"You can't come home here to-night without him--you can't! You better run after him, and run after him quick. You can't come home here to-night without him, I tell you! Whatta you going to do about it--huh? Whatta you going to do? Quick! What?" She trembled so she grasped the back of a chair for support, and tears ricocheted down her cheeks. "I can't, Jimmie! He's gone by now; he's gone by now--out of sight. I can't! Please, Jimmie! I'll tell her! I'll tell her! Don't--don't you dare come near me! I'll go, Jimmie--I'll go. 'Sh-h-h!" "You gotta get him--you can't come here to-night without him. I ain't goin' to stand for her not seeing him to-night. I--I don't care how you get him, but you ain't going to kill her! You gotta get him, or I'll--" "Jimmie--'sh-h-h!" "Jimmie, tell him it ain't like me to give out like this. Tell--" "Yes, ma." "Yes, ma--we're comin'. Joe's waitin' down at the door. I'll run down and bring him up; he--he's so bashful. In a minute, ma darlin'." She flung open the door and fled, racing down two flights of stairs, with her steps clattering after her in an avalanche, and out into a quiet street, which sprung echoes of her flying feet. After midnight every pedestrian becomes a simulacrum, wrapped in a black domino of mystery and a starry ephod of romance. A homeward-bound pedestrian is a faun in evening dress. Fat-and-forty leans from her window to hurtle a can at a night-yelling cat and becomes a demoiselle leaning out from the golden bar of Heaven. In the inspissated gloom of the street occasional silhouettes hurried in silent haste; and a block ahead of her, just emerging into a string of shop lights, she could distinguish the uneven-shouldered outline of Joe Ullman and the unmistakable silhouette of his slightly askew hat. She sobbed in her throat and made a cup of her hands to halloo; but her voice would not come, and she ran faster. A policeman glanced after her and struck asphalt. A dog yapped at her tall heels. Even as she sped, her face upturned and her mouth dry and open, the figure swerved suddenly into a red-lighted doorway with a crescent burning above it; and, with her eyes on that Mecca, she pulled at her strength and gathered more speed. The crescent grew in size and redness, and its lettering sprang out; and suddenly she stopped, as suddenly as an engine jerking up before a washout. CRESCENT POOL AND BILLIARD ROOM-- OPEN ALL NIGHT And her heart folded inward like the petals of a moonflower. Stretched to the limit of their resilience, the nerves act reflexly. The merest second of incertitude, and then automatically she swung about, turned her blood-driven face toward the place from whence she came and groped her way homeward as Polymestor must have groped after being blinded in the presence of Hecuba.