"A few months."
"No, he wants it soon. The sooner the better at our age. Alma, mamma's cured! What happiness! Kiss me, darling. So help me God to keep my promises to you! Cured, Alma, cured."
And so in the end, with a smile on her lips that belied almost to herself the little run of fear through her heart, Alma's last kiss to her mother that night was the long one of felicitation.
And because love, even the talk of it, is so gamy on the lips of woman to woman, they lay in bed, heartbeat to heartbeat, the electric pad under her pillow warm to the hurt of Mrs. Samstag's brow, and talked, these two, deep into the stilliness of the hotel night.
"I'm going to be the best wife to him, Alma. You see, the woman that marries Louis has to measure up to the grand ideas of her he got from his mother."
"You were a good wife once, mamma. You'll be it again."
"That's another reason, Alma; it means my—cure. Living up to the ideas of a good man."
"Mamma! Mamma! you can't backslide now—ever."
"My little baby, who's helped me through such bad times, it's your turn now, Alma, to be care free like other girls."
"I'll never leave you, mamma, even if—he—Latz—shouldn't want me."