She trembled so she grasped the back of a chair for support, and tears ricocheted down her cheeks.
"I can't, Jimmie! He's gone by now; he's gone by now—out of sight. I can't! Please, Jimmie! I'll tell her! I'll tell her! Don't—don't you dare come near me! I'll go, Jimmie—I'll go. 'Sh-h-h!"
"You gotta get him—you can't come here to-night without him. I ain't goin' to stand for her not seeing him to-night. I—I don't care how you get him, but you ain't going to kill her! You gotta get him, or I'll—"
"Jimmie—'sh-h-h!"
"Jimmie, tell him it ain't like me to give out like this. Tell—"
"Yes, ma."
"Yes, ma—we're comin'. Joe's waitin' down at the door. I'll run down and bring him up; he—he's so bashful. In a minute, ma darlin'."
She flung open the door and fled, racing down two flights of stairs, with her steps clattering after her in an avalanche, and out into a quiet street, which sprung echoes of her flying feet.
After midnight every pedestrian becomes a simulacrum, wrapped in a black domino of mystery and a starry ephod of romance. A homeward-bound pedestrian is a faun in evening dress. Fat-and-forty leans from her window to hurtle a can at a night-yelling cat and becomes a demoiselle leaning out from the golden bar of Heaven.
In the inspissated gloom of the street occasional silhouettes hurried in silent haste; and a block ahead of her, just emerging into a string of shop lights, she could distinguish the uneven-shouldered outline of Joe Ullman and the unmistakable silhouette of his slightly askew hat.