"O God!" she said, her hand closing over the Baron's, pressing it. "With us freaks, even if we win, we lose. Take me. What's the good of ten million dollars to me—twenty millions? Last night when I went in to offer him help—him in the same business and that ought to be used to me—right in the middle of being crazy with pain, what did he yell every time he looked at me, 'Take her away! Take her away!'"
"Aw now, Teenie, Jas had the D.T.'s last night; he—"
'"Take her away!' he kept yelling. 'Take her away!' One of my own kind getting the horrors just to look at me!"
"You're sweet on the Granite Jaw; you are, Teenie; that's what's eating you—you're sweet on the Granite Jaw—"
Suddenly Miss Hoag turned, slamming the door afterward so that the silence re-echoed sharply.
"What if I am?" she said, standing out in the hall pocket of absolute blackness, her hand cupped against her mouth and the blinding tears staggering. "What if I am? What if I am?"
Within her own room, a second-floor-back, augmented slightly by an immaculate layout of pink-celluloid toilet articles and a white water-pitcher of three pink carnations, Miss Hoag snapped on her light where it dangled above the celluloid toilet articles. A summer-bug was bumbling against the ceiling; it dashed itself between Miss Hoag and her mirror, as she stood there breathing from the climb and looking back at herself with salt-bitten eyes, mouth twitching. Finally, after an inanimate period of unseeing stare, she unhooked the long cape, brushing it, and, ever dainty of self, folding it across a chair-back. A voluminous garment, fold and fold upon itself, but sheer and crisp dimity, even streaming a length of pink ribbon, lay across the bed-edge. Miss Hoag took it up, her hand already slowly and tiredly at the business of unfettering herself of the monstrous red silk.
Came a sudden avalanche of knocking and a rattling of door-knob, the voice of Mrs. Bostrum. landlady, high with panic.
"Teenie! Jastrow's dyin' in his room! He's yellin' for you! For God's sakes—quick—down in his room!"
In the instant that followed, across the sudden black that blocked Miss
Hoag of vision, there swam a million stars.