“And you would fling me aside like a discarded glove?”
“That is just what I would fling you aside like,” she answered, unmoved.
“I see it all now,” said Edwin Dell, his voice the voice of one utterly crushed. “The veil lifts from my eyes. I’m just a man girls forget. You have drained the cup of pleasure, but it is I . . . I . . . who must pay . . . and pay.”
“Fair enough,” said Valerie Keat, in a voice like a file rasping steel. “Pay away. Good night.”
“Then you would have me go . . . out of your life . . . forever?”
“Or longer,” she said. “Shut the outside door after you.”
He did. The wind screamed down the alley; whirling snow dervishes danced round him. Ten thousand bright-lit windows bespoke the Christmas cheer within. Some people were happy. But on the once boyish face of Edwin Dell tiny hard pellets of ice formed; they were frozen tears. On he wandered through the night, he knew not whither. In time he reached a large building, and tottered in; it was a railroad station, a place where one bought tickets to go away. To go away? His brain caught at the idea.
He would go away. He went to the ticket window, and put down all his money, twenty-four dollars and seventy cents.
“Give me a ticket,” he said.
“Where to?” the ticket seller asked.