ng of yellow brick, its face
broken out with fire-escapes. It had narrow halls, stairs of slate
treads and iron rails, and cheap wooden doorways which had begun to warp
the minute the structure was finished--and sold. The bright-green burlap
wall-covering in the hallways had faded in less than a year to the color
of dry grass. The janitor grew tired every now and then. He had been
markedly diligent at first, but he was already giving up the task of
keeping the building clean. It was one of, and typical of, a mile of
yellow brick tenements; it was named after an African orchid of great
loveliness, and it was filled with clerks, motormen, probationer
policemen, and enormously prolific women in dressing-sacques.

The Goldens had three rooms and bath. A small linoleous gas-stove
kitchen. A bedroom with standing wardrobe, iron bed, and just one
graceful piece of furniture--Una's dressing-table; a room pervasively
feminine in its scent and in the little piles of lingerie which Mrs.
Golden affected more, not less, as she grew older. The living-room, with
stiff, brown, woolen brocade chairs, transplanted from their Panama
home, a red plush sofa, two large oak-framed Biblical pictures--"The
Wedding-feast at Cana," and "Solomon in His Temple." This living-room
had never been changed since the day of their moving in. Una repeatedly
coveted the German color-prints she saw in shop windows, but she had to
economize.

She planned that when she should succeed they would have such an
apartment of white enamel and glass doors and mahogany as she saw
described in the women's magazines. She realized mentally that her
mother must be lonely in the long hours of waiting for her return, but
she who was busy all day could never feel emotionally how great was that
loneliness, and she expected her mother to be satisfied with the future.

Quite suddenly, a couple of weeks after the dance, when they were
talking about the looming topic--what kind of work Una would be able to
get when she should have completed school--her mother fell violently
a-weeping; sobbed, "Oh, Una baby, I want to go home. I'm so lonely
here--just nobody but you and the Sessionses. Can't we go back to
Panama? You don't seem to really know what you _are_ going to do."

"Why, mother--"

Una loved her mother, yet she felt a grim disgust, rather than pity....
Just when she had been working so hard! And for her mother as much as
for herself.... She stalked over to the table, s