She was conscious that, though his head was passionately thrown back, his faunlike eyes stared into hers, and that his thin lips arched. Terribly she wanted to say, "Yes!" Actually, Una Golden of Panama and the _Gazette_ office speculated, for a tenth of a second, whether she couldn't go. Madness--river-flow and darkness and the stars! But she said, "No, I'm afraid we couldn't possibly!" "No," he said, slowly. "Of course--of course I didn't mean we _could_; but--Goldie, little Goldie that wants to live and rule things, wouldn't you _like_ to go? _Wouldn't_ you?" "Yes!... You hurt my arm so!... Oh, don't! We must--" Her low cry was an appeal to him to save them from spring's scornful, lusty demand; every throbbing nerve in her seemed to appeal to him; and it was not relief, but gratitude, that she felt when he said, tenderly, "Poor kid!... Which way? Come." They walked soberly toward the Golden flat, and soberly he mused, "Poor kids, both of us trying to be good slaves in an office when we want to smash things.... You'll be a queen--you'll grab the throne same as you grab papers offn my desk. And maybe you'll let me be court jester." "Why do you say I'll--oh, be a queen? Do you mean literally, in business, an executive?" "Hadn't thought just what it did imply, but I suppose it's that." "But why, _why_? I'm simply one of a million stenographers." "Oh, well, you aren't satisfied to take things just as they're handed to you. Most people are, and they stick in a rut and wonder who put them there. All this success business is a mystery--listen to how successful men trip themselves up and fall all over their foolish faces when they try to explain to a bunch of nice, clean, young clerks how they stole their success. But I know you'll get it, because you aren't satisfied easily--you take my work and do it. And yet you're willing to work in one corner till it's time to jump. That's my failing--I ain't willing to stick." "I--perhaps---- Here's the flat." "Lord!" he cried; "we _got_ to walk a block farther and back." "Well--" They were stealing onward toward the breeze from the river before she had finished her "Well." "Think of wasting this hypnotizing evening talking of success--word that means a big house in Yonkers! When we've become friends, Goldie, little Goldie. Business of souls grabbing for each other! Friends--at least to-night! Haven't we, dear? haven't we?" "Oh, I hope so!" she whispered. He drew her hand into his pocket and clasped it there. She looked shyly down. Strange that her hand should not be visible when she could feel its palm flame against his. She let it snuggle there, secure.... Mr. Walter Babson was not a young man with "bad prospects," or "good prospects"; he was love incarnate in magic warm flesh, and his hand was the hand of love. She was conscious of his hard-starched cuff pressing against her bare arm--a man's cuff under the rough surface of his man's coat-sleeve.