“I shan’t go!” she thought. “I’m tired, and I don’t want to go! I don’t have to rush off every time I’m sent for!”
She reached out for the telephone at the bedside and, with admirable poise, asked for and obtained the hotel where the elder Mrs. Lanier was living. It seemed somehow an audacious, almost an arrogant thing, to telephone to that majestic creature while lying in bed with her hair down. And to refuse her invitation! It was an adventure—it was thrilling!
But when Mrs. Lanier’s voice came to her over the wire, all Emily’s exultation fled.
“You can’t come?” said Denis’s mother. “That’s most unfortunate!”
There was more than chilly indifference in her tone. There was actual hostility, and something very like a threat.
“You see,” Emily explained, “I’m awfully tired, and—”
“If you will be at home, we shall call after dinner,” said Mrs. Lanier. “Will you be alone?”
“Yes, of course,” Emily answered, with as much cordiality as she could manage.
After she had hung up the receiver, the odd intonation of that word “alone” still sounded in her ears. Wasn’t she always alone? Ever since Denis had gone she had had no visitor, except one of the girls from the office where she had formerly been employed. She had seen no one.
Not that she cared for that. This new life, this new dignity, the delights of buying new books to read and new clothes to wear, of eating in the restaurant downstairs, of going to a matinée now and then, and, above all, of writing immense letters to Denis every evening, had filled her time in the most satisfactory fashion.