Naomi made no pretense of trying to sleep. She did not even resort to the bromide she was in the habit of taking when rest refused to come. She merely lay, with blinds drawn to shut out the early morning, trying to see light where she knew there was none. At ten she sprang up, hand to the throat that was full, lids covering the eyes that pained. Ever since Marshy Kent’s visit, those eyes had been straining toward the future, the result, inevitable almost, of his revelation to Bill Dixon. In the endless, wakeful hours of the night she had rehearsed, as women do, everything that had probably transpired.
Yet even in her misery she did not overlook the careful mask of make-up, as mechanical a part of her daily toilet as the brushing of her hair, or polishing of her glistening nails. She had grown to avoid facing her mirror without it.
She flung on a negligée of orchid chiffon that clung round her with the afterglow of sunset. But like the orchid, she sought the damp darkness of her living-room and sat with head resting against her locked hands for a long time before she made a move to raise the blinds and let in a shaft of sunlight.
She had just lifted one of them when the sharp summons of the bell came from downstairs. She pushed the electric button and waited without curiosity for the [153] ]apartment bell to ring. Then she opened the door and peered into the shadowy hall.
A girl stood there. The girl with her hair like a black cloud and eyes young and gray and tense.
They traveled hungrily over the other woman as if to get in that moment the viewpoint of another pair of eyes that no longer sought hers.
“May I come in, Miss Stokes? You don’t know me but my name is Nan Crawford,” she explained as Naomi said nothing.
Naomi nodded. “I know.”
The girl looked up quickly.
“Has he—has he talked to you—about me?”