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.
§ 7
Two evenings later, when November warmed to a passing Indian summer of golden skies that were pitifully far away from the little folk in city streets, Una was so restless that she set off for a walk by herself.
Phil had been silent, glancing at her and away, as though he were embarrassed.
“I wish I could do something to help him,” she thought, as she poked down-stairs to the entrance of the apartment-house.
Phil was on the steps, smoking a cigarette-sized cigar, scratching his chin, and chattering with his kinsmen, the gutter sparrows.
He doffed his derby. He spun his cigar from him with a deft flip of his fingers which somehow agitated her. She called herself a little fool for being agitated, but she couldn’t get rid of the thought that only men snapped their fingers like that.
“Goin’ to the movies, Miss Golden?”