“Good night! Good night, Brother Bains. Good night, Sister Bains. Good night, Sister Lulu. . . . Night, Frank.”
The room was far more boisterous when he was left alone in it. It reeled and clamored. He paced, nervously smiting the palm of his left hand, stopping in fever to listen. . . . Time crawling forever. . . . She would not come.
Creep-mouse rustle on the stairs, reluctant tip-toe in the hall.
His whole torso swelled with longing. He threw back his arms, fists down by his side, chin up, like the statue of Nathan Hale. But when she edged in he was enacting the kindly burly pastor, an elbow on the corner of the parlor-organ, two fingers playing with his massy watch-chain, his expression benevolent and amused.
She was not in a dressing-gown; she wore her blue frock unaltered. But she had let down her hair and its pale silkiness shone round her throat. She looked at him beseechingly.
Instantly he changed his pose and dashed at her with a little boyish cry:
“Oh, Lu! I can’t tell you how Frank hurt me!”
“What? What?”
Very naturally, as with unquestioning intimacy, he put his arm about her shoulder, and his finger-tips rejoiced in her hair.
“It’s terrible! Frank ought to know me, but what do you think he said? Oh, he didn’t dare come right out and say it—not to me—but he hinted around and insinuated and suggested that you and I were misbehaving there in the church when we were talking. And you remember what we were talking about—about my moth-er! And how beautiful and lovely she used to be and how much you’re like her! Don’t you think that’s rotten of him?”