“You’re right, kiddo; you got more sand than ten of such put together.”

“I’m as good as her and better.  I’m not so sure by a long shot that any of those baby faces would say no if they was ever invited to say yes.  Watch out there, that cab, Blink.  Gee! your nerves are as steady as gelatin.”

They were veering through the crowds and out into the soft flurry of the storm.  Flakes like pulled-out bits of cotton floated to their shoulders, resting there.  Seventh Avenue, for the instant before the eye left the great Greek facade of the Pennsylvania Terminal, was like a dream of Athens seen through the dapple of white shadows.  Immediately the eye veered, however, the great cosmopolis formed by street meeting avenue tore down the illusion.  Another block and second-hand clothing shops nudged one another, their flapping wares for sale outside them like clothes-wash on a line, empty arms and legs gallivanting in the wind.  A storm-car combed through the driven snow, scuttling it and clearing the tracks.  Down another block the hot, spicy smell of a Mexican dish floated out between the swinging doors of an all-night bar.  A man lurched out, laughing and crying.

Marjorie Clark’s companion steered her past and turned toward her, his twitching features suddenly, and even through their looseness, softened.

“Poor kiddo!” he said.  “Just send them to me for reference.  I can do some tall vouching for you.”

“The way I feel lately sometimes, honest, I think if I get to getting the indigoes much deeper, there’s no telling where they’ll land me.  The game as well as the name ain’t all poetry, let me tell you that.”

Through the fall of mild snow he could see her face shining out darkly, and his bare, eager fingers moved toward her arm, and except when the spasmodic twitch locked his features, his face, too, was thrust forward, keen and close to hers.

“I’ve been telling you that for five years, girl.”

“Now don’t go getting me wrong, Blink.”

“If I was what the law calls a free man, Marj, you know what kind of a proposition I would have put up to you five years ago when I had my health and my looks and—­”

“If you want to make me sore, just tune up on that old song.  You ain’t man enough to even get your own little kid out of the clutches of a mother that’s pulling her down to Hades with her.  Take it from me, if there wasn’t something in me that’s just sorry for you, I wouldn’t walk these here blocks with you.  Sometimes when I look at you right hard, Blink, honest, it looks to me like the coke’s got you, Blink.”

“Now, Marjie—­”

“You wouldn’t tell me if it had.  But you got the twitches, all righty.”

“It’s me nerves, Marj; me nerves and you.”

“Bah! you got about as much backbone as a jellyfish.  Blaming things on a girl.”

“You took the backbone out of me, I tell you.”

“Oh no, I didn’t; it’s been missing since your first birthday.”