"I--I'm a home woman, Mr. Latz. You can put a fish in water, but you
cannot make him swim. That's me and hotel life."

At this somewhat cryptic apothegm Mr. Latz's knee touched Mrs.
Samstag's, so that he sprang back full of nerves at what he had not
intended.

"Marry me, Carrie," he said, more abruptly than he might have, without
the act of that knee to immediately justify.

She spread the lace out on her lap.

Ostensibly to the hotel lobby they were as casual as, "My mulligatawny
soup was cold to-night," or, "Have you heard the new one that Al Jolson
pulls at the Winter Garden?" But actually the roar was higher than ever
in Mrs. Samstag's ears and he could feel the plethoric red rushing in
flashes over his body.

"Marry me, Carrie," he said, as if to prove that his stiff lips could
repeat their incredible feat.

With a woman's talent for them, her tears sprang.

"Mr. Latz--"

"Louis," he interpolated, widely eloquent of eyebrow and posture.

"You're proposing, Louis!" She explained rather than asked, and placed
her hand to her heart so prettily that he wanted to crush it there with
his kisses.