slighting warmth of liking. His appearance was preposterous, the
ready emotion often too foolish for words; but underneath there was
a--a goodness, a mysterious quality that stirred her heart to
recognition. Certain rare things in life and experience affected her
like that memory of an old happiness. She could never say what they
might be, they came at the oddest times and by the most extraordinary
means; but at their occurrence she would thrill for a moment as if
in response to a sound of music.

It was, for example, absurd that Mr. Moses Feldt, who was a Jew,
should make her feel like that, but he did. And all the while that
she was disagreeable to him, or mocking him behind his back, she was
as uncomfortable and "horrid" as possible. While this fact, of
course, only served to make her horrider still. At present she
adopted the manner of a patience that nothing could quite exhaust;
she was polite and formal, relentlessly correct in position.

Mr. Moses Feldt, the cigar in his grasp, pressed a hand to the
probable region of his heart. "You don't know how I think of you,"
he protested, tears in his eyes; "just the idea of you exposed to
anything at all in hotels keeps me awake nights. Now it's a drunk,
or a fresh feller on the elevator, or--"

"It's nice of you," Linda said, "but you needn't worry. No one would
dare to bother us. No one ever has."

"You wouldn't know it if they did," he replied despondently, "at
your age. And then your mother is so trustful and pleasant. Take
those parties where she is so much--roof frolics and cocoanut groves
and submarine cafes; they don't come to any good. Rowdy." Linda