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44 overcame her when she found herself in the same block with a live man. Her heart was broken. If only that Face were broken, instead!

And still he said no word; his face was too full of currency. It was not till he began speaking that he spoke.

“I am a stranger in Manhattan,” he remarked, “and this is the cheapest and best meal I have eaten here for several years. I was enjoying it in my simple Flushing fashion till you came. But you have taken away my appetite. If you don’t return it, I’ll call a policeman.”

No man had ever spoken to her so kindly, few had ever spoken at all. There was something, too, about the way he shoved her  into the gutter that moved her strangely. But she was in no mood for flirtation, or, indeed, for anything mere. At another time she might have loved that man—in a gondola, perhaps, or an obbligato or an arpeggio, or, in fact, in any of those picturesque  places you see in the movies. But it was not so to be. She heard only these cruel whiskers that had deceived her; she saw  only that lying voice.