"Coming, madam."

In the up-town Subway, bound for the up-town flat, he leaned to her with
his small blond mustache raised in a smile.

"Where's the book, madam?"

"Forgot it," she replied, without shame.

* * * * *

Out of three hundred and eighty dollars cash, a bit of black and gold
brocade flung adroitly over the imitation hearth, a cot masquerading
under a Mexican afghan of many colors, a canary in a cage, a potted
geranium, a shallow chair with a threadbare head-rest, a lamp, a rug, a
two-burner gas-stove, Madam Moores had evolved Home.

And why not? The Petit Trianon was built that a queen might there find
rest from marble halls. The Borghese women in their palaces live behind
drawn shades, but Italian peasants sit in their low doorways and sing as
they rock and suckle.

In Madam Moores's two-flights-up flat the windows were flung open to the
moist air of spring, which flowed in cool as water between crisp muslin
curtains, stirring them. In the sudden flare of electric light the
canary unfolded its head from a sheaf of wing, cheeped, and fell to
picking up seed from the bottom of its cage.

Mr. Alphonse Michelson collapsed into the shallow chair beside the table