“I mean it! You think I wouldn’t but I’m not afraid. I have nothing to lose any more.”
She stumbled toward the door, one hand reached out gropingly. There she turned and once more her eyes traveled over the other woman. Naomi felt that from their clear gray gaze she could not shield herself. A girl so near her own age—the girl she might have been! And in that moment she knew that Nan Crawford’s words had not been bravado, not foolish threat. She was battling in her own way for the thing she loved.
She opened the door as if, now that her message was given, she could not make her escape quickly enough.
“Make him happy,” came strangled. “You must! That’s what I came to tell you.”
[156]
]CHAPTER V
Through the window Naomi had lifted that morning, the shaft of sunlight receded slowly until it slipped away. Naomi had been sitting in the same position ever since her door had shut on a girl stumbling into the dark hallway. She sat there without moving and with a queer little twist of wonder at the problems we bring upon ourselves. All her life she had drifted with the least resistant current and without thinking much. Now, of a sudden, thought had come smashing upon her with the devastating violence of a hurricane.
As daylight grayed she rose a bit stiffly and lighted the few lamps that sent a glow through the room.
She went into her bedroom and started to dress. Bill was coming at five to take her to dinner. All afternoon she had waited for his usual phone call, for the big box of variegated flowers so different from those other men sent her. Neither came. But a peculiar lethargy held her, made her conscious only of the numbness of futility.
She dressed without haste in a plain dark cloth suit, feeling with a curious finality that Bill was not coming. He had never kept her waiting like this. Yet as the thought swept over her, a loud, long ring came from downstairs. She went to the door, stood with eyes fastened on the dusk. A figure loomed out of it, head bent, feet taking the steps two at a time.
[157]
] He did not look up until they were in the room. Then his head went back and the look of desperation he wore made her go to him swiftly and push him into a chair. He sank down without resistance and covered his face with hands he made no attempt to steady. She lifted hers from his shoulders.