“That’s about the way of it, isn’t it?” he said again into the growing silence.

Suddenly Mrs. Samstag’s fingers were rigid at their task of lace making, the scraping of the orchestral violin tearing the roaring noises in her ears into ribbons of alternate sound and vacuum, as if she were closing her ears and opening them, so roaringly the blood pounded.

“I—­When a woman cares for—­a man like—­I did—­Mr. Latz, she’ll never be happy until—­she cares again—­like that.  I always say, once an affectionate nature, always an affectionate nature.”

“You mean,” he said, leaning forward the imperceptible half inch that was left of chair—­“you mean—­me—?”

The smell of bay rum came out greenly then as the moisture sprang out on his scalp.

“I—­I’m a home woman, Mr. Latz.  You can put a fish in water, but you cannot make him swim.  That’s me and hotel life.”

At this somewhat cryptic apothegm Mr. Latz’s knee touched Mrs. Samstag’s, so that he sprang back full of nerves at what he had not intended.

“Marry me, Carrie,” he said, more abruptly than he might have, without the act of that knee to immediately justify.

She spread the lace out on her lap.

Ostensibly to the hotel lobby they were as casual as, “My mulligatawny soup was cold to-night,” or, “Have you heard the new one that Al Jolson pulls at the Winter Garden?” But actually the roar was higher than ever in Mrs. Samstag’s ears and he could feel the plethoric red rushing in flashes over his body.

“Marry me, Carrie,” he said, as if to prove that his stiff lips could repeat their incredible feat.

With a woman’s talent for them, her tears sprang.

“Mr. Latz—­”

“Louis,” he interpolated, widely eloquent of eyebrow and posture.

“You’re proposing, Louis!” She explained rather than asked, and placed her hand to her heart so prettily that he wanted to crush it there with his kisses.

“God bless you for knowing it so easy, Carrie.  A young girl would make it so hard.  It’s just what has kept me from asking you weeks ago, this getting it said.  Carrie, will you?”

“I’m a widow, Mr. Latz—­Louis—­”

“Loo—­”

“L—­loo.  With a grown daughter.  Not one of those merry-widows you read about.”

“That’s me!  A bachelor on top, but a home man underneath.  Why, up to five years ago, Carrie, while the best little mother a man ever had was alive, I never had eyes for a woman or—­”

“It’s common talk what a grand son you were to her, Mr. La—­Louis—­”

“Loo.”

“Loo.”

“I don’t want to seem to brag, Carrie, but you saw the coat that just walked out on Mrs. Gronauer?  My little mother she was a humpback, Carrie, not a real one, but all stooped from the heavy years when she was helping my father to get his start.  Well, anyway, that little stooped back was one of the reasons why I was so anxious to make it up to her.  Y’understand?”