"It ain't you, Loo—I had a fine and dandy time."
"Come on, Lil—come to bed, and you'll be all right in the mornin'. Gee! Won't the girls be glad to see the beauty back? Come on to bed—it's too late for you to go back to-night, anyhow; there's time to talk 'bout things in the mornin'. I wouldn't let any man know I couldn't get along without him! Come on, Lil, and tell me what the guy to-night was like."
Lilly was pinning on her hat in an agony of haste.
"I left the note on the pincushion. If he goes in the kitchen for his milk first, like he does on hot nights, maybe I can beat him! He may be—"
Her voice trailed down the hall. She fumbled a little at the street door, hot flushes darting over her body.
In the street-car Lilly dug her nails through the silk palms of her gloves and sat on the edge of the seat, her pulse pounding in her ear. Her voiceless prayer beat against her brain. She did not see or think beyond the possibility of reaching their bedroom before her husband.
Charley was due home now—as she was lumbering across town in a lethargic street-car. Her whole destiny hung on the frail thread of possibility—the possibility that her husband would follow his wont of warm nights and browse round the kitchen larder before entering their room. She drew in a suffocating breath at the thought of Charley's wrath—she had once seen him on the verge of anger.
To reach home and the note first! That hope beat against her temples; it flooded her face with color; it turned her cold and clammy. She left the car a corner too soon and ran the block, thinking to gain time over the jogging street-car; it passed her midblock, and she sobbed in her throat.
She turned the corner sharply. From the street she could see the yellow glow of gas coming from a side-window of her apartment; the light must come from one of two rooms—her sick senses could not determine which.
"Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!" her breath came in long, inarticulate wheezes. "Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!" A policeman eyed her suspiciously and struck the asphalt with his stick. She turned into the embrace of the apartment house and ran up the three flights of stairs with limbs that trembled under her; her cold fingers groped about before she could muster strength to turn the key in the lock.