§ 6
Phil talked to her for an hour after their Sunday-noon dinner. She had been to church; had confessed indeterminate sins to a formless and unresponsive deity. She felt righteous, and showed it. Phil caught the cue. He sacrificed all the witty things he was prepared to say about Mrs. Gray’s dumplings; he gazed silently out of the window till she wondered what he was thinking about, then he stumblingly began to review a sermon which he said he had heard the previous Sunday—though he must have been mistaken, as he shot several games of Kelly pool every Sunday morning, or slept till noon.
“The preacher spoke of woman’s influence. You don’t know what it is to lack a woman’s influence in a fellow’s life, Miss Golden. I can see the awful consequences among my patients. I tell you, when I sat there in church and saw the colored windows—” He sighed portentously. His hand fell across hers—his lean paw, strong and warm-blooded from massaging puffy old men. “I tell you I just got sentimental, I did, thinking of all I lacked.”
Phil melted mournfully away—to indulge in a highly cheerful walk on upper Broadway with Miss Becky Rosenthal, sewer for the Sans Peur Pants and Overalls Company—while in her room Una grieved over his forlorn desire to be good.