fein's; she was
glad to talk with them, to work with them, to be taken seriously as a
brain, a loyalty, a woman.

By contrast with two years of hours either empty or filled with
Schwirtz, the office-world was of the loftiest dignity. It may have been
that some of the men she met were Schwirtzes to their wives, but to her
they had to be fellow-workers. She did not believe that the long hours,
the jealousies, the worry, or Mr.