Once again she fought the fight that she had fought so many times of late—the fight that she knew she was ordained to lose before she started fighting. She longed to win it so earnestly that her defeat was the more pitiable. She was eager to prolong this new-found happiness to the uttermost limit. Though she knew that it must end when her supply of morphine was gone, she was determined to gain a few hours each day, in order that she might add at least another happy day to her life. Again she took but half her ordinary allowance; but with what anguished humiliation she performed the hated and repulsive act. Always had she loathed the habit, but never had it seemed nearly so disgusting as when performed amid these cleanly and beautiful surroundings, under the same roof with such people as the Penningtons.
There crept into her mind a thought that had found its way there more than once before during the past two years—the thought of self-destruction. She put it away from her; but in the depth of her soul she knew that never before had it taken so strong a hold upon her. Her mother, her only tie, was gone, and no one would care. She had looked into heaven and found that it was not for her. She had no future except to return to the hideous existence of the Hollywood bungalow and her lonely boarding house, and to the hated Crumb.
It was then that Eva Pennington called her.
“I am going to walk up to the Berkshires,” she said. “Come along with me!”
“The Berkshires!” exclaimed Shannon. “I thought they were in New England.”
She was descending the stairs toward Eva, who stood at the foot, holding open the door that led into the patio. She welcomed the interruption that had broken in upon her morbid thoughts. The sight of the winsome figure smiling up at her dispelled them as the light of the sun sweeps away miasmatic vapors.
“In New England?” repeated Eva. Her brows puckered, and then suddenly she broke into a merry laugh. “I meant pigs, not hills!”
Shannon laughed, too. How many times she had laughed that day—and it was yet far from noon. Close as was the memory of her mother’s death, she could laugh here with no consciousness of irreverence—rather, perhaps, with the conviction that she was best serving the ideals that had been dear to that mother by giving and accepting happiness when opportunity offered it.
“I’m only sorry it’s not the hills,” she said; “for that would mean walking, walking, walking—doing something in the open, away from people who live in cities and who can find no pleasures outside four walls.”
Shannon’s manner was tense, her voice had suddenly become serious. The younger girl looked up at her with an expression of mild surprise.