“She’s a beauty, anyway, and I’m going to see her when she makes her exit, if I have to sit up all night.”
“Oh! And what about the afterpiece?”
“To the devil with the afterpiece! It hasn’t any angels in it.”
Inside Goldie’s room, a big Dutch blonde in a soiled blue wrapper sat by the bed, and stared in open-mouthed surprise at the new-comers.
“Is it you she’s been askin’ for?” she asked, bluntly.
But ’Tana did not reply, and Harvey got the blonde 331 to the door, and after a few whispered words, induced her to go out altogether, and closed the door behind her.
“I thought you’d come,” whispered the little woman on the bed. “I thought the note would bring you. I saw you talk to him, and I dropped to the game. You’re square, too, ain’t you? That’s the kind I want now. That swell who went for you is the right sort, too. I minded his face and yours. But tell him to go out for a minute. It won’t take long—to tell you.”
Harvey went, at a motion from ’Tana. She had not uttered a word yet. All she could do was to stare in wonder at the wreck of a woman before her—a painted wreck; for, even on her deathbed, the ghastly face was tinted with rouge.
“I can’t get well—doctor says,” she continued. “There was a baby; it died yesterday—three hours old; and I can’t get well. But there is another one I want to tell you of. You tell him. It is two years old. Here is the address. Maybe he will take care of it for me. He was good-hearted—that’s why he married me; thought I was only a little girl without a home. Any woman could fool him, for he thought all women were good. He thought I was only a little girl; and I had been married three years before.”
She smiled at the idea of that past deception, while ’Tana’s face grew hard and white.