She must be very ill; must have dozed off a while—that is, if the old woman told the truth about night having come again.... Likely she had told the truth, for the room was quite dark, except for the one dim gas-jet lit in the old-fashioned chandelier.
The landlady had come in to say that she wanted the room as soon as Dolores was able to get about. A refined adult—a single gentleman—had enquired about it that day. Mrs. Trevor should remember her saying from the first that she never took in dogs or babies. She knew what babies were—just one sick spell after another. And she had no space in the back-yard for regular laundry. She was a kind-hearted woman and honest about her bargains, the Lord knew. But she had herself to think of and the other folks in the house. She wasn’t one to worry a fellow woman sick-a-bed, but the gent had said he would stop in the morning for his answer. Naturally, she would need to name the exact day he could come. Her soft heart always had been her worst enemy, but business was business.
After the old woman had dismalled herself out, Dolores’ gaze again strayed to the gas-jet. The turned-down flame fascinated her and seemed to make a light in her mind. It flickered an answer to the embarrassing question of when she could give over the room.... What time was it now?... Nine o’clock.... The day that was the life of a news sheet was long since done....
There were three jets to the chandelier. It wasn’t going to take long. Already she was affected by the fumes. The dog was sniffing suspiciously, whining protest....
“A life for a life,” she told him unfeelingly, thinking of Jack, the only one who ever had loved without harming her. But then—the Airedale, after all, had not asked Jack’s life any more than she had asked her mother’s.... She arose, tottered to the door, took him by the nape of the neck and thrust him into the pure air of the hall.
Fortunately the babe was too young to realize or complain; would never know about life—never know. Dolores held the small form to her heart and shuddered anew over what life might have meted out to so tiny and helpless a creature.
“There is the mark of the seal they call the signet of Solomon,” she mumbled through the dark to the chandelier. “There are to will and to have your will. There are your social ideas, your excesses, your pleasures that end in death——”
Who was it had reminded her of Maupassant not so very long ago? Oh, yes.... That night.... What, indeed, was folly but “a riotous expenditure of will”?... He had not seemed a man to shirk the obligations of his folly—John Cabot—that night. Yet he had not come.... So tender he had seemed in his madness for her; so willing to deny himself; so determined to consider her. He had made her realize the happiness which she and Jack had tried to learn from a bird.... Still, where now—happiness?... And God—where was God?
Who was bending over her?... Amor—could that be the gallant love-lad, so broken and so gaunt? Had he come to mock her?... And was it Innocentia clinging, peaked and weeping, to his hand?
Sorry comforters, the two. Their visit distressed her more than the nauseous fumes from the jets.