"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 simply one of a million stenographers."
"Oh, well, you aren't satisfied to take things just as they're handed to you. Most people are, and they stick in a rut and wonder who put them there. All this success business is a mystery-listen to how successful men trip themselves up and fall all over their foolish faces when they try to explain to a bunch of nice, clean, young clerks how they stole their success. But I know you'll get it, because you aren't satisfied easily-you take my work and do it. And yet you're willing to work in one corner till it's time to jump. That's my failing-I ain't willing to stick."
"I-perhaps--Here's the flat."
"Lord!" he cried; "we got to walk a block farther and back."
"Well-"
They were stealing onward toward the breeze from the river before she had finished her "Well."
"Think of wasting this hypnotizing evening talking of success-word that means a big house in Yonkers! When we've become friends, Goldie, little Goldie. Business of souls grabbing for each other! Friends-at least to-night! Haven't we, dear? haven't we?"
"Oh, I hope so!" she whispered.
He drew her hand into his pocket and clasped it there. She looked shyly down. Strange that her hand should not be visible when she could feel its palm flame against his. She let it snuggle there, secure.... Mr. Walter Babson was not a young man with "bad prospects," or "good prospects"; he was love incarnate in magic warm flesh, and his hand was the hand of love. She was conscious of his hard-starched cuff pressing against her bare arm-a man's cuff under the rough surface of his man's coat-sleeve.
He brought her back to the vestibule of the flat. For a moment he held both her arms at the elbow and looked at her, while with a panic fear she wondered why she could not move-wondered if he were going to kiss her.
He withdrew his hands, sighed, "Good-night, Goldie. I won't be lonely to-night!" and turned abruptly away.
Through all of Mrs. Golden's long, sobbing queries as to why Una had left her alone all evening Una was patient. For she knew that she had ahead of her a quiet moment when she would stand alone with the god of love and pray to him to keep her boy, her mad boy, Walter.
While she heard her voice crisply explaining, "Why, you see, mother dear, I simply had to get some work done for the office-" Una was telling herself, "Some day he will kiss me, and I'm not sorry he didn't to-night-not now any more I'm not.... It's so strange-I like to have him touch me, and I simply never could stand other men touching me!... I wonder if he's excited now, too? I wonder what he's doing.... Oh, I'm glad, glad I loved his hands!"
CHAPTER VI
"I never thought a nice girl could be in love with a man who is bad, and I s'pose Walter is bad. Kind of. But maybe he'll become good."
So Una simple-heartedly reflected on her way to the Subway next morning. She could not picture what he would do, now that it was hard, dry day again, and all the world panted through dusty streets. And she recklessly didn't care. For Walter was not hard and dry and dusty; and she was going to see him again! Sometimes she was timorous about seeing him, because he had read the longing in her face, had known her soul with its garments thrown away. But, timorous or not, she had to see him; she would never let him go, now that he had made her care for him.
Walter was not in sight when she entered the offices, and she was instantly swept into the routine. Not clasping hands beguiled her, but lists to copy, typing errors to erase, and the irritating adjustment of a shift-key which fiendishly kept falling. For two hours she did not see him.
About ten-thirty she was aware that he was prosaically strolling toward her.
Hundreds of times, in secret maiden speculations about love, the girl Una had surmised that it would be embarrassing to meet a man the morning after you had yielded to his caress. It had been perplexing-one of those mysteries of love over which virgins brood between chapters of novels, of which they diffidently whisper to other girls when young married friends are amazingly going to have a baby. But she found it natural to smile up at Walter.... In this varnished, daytime office neither of them admitted their madness of meeting hands.
He merely stooped over her desk and said, sketchily, "Mornin', little Goldie."
Then for hours he seemed to avoid her. She was afraid. Most of all, afraid of her own desire to go to him and wail that he was avoiding her.
At three o'clock, when the office tribe accept with naïve gratitude any excuse to talk, to stop and tell one another a new joke, to rush to the window and critically view a parade, Una saw that Walter was beginning to hover near her. She was angry that he did not come straight to her. He did not seem quite to know whether he wanted her or not. But her face was calm above her typing while she watched him peer at her over the shoulder of S. Herbert Ross, to whom he was talking. He drew nearer to her. He examined a poster. She was oblivious of him. She was conscious that he was trying to find an excuse to say something without openly admitting to the ever-spying row of stenographers that he was interested in her. He wambled up to her at last and asked for a letter she had filed for him. She knew from the casual-looking drop of his eyes that he was peering at the triangle of her clear-skinned throat, and for his peeping uneasiness she rather despised him. She could fancy herself shouting at him, "Oh, stop fidgeting! Make up your mind whether you like me or not, and hurry up about it. I don't care now."
In which secret defiance she was able to luxuriate-since he was still in the office, not gone from her forever!-till five o'clock, when the detached young men of offices are wont to face another evening of lonely irrelevancy, and desperately begin to reach for companionship.
At that hour Walter rushed up and begged, "Goldie, you must come out with me this evening."