"Pull yourself together there, Becker; we're in a public place."

"If only I could go to him and tell him."

"Well, you can't."

"It's not you that keeps me. Only, I know that with his kind of man and
at his age, a woman is--is one thing or another and that ends it. With a
grown daughter, he wouldn't--couldn't--he's too set in his ways to know
how it was with me--and--what'll I do, Kess?"

"Say, I'm not going to stand in your light, if that's what's eating you.
If you can get away with it, I don't wish you nothing but well. Looks to
me like all right, if you want to make the try. I'll even come and break
bread with you when I go out to see my Middle West trade pretty soon.
That's the kind of a hairpin I am."

"It's like I keep saying to myself, Kess. If--if he'd ask me anything,
it--it would be different. He--he says he never felt so satisfied that a
woman had the right stuff in her. And I have! There's nothing in the
world can take that away from me. I can give him what he wants. I know I
can. Why, the way I'll make up to that little girl out there and love
her to death! I ask so little, Kess--just a decent life and rest--peace.
I'm tired. I want to let myself get fat. I'm built that way, to get fat.
It was nothing but diet gave me the anaemia last summer. He says he
wants me to plump out. Perfect thirty-six don't mean nothing in his life
except for the trade. No more rooming-houses with the kitchenette in the
bath-room. A kitchen, he says, Kess, half the size of the show-room,
with a butler's pantry. He likes to play pinochle at night, he says,
next to the sitting-room fire. He tried to learn me the rules of the