“Tom!” she cried suddenly. “I can’t—I just can’t!”
“Can’t what, Joy?” In surprise he looked down at her face, which was so white that the spots of rouge flared out like little danger signals.
“I—I can’t stay at the Prom a minute longer.” Then, with growing resolve, “I really am all in, Tom. You see, I’m not used to it, and my feet are killing me, and—I’m so awfully tired that if I dance any longer I won’t get any fun out of it!”
She did indeed look tragically tired, and Tom was all self-reproach for not seeing it coming. They went to the fraternity booth and she said good-night to the matrons, who looked mildly surprised. Barnett was still standing at the door as they approached it and broke away from the stags with a lurch.
“Not going now, are you?” he demanded.
Joy insensibly retreated until Tom was between them. “Yes. I’m leaving now. Good night”; and she walked out.
Once in the cool night air, with Tom by her side keeping a comfortable silence, she felt free and almost happy. It was something to have left Jack Barnett—and soon she would have those silver slippers off.
The fraternity house was dark and empty. It was an effort to climb the steps—her last silver-slipper effort, she told herself. She watched Tom go back down the road, then sat down and pulled off her slippers. She couldn’t have kept them on another minute. Then slowly, painfully, she went in and upstairs.
The room was a wilderness of clothes and hairbrushes, powderboxes and wardrobe-trunk-drawers scattered here and there at inconsequential places, and she had hard work to guide her sore feet to the bureau. Her buoyant cheeks, waving twin flags of crimson joy while all the rest of her betrayed the weariness in which she was steeped, drew her first attention. That rouge must be wiped off—as the rest of the evening could not be. She took a limp handkerchief that trailed whiteness amid the disorder of the tools on the bureau, and scrubbed one cheek with concentrated energy. And as the handkerchief marched in its path of elimination, she heard the door swing open behind her.
She looked in the mirror, her hand frozen to her cheek; then became rigid with the shrieks and shrieks of terror that were so many and so fearful that they choked together in a hideous little rattle before they reached her throat. For Jack Barnett stood on the threshold. To her fevered fright, he towered as vast and menacing as the prehistoric man who swung a club and took what he wanted always. His eyes were swimming in red; his lips had lost the fine-chiseled lines into which they had been schooled by sobriety and civilisation, and sagged loosely back from his teeth.