"That's me, Mr. Latz. Not sick--just ailing. I always say that it's ridiculous that a woman in such perfect health as I am should be such a sufferer." "Same with her and her joints." "Why, I can outdo Alma when it comes to dancing down in the grill with the young people of an evening, or shopping." "More like sisters than any mother and daughter I ever saw." "Mother and daughter, but which is which from the back, some of my friends put it," said Mrs. Samstag, not without a curve to her voice, then hastily: "But the best child, Mr. Latz. The best that ever lived. A regular little mother to me in my spells." "Nice girl, Alma." "It snowed so the day of--my husband's funeral. Why, do you know that up to then I never had an attack of neuralgia in my life. Didn't even know what a headache was. That long drive. That windy hill-top with two men to keep me from jumping into the grave after him. Ask Alma. That's how I care when I care. But of course, as the saying is, time heals. But that's how I got my first attack. Intenseness is what the doctors called it. I'm terribly intense." "I--guess when a woman like you--cares like--you--cared, it's not much use hoping you would ever--care again. That's about the way of it, ain't it?" If he had known it, there was something about his own intensity of expression to inspire mirth. His eyebrows lifted to little gothic arches of anxiety, a rash of tiny perspiration broke out over his blue shaved face and as he sat on the edge of his chair, it seemed that inevitably the tight sausage-like knees must push their way through mere fabric. "That's about the way of it, ain't it?" he said again into the growing silence. "I--when a woman cares for--a man like--I did--Mr. Latz, she'll never be happy until--she cares again--like that. I always say, once an affectionate nature, always an affectionate nature." "You mean," he said, leaning forward the imperceptible half-inch that was left of chair, "you mean--me?" The smell of bay rum came out greenly then as the moisture sprang out on his scalp. "I--I'm a home woman, Mr. Latz. You can put a fish in water but you cannot make him swim. That's me and hotel life." At this somewhat cryptic apothegm Mr. Latz's knee touched Mrs. Samstag's, so that he sprang back full of nerves at what he had not intended. "Marry me, Carrie," he said more abruptly than he might have, without the act of that knee to immediately justify. She spread the lace out on her lap. Ostensibly to the hotel lobby, they were casual as, "My mulligatawny soup was cold tonight" or "Have you heard the new one that Al Jolson pulls at the Winter Garden?" But actually, the roar was high in Mrs. Samstag's ears and he could feel the plethoric red rushing in flashes over his body. "Marry me, Carrie," he said, as if to prove that his stiff lips could repeat their incredible feat. With a woman's talent for them, her tears sprang. "Mr. Latz--" "Louis," he interpolated, widely eloquent of posture.