"I know it, Kess." "The old man's stringing you, girl. His kind stop, look, and listen." "He's not stringing me! I tell you he's begging me to marry him and go back home with him. He's even told his--daughter about me." "Good Lord--little Effie! I was out there once when she was a kid. Stopped off on my way to Hot Springs. They live in a kind of park--Forest Park Street or something or other. Why, I've done business with Goldstone & Auer for fifteen years, and my father before me! Good Lord!" "What'll I do, Kess?" "So that's the size of the fish you went out and landed!" "I didn't! I didn't! He's been asking me out the last three trips, and post-cards in between, but I never thought nothing of it." "Why, he can't get away with this!" "Why?" "They won't stand for it out in that Middle West town. He's the head of a big business. He's got a grown daughter." "He's got her fixed, Kess--settled on her." "Hattie Becker, Mrs. I.W. Goldstone! Gad! can you beat it? Can't you just see me, when I come out to St. Louis pretty soon, having dinner out at Mrs. I.W. Goldstone's house? Say, am I seeing things?" "What'll I do, Kess? What'll I do?" "I tell you that you can't get away with it, girl. The old man's getting childish; they'll have to have him restrained. Why, the woman he was married to for twenty years, Lenie Goldstone, never even seen a skirt-dance. I remember once he brought her to New York and then wouldn't let her see a cabaret show. He won't even buy sleeveless models for his French room." "I tell you, Kess, he'll take me to Jersey to-morrow and marry me, if I give the word." "Not a chance!" "I tell you yes. That's why I got to see you. I got to tell him to-night, Kess. He--goes back to-morrow." He regarded her slowly, watching her throat where it throbbed. "Well, what are you going to do?" "I--I don't know." "Where do you stand with him? Sweet sixteen and never been kissed?" "He--he don't ask questions, Kess. I--I'm his ideal, he says, of the--kind of--woman can take up for him where his wife left off. He says we're alike in everything but looks, and that a man who was happy in marriage like him can't be happy outside of it. He--he's sized up pretty well the way I live, and--and--he knows I don't expect too much out of life no more. Just a quiet kind of team-work, he puts it--pulling together fifty-fifty, and somebody's hand to hold on to when old fellow Time hits you a whack in the knees from behind. But he ain't old when he talks that way, Kess; he--he's beautiful to me." "Does he wear a mask when he makes love?" "He's got a fine face." "So that's the way you're playing it, is it? Love-stuff?"