“You’re right, Nita! We’re pigs! Something’s wrong with us. ’Pologize. You know we don’t mean it.”
Anita endured her right-and-left kisses.
“You do mean it,” was all she said.
She was shrunk to such a small grey creature again. I thought to myself—‘Fire? It’s not even diamond-sparkle. She’s as dull as stone.’
Miss Howe was eagerly remorseful.
“We don’t. I don’t know what’s got into us tonight. It’s the fog. There’s something evil about a fog. Distorting. It yellows over one’s soul.”
“It isn’t only tonight,” said the Baxter girl, with her sidelong, ‘can-I-risk-it?’ look at them. “The fog’s been coming on for months.”
“And you mean——?” The blonde lady never snubbed the Baxter girl. It struck me suddenly, as their eyes met, that there was the beginning of a likeness between them. The Baxter girl at fifty—with dyed hair——? But it was only an idea of mine. I’m always seeing imaginary likenesses. I remember that those Academy pictures of Kent Rehan’s always set me to work wondering—‘That woman with the face turned away—I’ve seen her somewhere—of whom does she remind me?—where have I seen her?’ And yet, of course, in those days I knew nothing of Madala Grey.
But the Baxter girl was answering—
“It—it’s cheek, I know, but it’s true. When I first came—” then, with a swift propitiatory glance at Anita—“when you first let me come—the Nights weren’t like this. You weren’t like this, any of you——”