jowls barbered to death and wicked looking, like a well-known clubman or villain.  The lady was spectacular and cynical, with a cold, thin nose and eyes like a couple of glass marbles.  Her hair was several shades off a legal yellow and she was dressed!  She would have made handsome loot, believe me—­aigrette, bracelets, rings, dog collar, gold-mesh bag, vanity case—­Oh, you could see at a glance that she was one of them Broadway social favourites you read about.  And both grouchy, like I said.  He scowled till you knew he’d just love to beat a crippled step-child to death, and she—­well, her work wasn’t so coarse; she kept her mad down better.  She set there as nice and sweet as a pet scorpion.

“‘A scrap,’ I says to myself, ’and they’ve only half finished.  She’s threatened to quit and he, the cowardly dog, has dared her to.’  Plain enough.  The waiter knew it soon as I did when he come to take their order.  Wouldn’t speak to each other.  Talked through him; fought it out to something different for each one.  Couldn’t even agree on the same kind of cocktail.  Both slamming the waiter—­before they fought the order to a finish each had wanted to call the head waiter, only the other one stopped it.

“So I rubbered awhile, trying to figure out why such folks want to finish up their fights in a restaurant, and then I forgot ’em, looking at some other persons that come in.  Then the orchestra started this song and I seen a lady was getting up in front to sing it.  I admit the piece got me.  It got me good.  Really, ain’t it the gooey mess of heart-throbs when you come right down to it?  This lady singer was a good-looking sad-faced contralto in a low-cut black dress—­and how she did get the tears out of them low notes!  Oh, I quit looking at people while her chest was oozing out that music.  And it got others, too.  I noticed lots of ’em had stopped eating when I looked round, and there was so much clapping she had to get up and do it all over again.  And what you think?  In the middle of the second time I look over to these fighters, and darned if they ain’t holding hands across the table; and more, she’s got a kind of pitiful, crying smile on and he’s crying right out—­crying into his cold asparagus, plain as day.

“What more would you want to know about the powers of this here piece of music?  They both spoke like human beings to the scared waiter when he come back, and the lad left a five-spot on the tray when he paid his check.  Some song, yes?

“And all this flashed back on me when Nettie and I stood there watching this cute little banjo.  So I says to myself, ’Here, my morbid vestal, is where I put you sane; here’s where I hurl an asphyxiating bomb into the trenches of the New Dawn.’  Out loud I only says, ’Let’s go in and see if Wilbur has got some new records.’

“‘Wilbur?’ says she, and we went in.  Nettie had not met Wilbur.