soon the crowd might break
up, and found himself dangling uncomfortably on the porch railing
close beside the chair of a shadowy girl who was buried in its depths.
He could look down into the place where he imagined her face might
be. He was quite close to her and in the jabber of voices she was
silent. No one seemed to pay him the slightest attention, and his
interest mounted in a growing intimacy of silence with this girl in
the chair. A door opened and he saw Myrtle's figure pass across the
room within and busy herself with something on the table. In the faint
light that now pervaded the porch he again peered down at the figure
beside him. Instantly the glamour vanished. The face he saw was thin
and sharp, with hair slicked back from the forehead and narrow,
slanting sharp eyes. He caught a glimpse of neck and shoulders above a
brazen filmy waist, and in the splash of light and shadow there was no
softness of contour, but cruel bones and hollows.

"Think you'll know me next time?" came a harsh voice and a laugh, and
he straightened up and murmured an apology. He felt very much
embarrassed and disturbed. His mellow complacence had fled
precipitately. In his ears sounded the rattle of personalities. It was
as harsh and as constant and as senseless as machine-gun fire. At
least he could make an early "get-away."

Myrtle came and stood beside him from somewhere in the darkness. The
tip of her little finger barely touched his hand as she stood there,
leaning against the railing and firing back some "chaff" into the
darkness. There came a lull in the chatter and Joe was feeling a bit
mollified. Suddenly, before he realized it, the crowd was leaving,
and one by one they filed past him, each bidding good-night. There was
the thin girl in the chair, then two boys who were entirely
nondescript, with noisy throats cut out of the same copper plate, a
soft billowy shadow of a woman under a floppy hat and exuding a
ghastly sweet, cloying perfume. Her bare arm was as soft and flabby as
jelly as she stretched it out to Myrtle. After her came another man,
rather hesitantly, and keeping in the shadow. His voice was good,
rather deep, rather strong. As he passed, he called Joe by name.
Twisting around in the light, Joe saw that it was Hawkins, one of the
owners of the "Kum-quik Tire Company," a rather taciturn, solemn sort
of man to do business with. Joe was surprised.

In a moment they were all gone and the porch was dark and stil