There was a silence that seemed to wait, and Millie du Gass, her laugh like glass beads falling from a snapped chain:
"You must come down to the hotel, dear, some day, where I've a concert grand. This darling old tin pan! You should have seen, Felix, the way pops used to make me practice on it, rapping me over the knuckles. You old darling pops!"
"Papa's baby-la," he said, pinching her cheek.
"If you will excuse me now, please, I—won't, intrude any longer."
"Good night, dear; it was just lovely. Good night," joined in everybody, too kindly.
Walking out of that room, Lilly was conscious suddenly of passing through a prolonged stare, especially from Mrs. Neugass, who leaned forward slightly in her chair—a stare that prompted her somehow to quicken her departure almost to a run.
* * * * *
Out of a night that had flowed around her in a bitter sort of blackness that fairly threatened to drown her, she floated up toward morning to an exhausted doze, her face tear-lashed and her breathing sucked in sobbily as she slept.
It was out of this that she awoke suddenly to a bombardment of knocks at her door.
"Come!" she cried, sitting up rather alarmedly in bed, and holding the blanket over her chest. She was lovely and disheveled with sleep, her whiteness whiter because of the most delicately darkened oyster shells beneath her eyes.