"Card from the waiters' union right in my pocket," Dicky grinned, and stretched lazily as he followed me to the kitchen.
We served the coffee, and Lillian and her husband went home. As the door closed behind them Dicky came over to me and took me in his arms.
"Pretty exciting evening, wasn't it, sweetheart?" he said. "I'm afraid you are all done out."
He drew me to our chair and we sat down together. I found myself crying, something I almost never do. Dicky smoothed my hair tenderly, silently, until I wiped my eyes. Then his clasp tightened around me.
"Tonight has taught me a lesson," he said. "Sometimes I have dreamed of a little child of our own, Madge. But I would rather never have a child than go through the suffering those poor devils had tonight. It must be awful to lose a baby."
I hid my face in his shoulder. Not even to my husband could I confess just then how the touch of the naked, rigid little body of that other woman's child had sent a thrill of longing through me for a baby's hands that should be mine.
IX
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
"Well, we are in plenty of time."
We were seated, Dicky and I, in the waiting room of the Long Island railroad a week after my dinner party that had almost ended in tragedy. Dicky had bought our tickets to Marvin, the little village which was to be the starting point of our country ramble, and we were putting in the time before our train was ready in gazing at the usual morning scene in a railroad station.