"You must think I'm easy," she persisted. "He won't never marry me. Of course it don't matter how poor you are. Sometimes rich men from uptown marry factory girls, like in 'From Rags to Riches'—but not girls like me. Not girls that have been bad."
I tried to translate into the lingo of the Bowery the old proposition that it is never too late to mend. And then I asked her, "Didn't you go to the City Hall with him?"
"Don't I know? Haven't I seen people get married?" she retorted half in discouragement, half in anger. "Don't I know you have to have a white dress and a priest? Wot's the game?"
I did my best to explain that in America, we have civil marriages which are just as binding as the ones in a church. But all I could get from her was a reluctant admission that there might be two varieties of marriage—a half way kind at the City Hall and a truly kind with a priest. She insisted that it was a sin to have children without a white dress and a ring.
When Norman came in, I took him to my room and, closing the door, told him about it. He rolled around on the bed and kicked his heels in the air.
"Think of it!" he howled. "Me—done up in orange blossoms! Me—going to a priest! Arnold, get out your white gloves—polish your silk hat—you'll have to see me through with this."
He dashed out to order Nina's dress. But he said nothing to her about it, pledged me to secrecy. It was a complete surprise to her when it came.
I have never seen anything in all my life so wonderful as her face, when she opened the package—the gradual melting away of doubt, the gradual awakening of certainty—and then the way she walked over to Norman, her eyes so wide with joy, and threw herself sobbing into his arms. I had to go to my room to hide my tears.
In a few minutes, Norman came in—his voice was also stiff and husky.
"What in hell do you think is the latest?" he asked. "She's gone off with Guiseppe—to confessional! Says it would be a sin to get married without it. My God! My God!"