"It's going to be a scorcher. You take it easy and get rid of these blues you been gettin' here lately. You ain't got no better friend than your old man or any one who wants to do more of the right thing by you."
"I'll take a car-ride over to Loo's to cool off," she said, apathetically.
He opened his lips to speak; instead he nodded and kissed her twice. Then he hurried out.
After he left her she sank down on the little divan of highly magnetized red plush and stared into space. Face to face with her weeks-old resolve, her courage fainted, and a shudder like ague passed over her. She could hear herself wheeze in her throat; and her petal-like skin, unrelieved by moisture, was alternately hot and cold.
The low-ceiled room, dark except for a reflected slant of yellow gas-light coming in from the kitchen, closed down like an inverted bowl. She went to the window.
On the fire-escape opposite, the child still slept, one little ghost of a bare foot extending over the rail. As she watched, a woman's voice from within the apartment cried out sharply—a panicky cry filled with terror; then a silence—more pregnant than the call itself. Lily knew, with a dull tugging at her heartstrings, that the babe had died. Only a week before she and Charley had seen a little life snuffed out in the apartment above, and she knew the mother-cry. Charley had dressed the child and cried hot, unashamed tears; then, as now, her own eyes were dry, but her throat ached.
East Side tradition has it that every tenth year exacts the largest share of human toil—this might have been Death's Oberammergau!
Trembling, Lilly turned and groped her way into the little bedroom; drawers slid open and slammed shut, tissue-paper rattled, the hasps of a trunk snapped; then came the harsh sing of water pouring from a faucet. Presently she reappeared in the doorway in a fresh white blouse and a dark-blue skirt; there were pink cotton rosebuds on her hat and a long pair of white silk gloves dangling from one hand. In the other she carried a light wicker hand-satchel.
By the shaft of light she reread the small square of yellow paper and impaled it carefully, face up, on the pincushion of their little dressing-table. It poised like a conspicuous butterfly. Then she went out into the kitchen, poured a glass of milk, placed it beside a small cake of ice in a correspondingly small refrigerator, turned off the gas-light, and went out of the apartment without once glancing behind her.