"Then call your cab and tuck me in my little bed. My eyes will crack if I prop 'em up any longer."
"Miss—Miss—I can't recall your name, but you don't object?..."
"Oh, no, I don't object in the least," said Miss Williams satirically, with a wondering glance at the tall, immaculate gentleman at her side, his face stern in the electric-light, his evening clothes in marked contrast to Bob's negligée. "In fact, I rather——"
Dillon whistled a cab and gave the driver whispered directions. A bill fluttered as he passed it up. The man nodded, respectful.
"And now I am at your service," said Dillon, standing tall and straight before her. "Where did you wish to go?"
Not for one moment did it occur to him to evade his duty, and not for one moment did she intend that he should. Where they went, through all that nightmare evening, he could never afterward tell. From dance-hall to concert-hall they wandered, sat awhile, and departed. Nor were they silent on the way. What they spoke of he could not have told for his life, but they talked, fairly steadily at first, less and less as the night wore on, and the woman grew dreamily content with the lights, the warmth, and the liquor. Dillon was imperturbably polite, gravely attentive to her wishes, curiously conscious of one life with her and another distinct existence at Helena's home. Now he was waiting, waiting, waiting in front of the close-shaded windows to see if she had left the house or if she still sat in surprised idleness expecting him. Now he was at Stebbins's house watching Bob as he lay asleep there.
He remembered afterward thinking that the woman must have been a Southerner, for, as she drank, her tongue turned to those softer tones, slurred vowels and quaint idioms.
"It seems like you're having a good time, after all," she said once. He bowed gravely.
By eleven they were well down-town, he was not quite certain where. They stayed but little time in any one place. It seemed as if they had been on this endless journey for years. Now and then he saw a man he knew. In one place he wakened, with a shock of remembrance, to the fact that he had been there before: there, and at the place opposite, too. How little it had changed! It was before the five years....
They were at a corner table, he with his back to the room, the woman facing it. On a platform opposite a young fellow sat before a piano, striking desultory chords. Presently he began to sing, in a sweet, piercing tenor: