“Will you call me when you want me, Ilse?”
“Always, darling. Don’t grieve. Few women know happiness. I have known it. I know it now. It shall not even die with me.”
She smiled faintly and turned to enter her doorway; and Palla continued on alone toward that dwelling which she called home.
The mourning which she had worn for her aunt, and which she had worn for John Estridge that morning, she now put off, although vaguely inclined for it. But she shrank from the explanations in which it was certain she must become involved when on duty at the Red Cross and the canteen that afternoon.
Undressed, she sent her maid for a cup of tea, feeling too tired for luncheon. Afterward she lay down on her bed, meaning merely to close her eyes for a moment.
It was after four in the afternoon when she sat up with a start––too late for the Red Cross; but she could do something at the canteen.
She went about dressing as though bruised. It seemed to take an interminable time. Her maid called a taxi; but the short winter daylight had nearly gone when she arrived at the canteen.
She remained there on kitchen duty until seven, then untied her white tablier, washed, pinned on her hat, and went out into the light-shot darkness of the streets and turned her steps once more toward home.
There is, among the weirder newspapers of the metropolis, a sheet affectionately known as “pink-and-punk,” the circulation of which seems to depend upon its distribution of fake “extras.”