Night after night she stopped out until one o’clock. Then her mother would be awakened by voices in the courtyard—a kiss, very likely, a scuffle, a slap. That was Angelica and her escort, saying good night.
Then she would come in, jaded, irritable, the paint very brilliant on her pale face, and begin undressing—not in the dark, as she had done formerly, to avoid disturbing her mother. She would come into the room with no effort to be quiet, light the gas, and dawdle about, while the poor anxious woman in bed lay watching her, sometimes asking questions, but timidly, dreading a rebuff.
"Bah! I’m so sick of it!" Angelica told her one night. "Those cheap dances—those smart Johnnies mauling you round with their sweaty hands—and then a glass of beer and a whole lot of their cheap talk. Cheap, all of it! I’m sick of—everything!"
She had flung herself down fully dressed on her cot, her soiled white shoes on the clean spread.
"Just sick!" she repeated, with a break in her voice.
Her mother was moved.
"Maybe it’s because you got used to better sort of people out where you were," she said.
Angelica raised herself and looked at her.
"Better! Well, maybe they were. I don’t know. Only—I don’t know—I did get to like having things nice, and hearing nice voices. All this is kind of a sudden change. And the bunch I go out with—Lord, what a bunch!"
"Then why do you go out so much, deary? Why don’t you stay home?"