At last I must have slept, for a bell rang, and there I was still in the closet, and she was ansering it.
“Arrested?” she said. “Well, I should think he’d better be, if what you say about clothing is true.... Well, then—what’s he arrested for?... Oh, kidnaping! Well, if I’m any judge, they ought to arrest the Archibald girl for kidnaping him. No, don’t bother me with it tonight. I’ll try to read myself to sleep.”
So this was Marriage! Did she flee to her unjustly acused husband’s side and comfort him? Not she. She went to bed.
At daylight, being about smotherd, I opened the closet door and drew a breath of fresh air. Also I looked at her, and she was asleep, with her hair in patent wavers. Ye gods!
The wife of Reginald Beecher thus to distort her looks at night! I could not bare it.
I averted my eyes, and on my tiptoes made for the Window.
My sufferings were over. In a short time I had slid down and was making my way through the dewey morn toward my home. Before the sun was up, or more than starting, I had climbed to my casement by means of a wire trellis, and put on my robe de nuit. But before I settled to sleep I went to the pantrey and there satisfied the pangs of nothing since Breakfast the day before. All the lights seemed to be on, on the lower floor, which I considered wastful of Tanney, the butler. But being sleepy, gave it no further thought. And so to bed, as the great English dairy-keeper, Pepys, had said in his dairy.
It seemed but a few moments later that I heard a scream, and opening my eyes, saw Leila in the doorway. She screamed again, and mother came and stood beside her. Although very drowsy, I saw that they still wore their dinner clothes.
They stared as if transfixed, and then mother gave a low moan, and said to Sis:
“That unfortunate man has been in Jail all night.”