and this--this is the last."

"The last what?"

"Please, Kess, if you only run over to Rinehardt's with me. I got to
tell you something. Something about me and--and--"

He regarded her in some perplexity. "Tell it to me here. Now!"

"I can't. The girls'll be swarming in any minute. I can't get you
anywheres but lunch. It's the first thirty minutes of your time I've
asked in five years, Kess--is that little enough? Let Cissie show
Keokuk the blouses till we get back. It's something, Kess, I can't put
off. Kess, please!"

Her face was so close to him and so eager that he turned to back out.

"Wait for me at the Thirty-first Street entrance," he said, "and I'll
shoot you across to Rinehardt's."

She caught up her small silk hand-bag and ran out toward the elevators.
Down in Thirty-first Street a wave of heat met, almost overpowering her.
New York, enervated from sleepless nights on fire-escapes and in
bedrooms opening on areaways, moved through it at half-speed, hugging
the narrow shade of buildings. Infant mortality climbed with the
thermometer. In Fifth Avenue, cool, high bedrooms were boarded and
empty. In First Avenue, babies lay naked on the floor, snuffing out for
want of oxygen.

Across that man-made Grand Canon men leap sometimes, but seldom. Mothers