Her daughter, Salome, sat at the window looking out into the dull twilight of the street. She sat with one foot on a hassock, her elbow upon her knee, and her chin resting upon the palm of her hand. She looked listless and bored as she sat staring out into the falling twilight. The two women were singularly alike, only that the dark, heavy beauty of the mother was merely brunette in the daughter; that the somewhat square face of the elder woman was oval in the younger; that the rouge of the woman’s face was the dusky red of nature in the girl’s cheeks.
The words Herodias was reading must have cut suddenly to a deeper nerve, for she drew a sharp breath that was almost articulate. Her white teeth clicked together. She made a sudden motion as though to crush the paper she held; then she went on reading again. The girl nodded and smiled recognition to some one passing along the gray twilight of the street. Then the smile slowly faded, and the listless look settled back upon her face again.
There was a sound of footsteps crossing the hall, and Herod himself came into the room. He was a rather stout, thick-set man of about forty or forty-five. He wore a long mustache, the beard beneath being closely clipped and trimmed to a point. The cut of the beard and hair gave his countenance an air of quality that was belied by his puffy, mottled cheeks and the thick, red, sensual lips. Herodias looked up at him as he came within the circle of light. “Did you see this?” she said, hoarsely, holding the paper out towards him. She pointed to the column she had been reading, and her fingers trembled with the intensity of her self-repression. The paper rustled nervously as she held it out.
“See what?” said Herod. “Oh, that! Yes, I saw that down at the club. What do you read it for if you don’t like it?”
“And do you mean to say you aren’t going to do anything to this cursed Baptist? What are the laws good for, anyhow?”
Herod grinned. “They’re good for nothing when an election’s only six months off.”
The woman tried to speak; she could not. “It’s a damned shame,” she cried out, at last, still in the same hoarse voice.
Salome turned her head. “Oh, mamma,” she said, “how awfully vulgar.”
The mother glared at the daughter. She looked as though she were about to speak, but she only said, “Pshaw!”
There was a minute or two of silence. Herod stood with his hands in his pockets. “Was Corry King here, do you know?” he said, at last.