They plunged forward into the white flare of Broadway, and within her plate-glass inclosure she was like a doomed queen riding to her destiny. "Light up there, Dolly! No long face to-night! The crowd's going to be there waitin' for you. Look at me, you little devil--you little devil!" "Gawd, what are you made of? Ain't you got _no_ feelings?" "Tush! You ain't real on that talk. I know you better'n you know yourself. Ain't I told you that you can bring the little sister on and lemme look her over? There's nothin' I wouldn't do for you, Beauty. You got me crazy to-night over you. Eh! Pretty soft for a little hayseed like you!" She smiled suddenly, flashed her teeth, cooed in her throat, and reared her white throat out of its fur like a swan rears its head out of its snowy neck. "I--I'll be all right in a minute, Hy. Just lemme sit quiet a second, Hy. I--I'm dog-tired, encores and all. Gimme a little while to tune up--before--we get there. Just a minute, Hy." "That's more like it. Look at me, Beauty. Do you love me, eh?" "Easy on that stuff, Hy. They might chain your wrists for ravin'." "I'm ravin' crazy over you to-night, that's what I am. Love me, eh--do you, Beauty?" She receded from his approaching face close back against the upholstery, and within the satin-down interior of her muff her fingers clasped each other until the nails bit into her palms and broke the flesh. "Don't make me sore to-night, Queenie. I ain't in the humor. Gowann, answer like a good girl. Love me?" "Aw, Hy, quit your kiddin'." "No, no; none of that; come on, Silver Queen. I'll give you six to answer--love me?" "Aw, now--" "One--two--three--four--five--" "Yes." THE GOOD PROVIDER Like a suckling to the warmth of the mother, the township of Newton nestled pat against the flank of the city and drew from her through the arteries of electric trains and interurbans, elevated roads and motor-cars. Such clots coagulate around the city in the form of Ferndales and Glencoves, Yorkvilles and Newtons, and from them have sprung full-grown the joke paper and the electric lawn-mower, the five-hundred-dollars-down bungalow, and the flower-seed catalogue. The instinct to return to nature lies deep in men like music that slumbers in harp-strings, but the return to nature _via_ the five-forty-six accommodation is fraught with chance. Nature cannot abide the haunts of men; she faints upon the asphalt bosom of the city. But to abide in the haunts of nature men's hearts bleed. Behind that asphaltic bosom and behind faces too tired to smile, hearts bud and leafen when millinery and open street-cars announce the spring. Behind that asphaltic bosom the murmur of the brook is like an insidious underground stream, and when for a moment it gushes to the surface men pay the five hundred dollars down and inclose return postage for the flower-seed catalogue.