It never occurred to King O’Leary to ask what she intended to do.Page 69.
Leaving the crowd, flustered and frightened, to disperse into whispering groups, she went down the hall to the corner studio, which was piled with packing-cases in an indescribable confusion. In one corner, very black and white in the glare of the center-light, was a four-poster bed, and on it the sprawling figure of Dangerfield. She went to it straight and silent, knelt again, felt the pulse, lifted the eyelids, while King O’Leary waited.
“Well,” he said, as she arose. “D.T.’s, isn’t it?”
“Only a part of it—I think,” she said, looking down at the powerful figure that looked more like a stricken animal than ever. The curious thing is that it never occurred to King O’Leary to ask what she intended to do. He seemed to accept her as a fact, just as naturally as she had assumed control. She stood a moment silent, her finger on her lips, looking down, and then drew herself together with a sort of shudder, looked at King O’Leary, who was watching her, and said:
“Undress him and get him into bed. Then call me.”
VII
It was a weird ending to the night of Christmas romping for King O’Leary, sitting breathless on an upturned box, his elbows on his knees, chin in hand, staring through the dim shafts of light at the two figures in the further corner—Dangerfield, limp and inert, head and shoulders a confused shadow against the white, propped-up pillows, with the lithe figure of the girl, straight as a young spruce, waiting. From the time O’Leary had placed him in the great four-poster bed, the man had not moved, while the heavy breathing, slow and regular, was the only sound through the stillness in the room. Against O’Leary the boxes rose in craggy somberness; a rug, leaning against the wall in an elongated roll, stretched upward like a climbing tree. Bits of sculpture, struggling groups of single busts, peered down at him above heaped-up chairs and tables in such confusion that, at times, he seemed to be moving through a fantastic warehouse.