A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

The Night of June 20, 1896

The lights were going on in the St. Anselm Hotel for the first time. The last mason had left a week ago. The last painter and carpenter had left two days ago. The last decorators were still busy, in some of the rooms on some of the floors, working overtime, working like mad, unrolling carpets, tacking up drapes, unpacking mirrors. Everyone was new at his job, from the manager down to the merest bellboy; everyone was confused, highly excited, uncertain just what was expected of him, and how to go about what was expected of him. Everyone was asking the personnel member just over him what to do and how to do it, and then getting it wrong because he’d been told wrong. The bellboys were asking the bell captain, the bell captain was asking the desk clerk, the desk clerk was asking the manager. It stopped there; the manager had no one higher than himself to ask. So he passed the blame in reverse direction, and it started down the line again: to desk clerk, to bell captain, to bellboy. Then, when it got there, it had to stop once more and start up-rank again. But everyone was making allowances, so there was no great harm done, except to nervous energy. Everyone knew no one could be expected to be letter-perfect. Everyone knew they’d do better in a day or so, or a week. Everyone knew things would calm down and straighten out.

This was opening day, and the hotel had been in business for exactly six hours, ever since high noon.

Now room by room the lights were going on. Window after window bloomed yellow, against the outer presummer darkness, as the rooms were taken. Not in direct order, one after the next, of course. Haphazardly; but still the desk clerk was working his registrations upward pretty much floor by floor, from lower to higher. It was simpler that way. The second and third had been all gone even days before the opening, by premature reservation. The fourth and fifth were sold out by midafternoon, and by nightfall he was already as high as the ninth, with just a scattering of back singles on the two immediately below. And a completely booked hotel in those days was no mean feat.

The carriage arrived a little before ten. Carriages had been arriving all day in unending succession, rolling up in an almost unbroken line, so no one gave it a second look. It was a hired carriage, not a private one. There were telltale grains of rice sprinkled on its black felt flooring. There was a fairly sizable amount of hand-luggage on the seat beside the driver. At the back some mischievous person had affixed a placard reading “Just Married.” There was also an empty soup can and an old shoe trailing along behind it at the end of a string, and clattering considerably over the pavement.

A young man alighted, rather nervously. He had on a starched collar the height of his neck. He had on a dark-blue jacket, pinched-in at the back and secured by a halfbelt that ended at the sides. He had on white duck trousers, this being the beginning of the warm season. A flower from some recent function decorated the buttonhole of his lapel. He was about twenty-four.

He looked at the blazing hotel entrance. He looked extremely frightened. Then he turned back toward the carriage, and removed the flat-crowned, rigidly stiff straw hat he wore. This had a tricolored band of blue, white and green around it, and was secured to one of the buttons of his jacket by a black cord. He held out his hand toward the carriage, and, rather strainedly, forced a smile of reassurance. A reassurance that it was obvious he didn’t feel himself at the moment, much less being able to pass it on to someone else.

A smaller hand reached out to take his, and its owner followed him down.

She was about eighteen. Perhaps not even that. She had dark-brown hair, piled high atop her head and drawn back from her face in what was called a pompadour. She wore a hat that went high up on one side and far down on the other. It stayed that way through the aid of numbers of pins. It had willow plumes on the side that was up, it had roses and green leaves on the side that was down. A collar as high as his gripped her throat. However, it was not starched linen, but lace, stiffened with whalebone ribs. She held the bottom of her dress up from the ground with one hand. This was highly necessary, for it not only touched the ground, it lay over it for quite a few inches on all sides of her when at rest.

But in spite of all this she would have been beautiful in any generation.

They stood there terrified together, hand clasping hand low at their sides, as if trying to hide this bond from the world.

One of the peripatetic bellboys appeared. “Take your luggage in, sir?” he inquired.

The boy could only nod mutely, too stricken to speak. He paid and tipped the coachman, with considerable agitated fumbling of hands.

“Thank you kindly,” the coachman said. “Lots of luck to the two of you.” He touched whip to horse-flank. “And may all your troubles be little ones,” he added.

“I wonder how he could tell about us so easy?” the girl whispered with a nervous titter.

“They like to tease a lot,” he said soothingly. He curled her hand protectively about his arm. “Shall we go in?”

They went up the still-new entrance steps of the St. Anselm and into a marble-floored lobby that had, for the present occasion, been turned into almost a jungle of potted palms, ferns, and floral good-luck offerings. Most of these would be removed within a day or two, but at the moment it was almost like picking your way through a hothouse greenery.

“This way, sir, if you’d care to register,” the bellboy called helpfully to them. He was visible only above the waist, where he stood, and their baggage, presumably on the floor, had disappeared completely.

They approached the desk.

“Mr. Graham, please!” the bellboy called, addressing banked flowers.

Mr. Graham, the desk clerk, peered out at them from one side of a huge horseshoe of pink roses that partially screened his domain. They shifted over to the side he was on, since they had been erroneously standing over at the other side of the obstacle until then. Mr. Graham, however, had sought to adjust himself to them at the same moment as they did to him, so he had shifted back to the first side, by the time they left it and reached the second. Immediately, both parties corrected their mistake. Mr. Graham returned to the second side, his left; they returned to the first, their right.

Mr. Graham found a way of stopping the pendulum-like fluctuation at last, before it continued any further and died down of its own momentum. “Just stand there where you are now and wait for me,” he suggested wearily. “I’ll be right over.”

“I made a reservation,” the young man said timidly, when equipoise had been re-established. “John Compton.” He corrected himself. “Mr. Compton.” He corrected himself a second time, and far more all-embracingly. “Mr. and Mrs. John Compton.”

The girl dropped her eyes for a moment at this point, both pleased and shy.

The young man leaned forward. “The — er — the special suite,” he said diffidently.

“Oh, the bridal suite,” blurted out the insensitive Mr. Graham. “Yes, of course. We received your reservation. I have it right here.”

The girl picked at one of the marginal roses on the horseshoe as a cover for her self-consciousness.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Mr. Graham said. “If we’d only known where to reach you in time—”

“Why? Is something wrong?” the young groom demanded tautly.

“There was a hitch,” Mr. Graham apologized. “We’ve been doing everything we can to be ready on time, but those things will happen. Well, the fact of the matter is, Mr. Compton, it’s not quite finished yet. I wouldn’t feel right about putting you in there, on an — on an occasion such as this.” He bestowed a glance on the dewy-eyed bride, which sent her back to rose-leaf plucking again in a hurry. “Won’t you let me put you elsewhere just for tonight, and then I promise you the suite will be yours, without fail, tomorrow?”

The young pair looked at one another.

“Do you mind?” he murmured.

“Do you?” she breathed back.

The two deferring questions should have neutralized one another and brought them right back where they were, but he already seemed to be able to translate her meanings without any difficulty, inexperienced husband though he was. “Well, all right,” he said, “if you’re sure we can have the other tomorrow.”

“I give you my word,” Mr. Graham promised. He turned to the rack behind him. “I have a lovely room, up on the ninth. I’m sure you’ll find it satisfactory.” He handed a key to the bellboy. “Nine-twenty-three for Mr. and Mrs. Compton, Richard. Will you sign here, please, Mr. Compton?”

The groom bent over and wrote: “Mr. and Mrs. John T. Compton, Indiana.” He looked at it tenderly when he’d finished. Then he looked at her lovingly. “First time together — on paper,” he whispered.

She nodded eagerly, and clung closer to his arm, both her hands now clasped around it.

They went over and joined their waiting luggage and the bellboy in the brand-new elevator, its trellis-like ironwork still glistening with freshly applied gold-leaf.

The boy ushered them off at the ninth floor, stopped at a door, keyed and opened it, reached in. Some brand-new electric lights went on in bright welcome.

And at this point the story of Room 923 begins.

They followed him in and looked around.

“Oh, it’s nice, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” he agreed.

The bellboy bustled around, trying to make unnecessary actions look like highly necessary ones. Then he retired to the door and came to the crux of the matter. “Will there be anything else, sir, for now?”

“No, thank you.” Young Compton put something in his hand a little self-consciously.

The boy eyed it with widening eyes. “Thank you. Thank you very much, sir.” He backed out, closed the door, and they were alone.

The slightest of pauses followed.

Then she asked, “Did he bring everything up?”

“Yes,” he said. Then he contradicted himself by amending, “Wait, I’ll count,” and told off each separate piece with outpointed finger. “One, two, three — and that little one. Yes, he brought everything up.”

Another sliver of pause came between them; under other circumstances it would have been scarcely noticeable as such, but now they were acutely aware of every momentary silence that occurred between them.

“Don’t you want to take off your hat?” he suggested with an odd mixture of intimacy and abashed formality.

“Yes, I guess I may as well,” she assented.

She crossed to the dressing-table and seated herself at the glass. He remained where he was, watching.

“Gee, I always did think you had such pretty hair!” he blurted out suddenly with boyish enthusiasm. “The very first time I met you, I noticed that about you.”

She turned her head and smiled at him, equally girlish to his boyishness for an unguarded moment. “I remember, I’d just washed it that day. And Mamma had helped me put it up afterward. I told her that night how lucky it was we had.”

She turned back to the glass and looked at it intently in there. “It must be terrible to grow old and have it turn gray. I can’t picture that; the same hair, like it is now, should turn gray and still be on me.”

“But everyone’s does when they get old enough.”

“Yes, other people’s; but to have it happen to your She peered at herself more closely. “I can’t imagine it ever happening to me. But when it does, it won’t be me any more. It’ll be somebody else.” She touched her fingers to the sides of her face. “An old lady looking out of my eyes,” she said wonderingly. “A stranger inside of me. She won’t know me, and I won’t know her.”

“Then I’ll be a stranger too,” he said thoughtfully. “Two strangers, in a marriage that was begun by two somebody-elses.”

For a moment they were both frightened by this thing their nervously keyed prattle had conjured up. Then they both laughed, and the imminent fright went away.

He went over to her and touched his lips to the piled hair on the top of her head. She acknowledged the caress by placing her hand atop his, where it rested lightly on her shoulder.

“Are you tired?” he murmured close to her ear.

“Yes. Not — too much, though. Just from all the excitement.”

“Should we unpack our things?”

She welcomed the offered distraction. “All right, let’s. Because tomorrow we’ll be doing so much.”

“Want me to help you?”

“No, I can manage. I know which key belongs to which.”

He opened a door in the wall. “Look at the size of this closet.”

She came over beside him to look. “I want a closet that big when we have our own place. I love the way they smell when they’re new, don’t you? All clean wood-shavings and cedar. Just think, our things will be the first that were ever hung up in it. We sort of christen it.”

They smiled at each other. For a moment they were more like children playing house than two slightly bewildered, slightly frightened people about to enter on the most momentous stage of their personal lives.

“How’ll we do it?” he asked. “Should I take half, and you half?”

“I guess that’s what they — do,” she concurred vaguely.

“Which side do you want?” he invited.

“It doesn’t make any difference. I’ll take from here over, and you take from there over.”

He was already over at one of the valises, squatted down on his heels before it, applying himself perseveringly first to one lock, then the other. “My brother gave me this one,” he said, in apology for its recalcitrance. “I never can quite get it the first time, as long as I’ve been using it. There it is.” The lid went back and over.

She darted a quick glance of curiosity at the contents. “Oh, how many neckties! Does everybody have that many?”

“I’ve kept every one I ever owned, I guess,” he admitted. “I’ve never thrown one away, from the very first one I wore when I first put on long pants.”

“That’s a pretty one there, on top. The one with the blue. Wear that one tomorrow. I’d like it on you.”

“Ma gave me that on my birthday, when I was twenty-one. The last birthday — she was with us.”

“Oh, well, then maybe—” she said with quick compunction.

“No, I like to wear it. I’ve worn it lots of times, since. That’s what she wanted me to do. She bought it for me to wear.” He extricated it from under the straps with a zigzag sawing motion. “I’ll take it out now, and leave it on top here. So I’ll remember in the morning.”

He spread it flat along the top of the dresser. She stepped over after him and evened out, with her finger tips, a slight ripple that had remained in the topmost fold, as though the tie now belonged to the two of them alike, and must be cherished equally by both. “The bees are raised in it,” she said with proprietary approval. “I like that.”

They went back to their unpacking. They were not exactly with their backs to one another, but each with one shoulder given to the other, due to the position of the two pieces of luggage.

He glanced around after a moment. “It smells nice in there,” he complimented her.

“Mamma put in two little bags of sachet, one in each corner, before I left.”

Again they both returned to their unpacking.

With a double armful of fuming cambric layers, like someone holding newly trapped snow in her arms, she crossed to the dresser, opened the drawer, carefully put them in. She carried the fleecy articles turned toward the side, away from him, so that he wouldn’t get too close a look at them. Within a day or two it wouldn’t matter, they would be as one about such things, but at the moment modesty still claimed her, for these were articles of under-apparel.

When he in turn made a trip to the bureau with a double armful from his own receptacle, he likewise held it turned away from her to conceal it from view as much as possible.

Self-consciousness, which had more or less glazed the two of them during those few moments, thawed away again now that that was done. Smiling across-shoulder at one another, he closed down his suitcase, she closed down hers. She brushed off her finger tips against their opposites, but to indicate completion rather than that the task had been dusty. “Well, that much is finished,” she said with satisfaction.

“Yes,” he agreed. “We won’t have to do that now.” Then he suggested, “Why don’t you sit down? No sense standing.”

She selected an armchair, deposited herself into it with a little bounce of possessiveness, due in part no doubt to the newness of the springs. She said again, as she had about the closet, “Oh, I’d love to have a chair like this when we have our own home.”

He slung himself down beside her on one arm of the chair, and tucked his arm around her to her further shoulder, and feeling it there, she allowed her head to pillow back against it.

They were quiet for some moments, utterly, blissfully content. No need to talk, nor even to caress. Their being together like this, close like this, was in itself one big caress. He allowed his head to incline toward hers at last, that was the only thing, and remain there, check pressed to the top of her head.

Their eyes looked out straight ahead, into the distance, into the future, into a from-now-on, that was in the same place for the two of them. Golden future, peach-bloom future, impossible to capture, and even had it been possible to capture, impossible to hold. And even had it been possible to hold, impossible to bear, to endure. Not of this world at all, a future without a cloud, without a pain, without a spiteful word; without a wrinkle, without a gray hair, without a stiffening bone. A dream within a dream within a dream. The Great Shortchange practiced on youth since time immemorial. The boy, the girl, and the Great Untruth, blinding them all alike, two by two, down the countless generations. The bait that traps them together. A Christmas-tree bauble that, when they try to touch it, let alone hold onto it, crumples into a thousand tinseled fragments. And when they look, they hold nothing in their hands, only silvery dust. Like when you pinch a moth by the wings. But even the moth at least is there, for the moment you pinch it. This other thing isn’t.

Once during his double revery she said softly, “I can’t believe it even yet, can you?”

He understood the unexpressed thought. “No,” he said. “Me either.”

“That there was a time, only a little while ago, when there wasn’t any you yet, just me. By myself, alone.”

“And now there’s you and me, both.”

“It must be terrible to be alone.”

“Like we were a couple months ago.”

“I can’t remember it any more, can you? But it must be terrible. To go through each day without any — you.”

“But now we don’t have to any more,” he said. “From now on, each day has you in it.”

He took out a watch. She’d seen it before. It had been given to him on his graduation from high school. He’d told her so. It was gold-plated. He’d told her so. It had a fob of two little pennants of black moiré ribbon. They hung from an inch-wide bar. That was gold-plated too. It was the only watch they had with them, but one was enough. They had no separate needs of time; there was no time apart from one another. There was only time together.

He opened the lid with a spunky little click. She loved to look at the lid. It was bright as a mirror. It had on it: “To John, from Mother and Dad.”

He said, “I guess we better think about—” And then he stopped, because he hadn’t been ready in time with the right last word. The sentence really called for the terminal phrase “—going to bed,” but he didn’t want to use that. She didn’t want him to either.

He only stopped a moment; you could hardly notice it. Then he didn’t go back over the first part again. He only said “—retiring.”

“I guess we better,” she assented.

He got off the arm of the chair.

Then he said, “I guess I better go downstairs a minute — first.” Somebody must have told him this was the considerate thing to do. Maybe his father, maybe one of his friends.

“All right,” she said tractably.

She had stood up, too, now.

He came close and he kissed her.

His face didn’t have the handsome regularity of a Greek statue. But a Greek statue couldn’t smile, couldn’t show light in its eyes.

He went nearly as far as the door, but not quite.

Then he touched his pockets exploratively. His wallet, with his — their — money in it.

“I don’t need this,” he said. “I’ll leave it up here.”

He went over and he put it on the dresser-top. Not too far from where the necktie was, tomorrow’s necktie.

Then he did go to the door, all the way this time.

And he turned and looked at her so tenderly, so softly, that the look was a caress in itself. With just a touch of rue in it.

“Are you afraid?” he said.

“You mean now, about your going downstairs awhile?”

“No, I mean after — when I come back again.”

She dropped her eyes only momentarily. Then she quickly raised them again, and they looked directly into his, candidly and confidently. “No, because I know you love me. And even if part of love is strange, if the rest of it is good, then all of it has to be good. And soon there are no different parts to it, it is all just one love. Those are the words my mother told me, when she kissed me good-bye.”

“I love you,” he said, as devoutly as when you’re in a church saying a prayer meant only for God and yourself to hear. “So don’t be afraid.” Then he said only one thing more. “I’ll be back in just a little bit.”

Then he closed the door. But for a minute or two his face seemed to glow there where it had been. Then it slowly wore thin, and the light it had made went away.

Like the illusion of love itself does.

In a prim little flurry now she started disrobing. Intent on having it complete before she should be interrupted.

At the moment of passing from chemise to nightrobe, quite instinctively and without knowing she did it, she briefly closed her eyes. Then as the gown rippled downward to the floor, she opened them again. It was not, she had learned or been cautioned when still quite a little girl, nice to scrutinize your own body when it was unclothed. The gown was batiste, a trousseau gown, with eyelet embroidery and a bertha — that is to say, an ample capelike flap covering both shoulders; it was bluish in the shadow’s where it fell hollowed, pink where her body touched against it, but its actual color was snowy-white.

She had always brushed her hair before retiring. She did it now, for there was something comforting about the sense of normalcy it gave to do it; it was like something familiar to cling to in an eddy of imminent strangeness. She counted each stroke to herself, up to fifty; she longed to go past there, up to a hundred, for it would have seemed to help to arrest time, not allow it to go forward, but she conscientiously curbed herself and refrained.

Then she gave a look around the room, inquiringly and still with that flurried intensity. There was nothing left to do now, no remaining detail unattended.

She went to the bed, turned her back to it, and entered it.

She drew the covers up tightly about one shoulder — the other was turned inward to the pillow.

She gave a little sigh, of finality, of satisfaction, of when there is utterly nothing left to do and one is content there isn’t.

Her eyes remained fixed on the door. Not in a hard stare, but in soft expectancy. Nothing tenderer in this world, the eyes of youth looking for its love.

It tires you to look too long at any one object, no matter how gently. Her eyes left the door at last, and went over to the window. That didn’t hold them nearly as long, for there was nothing to be expected of it. Love wouldn’t enter through there. Then they went to the chair. There she made a discovery that cried for immediate reparation. One lace-cuffed leg-opening of her foreshortened pantaloons was hanging down in full, indelicate sight, escaping perversely from under everything else. It must have freed itself later, for she had painstakingly folded that particular article scrupulously from sight; it was the one thing of all she wished to have remain unnoticed.

“Will I have time to get over there and back before—?” she asked herself, appalled.

But it couldn’t be allowed to remain that way; it was more than indelicate, it was almost brazen, rakish, the way it flaunted itself.

She suddenly braved the risk. The covers flew back, she gave a sprightly little vault out of the bed, reached the chair, interred the offending garment, and returned to the bed. The way a child steals from its bed for a moment and scrambles back again undetected by its parents.

Reinstated, again she watched the door.

Now this time it was her hands that tired first, and not her eyes. They tightened in their hold of one another. Soon they grew taut, almost strained; were crushing against one another. She straightened them out. Almost at once they crept toward one another again, crooked, interlocked; clung desperately together, as though each without the other would die.

At last she took them away from one another altogether, seeing she could do nothing with them. One sought out her hair, and nervously felt at it here and there to see if it was in order. It was left, for that matter, in less order than it had been at first. The other sought the shoulder of her gown and twisted that about a little.

Perhaps he was standing just outside the door, uncertain whether to come in. Perhaps young men had trepidations at such a delicate time as this, just as she — just as girls — did. Perhaps if she were to go to the door, open it, that would resolve his irresolution for him.

The decision to go to the door, open it and look out, far more daring than the sortie to the chair had been, grew on her for many minutes before she found the courage to carry it out. At last, pinning her underlip beneath her teeth as if to steel herself to the act, she emerged from the bed once more. Because this was a door, and outside was a public corridor, she put on her wrapper first and gathered it tight. Then she went over to it, the door, and stood there by it, summoning up fresh reserves of courage, sorely needed. She put her hand out gingerly toward the knob, the way you reach for something very hot that you’re afraid will bum you.

Then she hesitated there like that, hand on knob.

If he didn’t discover her in the act of doing this, she wouldn’t tell him — later — that she had done it. It smacked a little too much of boldness, or, what was equally as bad, impatience.

Now she touched the door with her other hand, and inclined her head closer toward it, as if trying not so much to listen but rather to divine by some other subtle sense whether he was present there on the other side of it — or not.

She opened the door and looked, and he wasn’t; it was empty there on the other side.

She sighed, and the attentive forward-lean her body had taken relapsed into a backward inert slump of disappointment.

Perhaps he was further down the corridor, walking to and—? She tightened further her already tightened wrapper, and like an aerialist walking on a single wire, advanced through the door-opening and out to the corridor proper, one foot keeping in a straight line behind the other.

It was empty from end to end. Just carpeting, and light bulbs looking so lonely against the wall, like forgotten little orphan suns. She remembered the hall from before, from when they’d first come in, but it hadn’t looked so lonely then. Maybe because she hadn’t been so lonely then either.

She stood there long, long moments. But nothing, no one, came into sight. The emptiness stayed as empty as before. She re-entered the room at last, closed the door, and mournfully inclined her head against it on the inside in a desolate sort of way. Then that ended too, presently, as all attitudes and postures must sooner or later.

She moved away from there and roamed the room, without a destination, deep in thought, absently touching things as she went, to guide herself. He could not mean to stay away this long. He had lost track of the time. That must be it. That must be the explanation, there could be no other.

Perhaps if she called down, he would understand. Yes, but what genteel way was there to convey the message? “Would you ask my husband to come up, please?” She shuddered at that. It was so unthinkable it made her squeeze her eyes tightly shut for a moment. No, she couldn’t say anything like that. The man at the phone—

She tried out several other phrases in her mind, and rejected them as being almost as indelicate if not equally so. “Could you tell me what the time is, please? Our watch has stopped up here.” But the mere fact that she was watching the watch; he’d read between the lines — “Could you please arrange to have us called at such-and-such an hour?” But that was unsatisfactory from another point of view; that was almost too neutral. The man down there might take the request literally, and while accepting it, fail entirely to convey it to her husband, in which case nothing would have been solved.

She had stopped meanwhile by one of the valises, her own, and this finally, as she glanced down and noticed it, gave her the sought-after inspiration. The perfect phrasing in which to imbed her unspoken message. Completely neutral, and yet personal enough to require his participation. She rehearsed it to herself, in order to have the wordage arranged right and not be caught faltering at the moment of pronouncing it. Then, letter-perfect, she went to the wall telephone and brought down the corded earpiece from it. She wound the little crank and the connection was established.

A man’s voice, frighteningly immediate and immediately frightening, the gruffest voice a man had ever used in the whole world before, the harshest, the raspiest, said: “Yes, please? Can I be of service?”

She began too low, and had to start over at once.

“Beg pardon?”

“I said, I can’t seem to open one of our suitcases. My husband—” She swallowed hard, and almost spoiled it, but recovered in time. “Would you ask him if he has the key with him, please?”

“I will without fail, madam, just as soon as I see him.”

She’d had the same sensation once years before, when a small boy in a tree had dropped a soft splashy snowball on her as she passed below and it had struck and disintegrated at the nape of her neck.

“Oh, isn’t he—? I thought he was—”

“He went out of the building, madam. I saw him as he went past.”

“But are you sure it was—?”

“The night bellboy told me it was the young man from ’23.”

She didn’t speak any further. She hadn’t strength enough to hang up, she hadn’t fortitude enough to continue listening.

He must have sensed an urgency she hadn’t wanted to show. “Shall I send out and see if he’s outside by the entrance?”

She didn’t say anything. Her breath was too much in the way, rising up again before it had even finished going down, leaving no passage clear.

The wait was cruel and long. And this had nothing to do with measured time, for even had it been of no duration whatever, an immediate turnabout, it would have been no less cruel, no less long. The heart cannot measure, it can only feel; in a single instant it can feel as much as in a long slow hour, it cannot feel more than that.

There was a background murmur soon, as of tidings being brought, and then a clear-spoken address directly to her: “He doesn’t seem to be out there right now, madam. He may have taken a short stroll away from the hotel. Just as soon as he returns I’ll notify him that you—”

She heard him go, at the other end, and what was there to stay for anyway? But she stayed; just stayed there, on and on, through long slow minutes that never seemed to pass away.

At last she came away from there, a thin shining line down each cheek like silver threads unraveling from her eyes. She was cold suddenly, in mid-step, in mid-room, with a knifelike instantaneousness that temperature alone could never have brought about. Quivering spasmodically, with clenched teeth and rigidity of movement. Clutching for the warmest thing she could lay hands on, a woolen bathrobe, she encased herself in it like a cocoon, muscles too chill-bound to allow her to insert arms through sleeves. Covered up to her very eyes, she huddled in the chair they had once shared, feet folded up, a lumpy little woolen mound of misery.

The chill soon stopped. Only misery went on; whether warm blood or cold, the same misery. Her eyes stared hauntedly, fixedly, from just above the upended robe-collar; darkly shadowed now by long strain, perhaps darkly shadowed too by the fact that they were so recessed within the sheltering robe. Her mouth was hidden, and most of her nose. Only the eyes, like low-burning lamps of despair. Never wavering, scarcely blinking. Duller now than they had been before. Tearless too, for grief was past its early weeping stage; had become a deeper, unseen thing.

The night wore on, with a hush like funeral velvet draperies.

When she was a little girl, she had feared the night, as most small children do. Once, awakening too early and in the dark, she had cowered there uneasy and sent up a little plea: “Make the light come soon; make the night go away.” Now, it was the day she feared, the coming of light. For while the night still lasted, it might yet return him. But when the day came, she would have lost him altogether. She knew that well, knew that well. It was in the night that he had gone, and if the night did not bring him back to her, the day never would. His absence would be sealed forever. So now she prayed for darkness, prayed for night, the punishing night, to last beyond its span.

“Don’t let the day come. Don’t let it come yet. Wait till he’s back first. Then let it come.”

But mercilessly the night thinned away, as if there were a giant unseen blackboard eraser at work, rubbing it out. And in the new light he didn’t come, just as he hadn’t in the former dark. Still her eyes stared out over the woolen folds, looking nowhere, seeing nothing now. Duller than dull, hopelessly opaque.

She must have slept, or dozed awake at least. Her head went over a little to the side at last, became more inert. The eyes never fully closed, but lost some of their haunted fixity. The lids did not drop over them the whole way, but sagged to a somnolent meridian.

The fidgeting of the knob must have been hours after. No hope came with its fluttering, somehow. Hope would not come back; it had been dead too long perhaps. It didn’t even stir, strangely enough. Nor when the questioning tap came. Nor when it parted at the seams and a gap was made, empty the first few instants. Then an errant flounce of skirt peered momentarily, showing hope it had been right to lie there dead.

Above, a head looked cautiously in, everything else kept back.

The woman was in maid’s headgarb, ruched cap atop a massive pillow of upturned red hair, kept walled in by barrettes. She was buxom, florid, maternal in every respect. Save perhaps the actuality.

“Did I come too soon, now?” she murmured softly.

The eyes just looked at her.

“They told me one of the rooms around here was a bride and groom, but sure it’s the first day for all of us, and I would be getting mixed up like this.”

The eyes just looked.

“Shall I step out and be coming back a little later then?”

A voice like the echo of far-off sound said: “It doesn’t matter.”

“Did the young man step out for a minute?”

The far-off voice said: “He’s gone.”

She advanced more fully into the room now, concerned. “What’s the matter, darlin’? What ails—?”

The bunched-up robe suddenly exploded like an overstuffed pod, lay there flaccid, the chair was empty, and she was clinging to her, and being clung to. Someone of one’s own kind, another woman. Someone like your mother, someone like your sister. Someone like — you.

The maid held her, and patted her, and coaxed her. “Sh, darlin’. Sure and he’ll be back before you know it. Any minute now, through the door he’ll be coming.”

“He won’t. He won’t. He never will again.”

“How lang ago did he leave? How lang is it he’s gone?”

“At twelve. I think it was at twelve. But I don’t know any more. I can’t remember any more.”

“But sure, darlin’, it’s only a little after two o’clock now.”

“At twelve last night.”

The ruddy face whitened. For a moment her eyes were frightened too, then she covered it up. She patted the girl some more, she held her to her. Then she left her briefly, saying she’d be back. The girl just stood there exactly where she’d left her, like someone deprived of her own powers of locomotion.

When the maid came back she held a thick crockery mug of steaming tea. She led her, like an automaton, to the chair and into it, and held the mug up to her lips.

“Come, now. This’ll do you good. They have a little closet on each floor at the back of the hall, with a gas-ring in it, so we maids can brew ourselves a cup of tea at noon.” She stroked her hair a little as the girl tasted of it. She finally left the mug in her hands altogether. Then she turned to make the bed, from habit that was already fixed by morning-long practice. When she saw she had no need to, she drew in her lips in unspoken commiseration, and quickly turned away again with an almost pirouette-like rapidity.

She sat down herself then, in solacing camaraderie, but on the very edge of the chair, to show that her stay was stolen and had to be a short one.

She asked what her name was, the girl’s. This brought on pain again, but the mug was there to conceal the flickering her lips made. “It was to have been Compton.”

The maid quickly spoke of her own, to snare her mind away. “Mine’s Ann, spelt shart, without the e. I don’t know why they left it aff, but as long as they did, I might as well keep it that way. Ye can write it quicker that way.”

She rose soon and had to leave her, telling her she had half the floor still to do, but promising to look in on her a little later. “I’ll be right out there somewhere. Cahll me if you want anything, and I’ll drop the broom and dustpan and come to you in a minute. Don’t you want to get a little rest now.”

The girl averted her eyes from the bed almost in horror. “I couldn’t get in there. I couldn’t.”

“Let me fix you in the chair, then.” She put a pillow behind her head and, daring the official wrath, for all the bedding was new, slipped another to the floor underneath her feet. She took one of the blankets and deftly spread it over her. She stroked her hair soothingly, before turning to go. “Is there no one ye want me to tell, for you, now?”

The girl said plaintively, “There was only he. Who else could there be?”

She left as she had entered the first time, gradually; her face remaining to peer back after the rest of her was already hidden.

“Come back soon, Ann,” the girl whispered.

A flirt of skirt in the door-seam, just like the first time, and she was gone.

She had left the chair when Ann next entered. This was quite some hours later, and she was crouched on the floor, head and shoulder supported upright against the dresser. One of the drawers peered open. Against her she held pressed a man’s white shirt, still buttoned in a flat oblong. One empty papery sleeve she had drawn up around her own shoulder, as if seeking a phantom embrace. She was awake.

Ann said nothing, drew it subtly away from her, and it deftly vanished from sight. She got her back to the chair again. She had brought more tea, and this time slabs of buttered white bread. The tea she got her to take, the bread she couldn’t.

“And is there no one you’re going to tell about this, darlin’?” she breathed coaxingly.

“I have no one. Who is there?”

Then, belatedly, she noticed a change in her comforter’s appearance. “You’re going away. You’re going to leave me.”

Ann had on a short pinched-in jacket, a bell-shaped ground-trailing skirt, and on her head a flat saucer-like straw hat from which looped three cherries, one of them on a broken stem. “I have to, darlin’. Sure I finished up lang ago. I hung behind all I could. I even asked the housekeeper could I be staying with you in here tonight. ‘An employee in one of the guest-rooms? Out of the question!’ You know how they talk.”

The girl wrung her hands, and bowed her forehead against them. “Oh, what’ll I do? All night in here, alone.”

“I’ll be here bright and early. I’ll look in at you the first thing.” She drew her from the chair, and tried to guide her across the room.

At the last minute the girl noticed the destination, shrank back. “I can’t. Don’t ask me to. I’ll keep staring at the door, and the door’ll keep staring at me. Like last night.”

“Is it the door that bothers you, now?”

“All night long I’ll watch it, waiting for it to open.”

“If I cover it so ye can’t see it, then will ye try to sleep?”

“But how can you?”

The purposeful Ann looked about, for a daring moment even eyed the drapes. Then, discarding such a job-risking choice, came to a heroic decision. Modestly she turned away from her protégée. Up, in bunchy awkwardness, went the ground-trailing skirt. Down, in sudden release, came a petticoat. Not new, not even whole perhaps, but her own, all she had to give. She stepped clear, the skirt subsided, and the diminution could not have been detected.

She picked it up, went to the door, and held it outspread against it in measurement. It was inadequate.

“Wait, now,” she said determinedly, though nothing had been said.

Her arms came close together, widened with a rending noise, and the petticoat had opened from waist to hem into twice its former area.

“Oh, no!” the girl protested too late. “Your petticoat— How’ll you get home?”

“Sure and many’s the time I hadn’t one to my name, and I still moved about. It’s June.”

She slipped out, came back with a palmful of thumbtacks filched from the supply room at the end of the hall. Using only the toil-toughened heel of her hand to drive them home, she obliterated the door for at least two-thirds of the way down with a sort of diagonal slipcover effect. The bottom third could not be seen from a prone position in the bed.

“There, darlin’,” she said, “it won’t hurt you anny more.”

“Now when I look at it,” the girl mused, “I’ll think of you, not of—”

Ann was able now to lead her docilely to the bed, help her in, and prod and plump the covers about her. The girl lay with her head flat on the pillow, staring straight up at the ceiling overhead. Ann stood there by her a moment, placed her hand on her forehead in consolation; looked down considering, decided, and finally put her lips to the girl’s forehead in a sisterly kiss of sympathy.

“Rest, now,” she coaxed her. “Till the marning, darlin’. We’ve been told to get here by seven, but I’ll make sure I’m here by six, so I can be with you a little bit.” She moved on toward the door, the ex-petticoat bellied out hugely for a moment, there was a smothered latch-click, and she was gone.

The girl’s eyes kept staring straight up at the ceiling overhead. Not right away, not soon even, but after a lengthy while they flickered closed, reopened briefly once or twice, and then at last she slept.

Her sleep was not without the continuing thoughts and images of her waking, however; its stresses and its longings kept on uninterrupted. And, as in most such dreams, there was a magic formula by which she could recover him, bring him back. Waiting there for her to use, if only she could. So easy that it tantalized, so simple that it tortured, made her twitch upon the bed. It was: just to speak his name, just to say it. That was all she had to do.

Other names like meteors flashed by, lighting up momentarily the black skies of her sleep, but always the wrong ones. “Arthur.” “Wallace.” And the strange name of a little boy she had once schooled with: “Ansel.” While he waited patiently just out of sight to appear when she would have pronounced his own, the right one.

Faster and faster her head rolled to and fro on the pillow. She even arched her back clear of the bed time after time, to fall back again frustrated every time.

And suddenly, as she seized upon it at last, the effort of doing so shattered the dream like a dark-glass casing, too much violence for its fragile texture, and her eyes flew open and she awoke.

Saying it low first, then louder, louder still, then screaming it out, in vain effort to stay the dream and have it fulfill its promise. “Johnny! John-eee!”

But the dream wouldn’t come back, and the magic formula was no good now.

Over and over she screamed it, hoping against hope that it would work. “John-eee! John-eee!” Then stopped at last only because she had no more breath to spend.

In a moment or so someone tapped tentatively on the other side of the door. She seized a corner of the pillow and stuffed it into her mouth, and closed her teeth on it, to keep from screaming any more.

Then the voice of a man said, speaking to someone beside him: “Nobody in there. It must have come from somewhere else, I guess.” And they went away again.

She whimpered awhile, and lay awake awhile, in the silence of the coffinlike night.

Then again she slept, and then again she dreamed. But the new dream was less exacting, producing him without requiring of her any magic formula.

The petticoat vanished and the naked door was there again.

Then it opened, and she knew he was there, just back out of sight. Her heart could feel his presence salving its hurt.

Then his head appeared, timorously. She had to call out, to reassure him: “It’s all right, Johnny. It’s all right.”

Then at last all of him, and there he was. The tie he’d worn, the suit. Even to his hat, thrown back upon his head, as she had seen him once do on the train, to relieve heat and haste.

He came all the way in, as far as the foot of the bed. As though he were staying now, as though he were staying now. He even rested both hands on the footrail of the bed. He was so near her now, and she to him. Almost she thought she could feel the warmth of his breath carried to her on the cold barren air. Almost she thought she could see those little glints of topaz, like spinning pinwheels, in his dark-brown eyes.

“I can explain,” he said. “I can explain why I stayed so long.”

“I know you can,” she said docilely. “I know you can, Johnny.”

“But only if I have time enough. If they don’t give me time enough—”

“Hurry, Johnny! Hurry, while you still have time — I”

But just as he started to, it was already too late. Time, the mysterious enemy, overtook him. Three cherries sprouted from the top of his head, and dangled over sideward, one on a broken stem.

His face got redder than it had been, and broader, and he was Ann the chambermaid, leaning over the foot of the bed and crooning pleadingly: “Don’t you know me, now? Don’t you remember me from yesterday?” The girl murmured softly, but wistfully rather than with resentment, “Now he’ll never come. Now you’ve made him go away forever. And just when I almost had him.”

Ann stayed with her awhile, and gave her tea again. Then she left, promising, “I’ll be back soon, dear. As soon as ever I can.”

When she came it was several hours later, and she had someone else with her. She stood back by the doorway in deference, and let the other come forward alone and take command of the visit. The newcomer was a woman.

She wore pince-nez glasses. She wore a dress of sleek bronze-colored bombazine, iridescent like the breast feathers of a pouter pigeon, and at her waist a black alpaca apron with two pockets. In one was a writing-tablet, in the other a great mass of keys, resembling a porous chunk of ore that has been imperfectly smelted and failed to fuse properly. From her bosom hung an open-face gold watch, suspended upside-down so that it could be lifted and read with a single move of the hand. A lead pencil was thrust raffishly (but no doubt the raffishness was not intended) through one of the “rats” at the back of her head.

She patted the girl’s hand. It was meant kindly, but it was a perfunctory pat. She exuded no warmth, such as Ann breathed with every breath she drew. “Now, dear,” she said, “what is it?”

“Nothing,” the girl said. She could think of no other answer to make to a question like that.

“Now, dear,” the housekeeper said again, “what do you want us to do?”

“Nothing,” the girl said. She could think of no other answer to make to that question either.

“Is there nothing you would like us to do?”

This time the girl looked up at her with the plaintiveness of a sick child coaxing for a drink of water. “Can I have Ann back?”

The woman turned her head to where Ann stood. “Ann has her duties,” she replied disapprovingly. “She must not stay away from them too long.”

As though she understood the hint, Ann immediately slithered out the door and was gone.

The housekeeper gave the girl’s hand one more perfunctory pat, turned to go herself. At the open door she said, “Mr. Lindsey will have to be notified. He will have to decide what is to be done.” Then she closed the door after her.

The girl remained alone.

Some time after, a knock again interrupted her solitude. The knock did not wait for a response, but the door was opened immediately on its heels, and a dignified and well-dressed gentleman entered, with the air of someone who did not need to ask permission but was free to enter a room like this at any time he chose.

He was about her father’s age, and dressed somewhat as she had seen her father dressed; but not at ordinary times, only on rare occasions, such as churchgoing on an Easter Sunday morning. He had a very heavy down-turned mustache, glistening with wax, and wore a small flower, she did not know its name, in the buttonhole of his swallowtail coat.

“My poor child,” was his greeting to her. “I’ve come to see what can be done about this.” Then, after having already seated himself, he asked, “May I sit down a moment and have a little chat with you?”

Her face flickered briefly as the sympathy in his voice revived her grief. She nodded mutely; he made her feel less lost and lonesome.

“I’m Mr. Lindsey, dear,” he introduced himself; and though he didn’t add that he was the manager, somehow she knew that he must be. He had too much of an air of habitual authority about him.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said artlessly.

And, hesitantly and awkwardly at first, but soon without any self-consciousness whatever or even awareness that she was doing so, she was answering the sprinkling of guiding questions that he put to shape the course of her talk. She did not even know that they were questions, they were so deftly inserted. She did not even know, in telling him about their house at home, that she had told him what street it was on, or what its number was, or of course what town it was situated in. Sitting back at ease in his chair, one knee crossed above the other, nodding benignly, he skillfully slanted the conversation.

Then almost in mid-word — hers, not his own — his knees had uncoupled, he was on his feet taking leave of her, and the refreshing little flow of confidence had ended. Mouth still open on an unfinished sentence, she watched him go to the door and open it, with a soothing “Forgive me, my child; I must hurry. There’s an awful lot to do here today.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Lindsey,” she said forlornly, eyes hopeful to the end that he might change his mind and remain.

Just as he closed the door she heard him say, in a tactfully lowered voice to someone who must have remained out there waiting for him: “They must be sent for. She can’t remain here alone like this.”

He returned in about two hours’ time — or perhaps it was even three; her standards of time were all awry now — and now there was another man with him. He opened the door on the concluding words of something they had just finished discussing, and she caught the tail-end of it. “—might be better, as you say. The sight of it might frighten her.” He entered alone first; the second person lingered outside the door an additional moment or two. She had a vague impression, she didn’t know why, that he was disencumbering himself of something. She even glimpsed a stiffly outthrust arm for an instant, held as when one shucks a sleeve off it.

Then the other man came in at last. He was older than Mr. Lindsey. He could almost have been her Grandpa, if her Grandpa had still been alive. He came in smoothing down his mop of snowy-white hair, as if he had just finished removing something from his head. His attire was incomplete almost to the point of freakishness. She had never seen anyone dressed like that before, except in their own home. He had on dark-blue trousers, an undershirt with elbow-length sleeves, suspenders over this, and pinned to the undershirt as one would wear a medal, some sort of a shield or badge. Still, everything was so unreal to her now, so strange, that this one little bit of added strangeness held no meaning, glided by her almost unnoted.

He seated himself and promptly began to talk to her. Mr. Lindsey remained standing in the background, attentive but taking no part.

Like Mr. Lindsey, his whole conversation was in the form of questions. Unlike Mr. Lindsey, they were all about Johnny, not herself. About his family, about where he had come from, about how long she had known him. She found it very difficult to talk to him, mainly because the subject-matter held so much pain in it for her. It hadn’t been painful to talk about herself; it was painful to talk about Johnny. And some of the questions were so extremely private, that she could scarcely answer them at all. Questions such as only her own mother would have asked her — and even she had not. Did she know whether he had gone with girls at all before their engagement?

“I don’t know. I think he must have. All boys do.” And then, completely unsure of herself, she in turn transtormed it into a question. “Don’t they?”

Had she any way of knowing whether he had ever kissed any girl, before he had kissed her?

Her eyes pleaded with Mr. Lindsey over her interlocutor’s shoulder, and his in turn tried to reassure her.

Her face felt warm and her voice was low. “He told me — when we first did — he never had before.”

“Did he tell you why?”

He had to lean forward to catch the whispered thread of sound. “He said he never liked anyone — enough to — until he knew me.”

Then at last he let her be, and rose, and went and stood beside Mr. Lindsey, and they spoke together for a long while. She could hear some of it, but it held little meaning for her. It seemed to be on some general topic, rather than on herself and Johnny. One of those dry general topics, like politics, that grown-up men always seemed to discuss when they got together.

“Too little general education on the subject. Everything’s kept hushed up, in this day and age of ours—”

“But you can’t shout those things out loud,” protested Mr. Lindsey.

“The girls grow up knowing nothing, and half of the boys grow up and what little they know is wrong, all wrong. Then we throw them at each other’s heads, and many times this is what happens.”

“But I’m a married man myself,” she heard Mr. Lindsey tell him. “And I don’t think anyone knew less than I did when I got married, and yet my marriage has turned out very happily.”

“Don’t doubt it,” said the other man obdurately. “But it’s still blind luck. Other things enter into it too. If a boy is brought up in a strict, religious household, and trained to believe all that is sinful — then his conscience will trouble him about it later on. The more decent the boy, the more his conscience will trouble him. You can’t break away from your early training, you know. Never altogether. And I think something like that is what’s at the bottom of this. I think this boy ran away because he loved her, not because he didn’t love her. He wanted to keep himself from doing something that he thought was sinful to her—”

Now they were talking about Johnny himself, she could tell. “Johnny wouldn’t have done anything that was sinful to me,” she wanted to say, but she couldn’t, she was too ashamed. She covered up her reddened face with both her hands, and tried to hide it.

For the first time the other man turned and glanced over to her. “He certainly wasn’t waylaid, or it would have been reported to us by this time. The same if he’d been injured in an accident. That leaves just this, what we’ve been discussing, and one other possibility — which I don’t think is very likely at his age. A sudden complete loss of memory. I’m not a doctor, so I can’t think what they call it. But there is such a thing; very rare though. Anyway, if it were that, I think he would have come to us of his own accord for help by now. We’ll keep looking — and waiting — and I’m afraid that’s all we can do. What’d you say his name was, again?” He moved toward the dresser, where the billfold lay, and reached out a hand toward it.

She sprang up with a quickness they hadn’t known she was capable of, and lunged between him and the dresser like the sideward thrust of a knife, shielding it — the billfold — with her back. Or rather, shielding its exact position, for this was fetishism, though the word had not been born yet.

“No,” she pleaded wildly, “don’t touch it! Don’t move it! It’s right where his fingers left it, right in the exact place. If it stays there, then he’ll come back. If you move it, then he never will.”

The man gave Mr. Lindsey a look and withdrew his seeking hand.

She turned and let her own fingers hover lovingly above the article, without, however, touching it. “His hand was the last one touched it,” she said. “His hand put it down right here. It’s like a magic spell, and it mustn’t be broken.” She gestured as if patting the air above it. “It means that he’ll come back.”

“Did he go out without his tie too?” the man asked, noticing the necktie placed neatly folded beside it.

“No, that was the one he put out to wear for tomorrow.” She stopped a moment, thought about it, pensively stroking her cheek with just two fingers. “But now tomorrow’s yesterday.” She turned to him bewilderedly, as if seeking his help. “Oh, what happened to tomorrow? Who took it away?” And turned to look, as if seeking it about the four corners of the room. “Who took tomorrow away?” And even took him by the sleeve and tugged at it repeatedly, like a small child demanding an answer to its question. “It was there. It was to have come. It never did. Yet now it’s gone. Who took it? Who?”

A thin haze of grayish smoke seemed to begin rising all about, until she couldn’t see him clearly any longer, nor Mr. Lindsey, nor the room itself. It didn’t make her cough, though, like real smoke does. Just hampered her vision. The floor tipped up and nudged her knees. It didn’t hurt though. She put her palms against it, to keep it from her face.

“You’re the very one should know,” she murmured. “You are a policeman. I understand that now; I didn’t when you first came in— That’s why you wear that little thing — there—” She toppled over on her side, and shielded her eyes with one best forearm. “Please Mr. Policeman. Catch them, make them give tomorrow back.”

And then somebody’s strong arms went around her and gently lifted and held her. The strong arms carried her and placed her on something soft that sank a little under her. And the gray smoke rolled in like a blanket and covered her all up. She could even feel it being tucked in around her chin.

When the haze that had misted her eyes had cleared away again, as at last it did, Papa was there in the room with her; he was the first one she saw. He was standing, back from the bed a little, beside a chair. In the chair sat Mamma, pressed close against him, his arm consolingly about her shoulder. Within her clenched hand, raised to just below her face, she held a tiny balled-up handkerchief, and from time to time would press it to her nose. But she was not crying now, though just previously she evidently had been. This was just the leftover corrective from when she had been crying. Both their faces were haunted with concern, their eyes were fixed troubledly on her, with a steadfastness which indicated they had been gazing at her like this for a long time past. They did not smile at her, seemed too deeply troubled to be able to, even when they saw that she recognized them. Papa’s mustache even seemed to droop, for it was so heavy that it took whatever shape his mouth took under it, and his mouth therefore must have been turned deeply down.

Nearer at hand was someone else. She only noticed him last, for his head had been bent down low, listening to her breathing. She knew him to be a doctor, for she felt the tiny coolness his instrument made, moving here and there about her chest. She wasn’t afraid; she had had doctors do this before with a stethoscope, for a bad cold in the chest, perhaps. This was home, a part of home; a part of being with Papa and Mamma, a part of being safe, of being cared for.

His face was wise and grave as a doctor’s should be, as he righted his head at last. Glasses with a black cord at the side, and a trim, neat beard, not allowed to grow too long, and eyes that sympathized and gave you confidence.

“There, dear,” he said, and patted her shoulder, and made a gesture to reclose the open neck of her gown, which, however, he did not complete. She did it herself, her attention attracted to it by his gesture.

He put away his stethoscope, and turned to them, to Mamma and Papa, and said, “She is sound physically. There is no need for worry on that score. But—” And then he didn’t finish it.

Mamma’s face tightened up even more than it was already. “What is it, Doctor?” she said in a whisper that was almost superstitiously fearful.

“She has suffered great shock,” he said, and he rose now to finally face them in entirety, so that she could see only his back. He crossed the room before speaking further, and then, trickling water into a tumbler, said, “And those things sometimes take long to wear off.” Then bringing the tumbler back to her side, he took from his bag which sat open on the floor a neat little oblong paper packet, and deftly unfolded it to make a little trough of it, and from this allowed a white powder to sift into the water and cloud it to the hue of diluted milk. “And sometimes never,” he said, concluding at last his sentence.

Mamma gave a start and cried, “Oh, Doctor— Oh, no—!”

He stirred the dose by hand-motion alone, without the aid of any spoon, by giving his wrist a rotary motion. Then passed it to her and said, “Drink this, dear. Right down.”

She knew the taste, she’d experienced it before. Calomel.

“Now lie back and rest,” he said, when he’d taken the empty tumbler back from her, and gently placed his hand upon her forehead, again more as a gesture of what he wanted her to do than by exerting any actual pressure upon her.

She lay back and watched and listened, while he gave them his undivided attention at last.

Mamma said pleadingly, “What shall we do, Doctor? Doctor, what shall we do?’’

“There is nothing you can do, except wait and see. Nothing I can do, nothing anyone can do. Except let time go by.”

“Shall we take her back with us now, Doctor?” Mamma asked.

“Is it far?” he said.

She told him where it was, in Indiana. He closed his eyes briefly, as though he would have preferred it to be not that far. Then he said, “Yes, it’s better if you do, even if the trip is a tiring one. The sooner you take her out of this terrible room and what it spells for her, the better off she’ll be.”

Mamma got up at once, and went forthwith to the bureau drawers, almost briskly, as though the mere act of starting preparations cased her distress somewhat.

Papa looked out into the hall and called to someone unseen: “Will you send the porter up?” Then came back and reached into his pocket for his billfold.

The doctor took up his hat, and went to shake hands with Papa. Mamma quickly let the drawer be momentarily, to go and join in the leave-taking.

Someone knocked on the door, and the doctor went to it and looked out. He stood there awhile, just his back showing, while someone spoke to him.

When he had closed the door again, he motioned them to come nearer. “They’ve found him,” he breathed.

“Is he—?” Papa whispered.

“They found his body,” the doctor said. “The pockets were all inside out. He didn’t have his wallet with him. Maybe if he had had it on him, he wouldn’t have been killed.”

Mamma wrung her hands.

Papa looked down at the floor.

“I leave it up to you whether to tell her or not,” the doctor said. He sighed and shook his head. “Keep her to yourselves a lot. All you can. Don’t let people hurt her.”

Mamma said, “Who would want to hurt her, Doctor? Our little girl.”

“Nobody wall want to. But everyone will. Every time she sees a boy holding a girl by the hand. Every time she sees a couple dancing. Every time she sees a baby roll by in its carriage— Keep her to yourselves a lot. All you can, all you can.”

“But after we’re gone, Doctor?”

“Maybe it won’t matter any more by then. That would be the kindest thing. Hope for that, pray for that. Maybe it won’t matter any more by then.”

Then he patted Mamma on the shoulder, as one who tries to give solace where none can be given; then he shook Papa’s hand. Then he was gone.

Mamma returned to her, and kissed her on the forehead, but dry-eyed and calm and wise and strong now, as she had always been when her girl was a little girl; her tears and fears no more to be seen. She helped her from the bed and stood her there before her, and dressed her as she used to when she was small. From the inside to the out, button by button, and hook-and-eye by hook-and-eye. The only difference was — she, Mamma, no longer needed to bend down on the point of her knee as she had when she was six or seven, for she was taller now, a full-grown height, not a child’s height any more.

Papa in the meanwhile moved about in the background, his back to them; all the things were gone from the drawers. But on the top of the bureau his tie for tomorrow still lay, untouched, just where he had put it. She wanted to go over to it and stroke it, but Mamma, with a quick glance to see what drew her, turned her gently, ever so gently, the other way. So gently that she could not be resisted, for there was no force there to resist, only gentleness and that is stronger than force.

A porter came in and took the valises out, but she was only dimly aware of that, for Mamma was standing before her blocking her view.

Mamma put her hat on for her last of all, and adjusted it, and thrust the pins through it. The hat that went way up on one side, way down on the other.

Then Mamma placed an arm about her waist, and kissed her once again on the forehead, the kiss that she remembered so well from her childhood, the kiss of security, the kiss of consolation, the kiss of belonging to someone, of being a part of them; the kiss of home. And Mamma murmured gently beside her ear, “Come, our little girl is coming home with us.”

Step by step, with her arm about her, she led her over to the door, then out past it to where Papa stood waiting, and reaching behind her, started to draw it tactfully closed after them.

But just as it was closing, the girl herself gave an abrupt turn, and pleading, “Just one moment—! Only one—!” stepped back to it and looked in once more, while Mamma’s arm still held her around the waist.

And staring around at the emptiness, as if seeking him everywhere and finding him nowhere, she called out with whispered intensity: “Good-bye, Johnny! Good-bye! And good-bye to me too. For we both died in here the other night.”