Tears that were distilled in her heart rose to her eyes, dimming them.  Her hand fluttered in among the plates and cups and saucers toward him.

“Phonzie, I—­I—­”

“You what?”

“I—­I—­Aw, nothing.”

Her head fell suddenly forward in her arms, pushing the elaborate coiffure awry, and beneath the blue-checked apron her shoulders heaved.

He rose.  “Madam!  Why, madam, what—­”

“Don’t—­don’t pay any attention to me, Phonzie.  I—­I just got a silly fit on me.  I’ll be all right in a minute.”

“Aw, madam, I—­I didn’t mean to make you sore by anything I said.”

“You go now, Phonzie; the whole evening don’t need to be spoiled for you just because I went and got a silly fit of blues on.  You—­you go get some live one like Gert and—­and take her out skylarking.”

“You’re sore about Gert, is that it, madam?”

“No, no.  Honest, Phonzie.”

“Madam, I—­I just don’t know what’s got you.  Is it something I said has hurt your feelings?”

“No, no.”

He advanced with an incertitude that muddled his movements, made to cross to her side where she lay with her arms outstretched in the fuddle of dishes, made to touch her black silk sleeve where it emerged from the blue-checked apron, hesitated, sucking his lips in between his teeth, swung on his heel, then around once more, and placed his hand lightly on her shoulder.

“Madam?”

“You—­you just go on, Phonzie.  I—­I guess I’m an old fool, anyways.  It’s like trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip for me to try and squeeze anything but work out of my life.  I—­I guess I’m just nothing but an old fool.”

“But, madam, how can a fellow like me squeeze anything out of life for you?  Look at me!  Why, I ain’t worth your house room.  I’m nothing but a fellow who draws his salary off a woman, and has all his life.  Why, you—­you earn as much in a week as I do in a month.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Look, you with a home you made for yourself and a business you built up out of your own brains, and what am I?  A hall-room guy that can put a bluff across with a lot of idiot women.  Look at me, forty and doing a chorus-man’s work.  You got me wrong, madam.  I don’t measure nowheres near up to you.  If I did, do you think I wouldn’t be settled down long ago like a regular—­Aw, well, what’s the use talking.”  He plucked at his short mustache, pulling the hairs sharply.

She raised her face and let him gaze at the ravages of her tears.  “Why—­why don’t you come right out and say it, that I ’ain’t got the looks and—­the pep?”

“Madam, can’t you see I’m only—­”

“You—­you can’t run yourself down to me.  You, and nobody else, has made the establishment what it is.  I never had a head for the little things that count.  That’s why I spent my best years down in Twenty-third Street.  What did I know about the big little things!—­the carriage-call stunt and the sachet-bags in the lining and the blue and gold labels, all little things that get big results.  I never had a head for the things that hold the rich trade, like the walking models, or the French accent.”