“I know life, kiddo.  I’ve used up thirty years of my lease on it getting wise to it.  Come now, is it Checkers, queenie?  What’s your game?”

She leaned forward, looking him evenly between the eyes, but her lips seared as if from his hot insult.  “You take that back.”

“What you green around the gills for, kiddo?  Didn’t you say yourself that the name and the game come together in the same package?  I ain’t arguing it with you.”

“You take it back, I said.”

He laughed and flecked his fingers for a waiter, flinging out his legs at full length alongside the table.  “You’re a clever little girl, Marj, and I’ve got to hand it to you.  Another stein there, waiter, and one for the girl; she needs it.”

“I’ll spill it right out if it comes.”

“Lord! what you so sheety-looking for?  White with temper and green at the gills, eh?  Gad!  I like you that way.  I like you for your temper, and if you want to know it, I like you for every blamed thing about you.”

“You—­quit!  Let go!  Let go, I say!  Ug-gh!” Her lips, with the greenish auro about them, would only move stiffly, and she pushed back from the table only half articulate.  “Let me pass—­please.”

“Where you going, peaches?” He reached for her hand.  “You mad, Marj?  I didn’t mean to get you sore.”

“N-no, Blink.”

“You beauty, you.”

“’Sh-h-h!”

“Gad! but I like you.  Sit down, Marj, I got a new proposition to put to you.  I can talk big money, girl.”

“Don’t—­Blink.”

“Sit down, girl.  Harry don’t stand for no stage stuff in here no more.”

“I—­”

“I got a new proposition, girl.  One that’ll make Checkers look like thirty cents.  A white proposition, too, Marj.  A baby could listen to it.”

“Yes, yes, Blink, but not now.  When you get lit up you—­you oughtn’t begin to dream about those millionaire propositions, Blink.  Try and keep your wits.”

“A baby could listen to this here proposition, Marj.  And big money, too, Marj.  It’s diamonds for you.”

Somehow with her lips she smiled down at him, and did not tug for the release of her hand.  Dallied for the instant instead.

“You’re lit up, Blink.”

“Some big guns in Wall Street, Marj, are after me, Marj, with a million-dollar proposition.  I—­”

“Yes, yes, but wait a minute, Blink.  I’ll be back.”  She even lay a pat on his shoulder and slid past him lightly.  “In a minute, Blink.”

“Hurry,” he said, his smile broken by a swift twitch of feature, and raising his fresh stein.

Once out of his vision, she veered sharply and in a bath of fear darted toward the small hallway, with its red bead of gaslight burning on and flickering against the two panels of colored glass in the dingy brown door.

Outside, the flakes had ceased and the sinister-looking side street lay in a white hush, a single line of scraggly footsteps crunched into the snow of the sidewalk.  A clock from a sky-scraping tower rang out eight, its echoes singing like anvils in the sharp, thin air.  On the cross-town street the shops were full of light and activity, crowds wedging in and out.  Marjorie Clark pulled at her strength and ran.