She threw out an arm that was visibly trembling.  “Mr. Vetsburg, for God’s sake, ’ain’t I just told you how that she—­harum-scarum—­she—.”

“Will you, Mrs. Kaufman, come or won’t you?  Will you, I ask you, or won’t you?”

“I—­I can’t, Mr.—­”

“All right, then, I—­I bust out now.  To-day can be as good as to-morrow!  Not with my say in a t’ousand years, Mrs. Kaufman, you sign that lease!  I ain’t a young man any more with fine speeches, Mrs. Kaufman, but not in a t’ousand years you sign that lease.”

“Mr. Vetsburg, Ruby—­I—­”

“If anybody’s got a lease on you, Mrs. Kaufman, I—­I want it!  I want it!  That’s the kind of a lease would suit me.  To be leased to you for always, the rest of your life!”

She could not follow him down the vista of fancy, but stood interrogating him with her heartbeats at her throat.  “Mr. Vetsburg, if he puts on the doors and hinges and new plumbing in—.”

“I’m a plain man, Mrs. Kaufman, without much to offer a woman what can give out her heart’s blood like it was so much water.  But all these years I been waiting, Mrs. Kaufman, to bust out, until—­till things got riper.  I know with a woman like you, whose own happiness always is last, that first your girl must be fixed—.”

“She’s a young girl, Mr. Vetsburg.  You—­you mustn’t depend—.  If I had my say—.”

“He’s a fine fellow, Mrs. Kaufman.  With his uncle to help ’em, they got, let me tell you, a better start as most young ones!”

She rose, holding on to the desk.

“I—­I—­” she said.  “What?”

“Lena,” he uttered, very softly.

“Lena, Mr. Vetsburg?”

“It ’ain’t been easy, Lenie, these years while she was only growing up, to keep off my lips that name.  A name just like a leaf off a rose.  Lena!” he reiterated and advanced.

Comprehension came quietly and dawning like a morning.

“I—­I—.  Mr. Vetsburg, you must excuse me,” she said, and sat down suddenly.

He crossed to the little desk and bent low over her chair, his hand not on her shoulder, but at the knob of her chair.  His voice had a swift rehearsed quality.

“Maybe to-morrow, if you didn’t back out, it would sound finer by the ocean, Lenie, but it don’t need the ocean a man should tell a woman when she’s the first and the finest woman in the world.  Does it, Lenie?”

“I—­I thought Ruby.  She—­”

“He’s a good boy, Leo is, Lenie.  A good boy what can be good to a woman like his father before him.  Good enough even for a fine girl like our Ruby, Lenie—­our Ruby!”

“Gott im Himmel! then you—­”

“Wide awake, too.  With a start like I can give him in my business, you ’ain’t got to worry Ruby ’ain’t fixed herself with the man what she chooses.  To-morrow at Atlantic City all fixed I had it I should tell—­”

“You!” she said, turning around in her chair to face him.  “You—­all along you been fixing—­”