"Phonzie, tell me, do you--do you--think--"

He held her closer. "Sure, madam, I do."

* * * * *

On the wings of a twelvemonth, spring had come around again and the
taste of summer was like poppy-leaves between the teeth, and the
perennial open shirtwaists and open street-cars bloomed, even as the
distant larkspur in the distant field. At six o'clock with darkness
came a spattering of rain, heavy single drops that fell each with its
splotch, exuding from the asphalt the warming smell of thaw. Then came
wind, right high-tempered, too, slanting the rain and scudding it and
blowing pedestrians' skirts forward and their umbrellas inside outward.
Mr. Alphonse Michelson fitted his hand like a vizor over his eyes and
peered out into the wet dusk. Lights gleamed and were reflected in the
dark pool of rain-swept asphalt. Passers-by hurried for shelter and bent
into the wind.

In Madam Moores's establishment, enlarged during the twelvemonth to
twice its floor space, the business day waned and died; in the workrooms
the whir of machines sank into the quiet maw of darkness; in the
showrooms the shower lights, all but a single cluster, blinked out.
Alphonse Michelson slid into a tan, rain-proof coat, turning up the
collar and buttoning across the flap, then fell to pacing the thick-nap
carpet.

From a mauve-colored telephone-booth emerged Miss Gertie Dobriner,
flushed from bad service and from bad air.