"Oh, Carl--Carl! Oh, why, why, why! Oh, why don't you want me to go walking with you, now? Why don't you want to go anywhere with me any more? Have I displeased you? Oh, I didn't mean to! Why do I bore you so?" "Oh--Gertie--oh--gee!--thunder!" whimpered a dismayed youth. A more mature Hawk Ericson struggled to life and soothed her: "Gertie, honey, I didn't mean----Listen----" But she moaned on, standing rigid, her left hand on her breast, her eyes red, moist, frightened, fixed: "We always played together, and I thought here in the city we could be such good friends, with all the different new things to do together--why, I wanted us to go to Chinatown and theaters, and I would have been so glad to pay my share. I've just been waiting and hoping you would ask me, and I wanted us to play and see--oh! so many different new things together--it would have been so sweet, so sweet----We were good friends at first, and then you--you didn't want to come here any more and----Oh, I couldn't help seeing it; more and more and more and _more_ I've been seeing it; but I didn't want to see it; but now I can't fool myself any more. I was so lonely till you came to-night, and when you spoke about tramping----And then it seemed like you just went away from me again." "Why, Gertie, you didn't seem----" "----and long ago I really saw it, the day we walked in the Park and I was wicked about trying to make you call me 'Eltruda'--oh, Carl dear, indeed you needn't call me that or anything you don't like--and I tried to make you say I had a temperament. And about Adelaide and all. And you went away and I thought you would come back to me that evening--oh, I wanted you to come, so much, and you didn't even 'phone--and I waited up till after midnight, hoping you would 'phone, I kept thinking surely you would, and you never did, you never did; and I listened and listened for the 'phone to ring, and every time there was a noise----But it never was you. It never rang at all...." She dropped back in the Morris chair, her eyes against the cushion, her hair disordered, both her hands gripping the left arm of the chair, her sobs throat-catching and long--throb-throb-throb in the death-still air. Carl stared at her, praying for a chance to escape. Then he felt an instinct prompting him to sob with her. Pity, embarrassment, disgust, mingled with his alarm. He became amazed that Gertie, easy-going Gertie Cowles, had any passion at all; and indignant that it was visited upon himself.