Hubert was still with that woman! The woman was perhaps resting now and they were talking! She would be so much at her ease that she would talk without taking the trouble to throw her wrap round her. Hubert, too, would be at ease, preferring her without her wrap rather than with it. In vain she reminded herself that the situation was one to which an artist was accustomed. She hadn't been in a studio for a year without learning that much, though she got no comfort from it now. No comfort was possible with the vision of this naked magnificence seared on her memory. Hubert had let her come without a welcome, and go without a protest. He was probably glad when she went so that he might be alone with this wanton who didn't know shame.
In the end, she saw but one course before her. She would make the best of Bob. To do so would mean that Bob would be disinherited by his ogre of a father, but with Mrs. Collingham's aid a counteracting influence might be found. Moreover, she could thus return home, confess herself Bob's wife, and offer the hundred dollars to her father as cash lawfully her own. Life would be simplified in this way, even though happiness were dead.
She was the last of the commuting family to reach the house that evening, and on crossing the threshold was greeted with a sense of cheer. It did not mean much to her at first, for, with the optimism of a hand-to-mouth existence, a sense of cheer was the last thing the family ever abandoned. She herself cast all outward air of trouble away from her on opening the door, because it was in the tradition.
Her father was seated quietly smoking his pipe, which he had not done for the past week or more. Gussie held the middle of the floor, her arms extended in a serpentine wave, humming a dance tune and practicing the step. To mark the rhythm, Gladys was clapping her hands with a slow, tom-tom beat. Pansy alone stood apart, blinking and unresponsive, as if for reasons of her own she considered this mirth ill-timed.
"Look, Jen!" Gladys giggled, as her eldest sister passed down the room. "This is the new thing at the Washington. Gus has got it so you wouldn't know her from Samarine herself."
Jennie went on to the kitchen, where, as she expected, her mother was getting the supper, and did her best to be nonchalant.
"Hello, momma! What's the good word? What makes everyone so gay?"
Lizzie looked up, a cover in one hand and a spoon in the other. Her face was so radiant that Jennie was still more mystified.
"Oh, Jennie darling, your father has the money! He can make the payment to-morrow, and everything will come right."
So Jennie's plans recoiled upon herself. She had meant to tell her mother here and now that for four days past she had been Bob Collingham's wife, and had a hundred dollars in her top bureau drawer. Her mother was to tell her father, and her father Teddy and the girls. But now—well, what would be the use? By keeping her secret she might put off inevitable fate a little longer.