Slowly Jean came and stood beside him.
"Please, Franklin," she said in a low hurried tone, "don't kiss me like that ever again. I hate it."
"All right." Herrick spoke from his folded arms without looking up.
Jean stood where she was for a moment and then went back to the couch. She took up her book and tried to read, but the words made no sense. Herrick still stood at the window and the typewriter was covered on the desk.
It was as if a murder had been committed in the room.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Late in December the rains set in. Heavy gray clouds hung low over the city's hills, pressing all the joy and color from life, flattening the world to a monotone of black umbrellas.
At New Year there was an interval of pleasant weather and then more rain, steady, deliberate, endless rain. The street cars were crowded with damp people, all trying to keep as far as possible from each other, all peevish and nervous under the strain. Gutters broke and streams of water ran everywhere. The streets were rivers of thick, black mud and buildings reeked with the odor of woolen clothing drying in steam heat. From the middle of January to the middle of February the world woke in the morning to rain and went to bed at night with the rain steadily pouring in long, gray lines from the leaden sky.
Against the background of the rain, Jean's days ran together in a blur. She created a false enthusiasm and, under this self-imposed stimulus, got so many words on paper. Sometimes she wondered how long she would be able to keep it up. She thought now more and more often of Pat steadily plodding in her mountain school, and of her mother, trotting through each day's task, every crevice of her life filled with the knowledge that she could do no more than she was doing, nor do it better. Most of all she thought of Dr. Mary, buoyant and vital among her people, holding to her purpose and working toward it surely. She wondered whether Dr. Mary would remember her if she went.
There had been no mention at all of the night that Herrick had stood long at the window with his face in his arms. The thing that had been killed had been decently buried, so decently buried that it might never have existed at all. Herrick worked spasmodically on a short story, but he rarely worked in the evenings. They often went to the theater, and at long intervals to Flop's. Once Jean had quite enjoyed herself and they had gone again the following Sunday, but the out-of-town visitors had gone away and it was duller, more noisy, less sincere than ever.