"Oh yes, sure! Lemme tell you, a lady can't be none too careful about her reputation with one of them skinny, dark devils like a Dago snooping around." "Why, you're absolutely ridiculous! Besides, how do you know Mr. Babson is bad? Has he ever hurt anybody in the office?" "No, but they say--" "'They say'!" "Now don't you go and get peeved after you and me been such good friends, Miss Golden. I don't know that this Babson fellow ever done anything worse than eat cracker-jack at South Beach, but I was just telling you what they all say--how he drinks and goes with a lot of totties and all; but--but he's all right if you say so, and--honest t' Gawd, Miss Golden, listen, honest, I wouldn't knock him for nothing if I thought he was your fellow! And," in admiration, "and him an editor! Gee!" Una tried to see herself as a princess forgiving her honest servitor. But, as a matter of fact, she was plain angry that her romance should be dragged into the nastiness of office gossip. She resented being a stenographer, one who couldn't withdraw into a place for dreams. And she fierily defended Walter in her mind; throbbed with a big, sweet pity for her nervous, aspiring boy whose quest for splendor made him seem wild to the fools about them. When, just at five-thirty, Walter charged up to her again, she met him with a smile of unrestrained intimacy. "If you're going to be home at _all_ this evening, let me come up just for fifteen minutes!" he demanded. "Yes!" she said, breathlessly. "Oh, I oughtn't to, but--come up at nine." § 2 Una had always mechanically liked children; had ejaculated, "Oh, the pink little darling!" over each neighborhood infant; had pictured children of her own; but never till that night had the desire to feel her own baby's head against her breast been a passion. After dinner she sat on the stoop of her apartment-house, watching the children at play between motors on the street. "Oh, it would be wonderful to have a baby--a boy like Walter must have been--to nurse and pet and cry over!" she declared, as she watched a baby of faint, brown ringlets--hair that would be black like Walter's. Later she chided herself for being so bold, so un-Panamanian; but she was proud to know that she could long for the pressure of a baby's lips. The brick-walled street echoed with jagged cries of children; tired women in mussed waists poked their red, steamy necks out of windows; the sky was a blur of gray; and, lest she forget the job, Una's left wrist ached from typing; yet she heard the rustle of spring, and her spirit swelled with thankfulness as she felt her life to be not a haphazard series of days, but a divine progress. Walter was coming--to-night! She was conscious of her mother, up-stairs. From her place of meditation she had to crawl up the many steps to the flat and answer at least twenty questions as to what she had been doing. Of Walter's coming she could say nothing; she could not admit her interest in a man she did not know.