Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 7, 1928 — page 43: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE RESPECTABLE MANIACS, front room to rest, she was thinking of several things. Albert had not kissed her; she had missed the movies to-night; there was a girl in Albert’s album, and an un- known individual called George Archer was somehow-the key to it all and to her restless mood. It occurred to her that her mood was only a premonition of something that was about to hap- pen. TT. SEVERAL nights later it rained. Viola had sat at one of the front win- dows since four o’clock, watching the large drops splashing in the street pud- dles. The depression in the corner across the way, where the sewer grat- ing was placed, had filled up rapidly. That grating was always clogged up, and whenever it rained a small mud-colored lake formed there. Small Italian boys would squat on the side- walk there after the storm and sail their pirate galleons—slats of wood from fruit crates belonging to the pub- lic market across the street. What a storm it was! The street was empty until about five thirty, when people began coming home from their jobs. ‘They were a strange people to Viola, these folks who went to work in the morning and returned at night. And to-night, as she pressed her nose against the wide pane and- watched them scurrying to their drab apart- ments, protecting their hats with news- papers, she sensed a new barrier be- tween her and her husband. He belonged to that world of city workers; she to a domestic world. He met many people of whom she never dreamed. He and his associates went about their work with set, pale faces, and talked, in each different office, a different jargon of business. She pictured Albert sitting at his desk and shuffling papers, making marks with his pen, and talking some Sega tocs language to those about A 33 him. The same thing went on in countless offices, in countless cities. And all of it was unknown to her, part of another world. How much the world claimed of him, and how little it left of him to her! His past before she met him— that belonged to himself, to his own memory. His daily life at the office— that, too, was his own. Yet she, on her part, presided over this little apartment, and met another class of people, the homekeepers, com- posed of young and old wives, old men who walked solemnly around, their hands behind their backs—and children and shopkeepers. She, too, lived in a strange world, a world apart from Al- bert’s. How inconceivable that they should try to combine these two worlds, they who were practically strangers to each other. “ Her eyes settled on two people who were hurrying across the way, their black silk umbrella tilted against the rain and wind. They crossed the street and tried to find a way over the big puddle near the sewer grating. When at last they discovered a place where the jumping from the street to the sidewalk was not too wide, the man lifted the girl by the elbows and helped her across. It certainly looked as if he got his feet wet for his pains. Viola chuckled disdainfully at him. The darn fool! The girl could just as well have jumped unaided. : A shift in the wind tipped over the umbrella, wrenched it from the man’s hand—and Viola sprang to her feet, her brown eyes wide and unbelieving. It was not until she had seen the man recover the umbrella and disappear down the street with the girl that Viola muttered wonderingly : “Why, that was Albert!” Yes, she told herself, it was Albert. But who the dickens was the girl with him? Where had she seen that bright, pretty face before, and how had Al- COPMICLOOOKS (E@)