Weeks and weeks of this and already Louis Latz's trousers were a little out of crease and Mrs. Latz after eight o'clock and under cover of a very fluffy and very expensive négligée, would unhook her stays.
Sometimes friends came in for a game of small-stake poker, but after the second month they countermanded the standing order for Saturday night musical comedy seats. So often they discovered it was pleasanter to remain at home. Indeed, during these days of household adjustment, as many as four evenings a week Mrs. Latz dozed there against her husband's shoulder, until about ten, when he kissed her awake to forage with him in the great, white porcelain refrigerator and then to bed.
And Alma. Almost, she tiptoed through these months. Not that her scorching awareness of what must have crouched low in Louis' mind ever diminished. Sometimes, although still never by word, she could see the displeasure mount in his face.
If she entered in on a tête-à-tête, as she did once, when by chance she had sniffed the curative smell of spirits of camphor on the air of a room through which her mother had passed, and came to drag her off that night to share her own lace-covered and ivory bed.
Again: upon the occasion of an impulsively planned motor trip and week-end to Lakewood, her intrusion had been so obvious.
"Want to join us, Alma?"
"O—yes—thank you, Louis."
"But I thought you and Leo were—"
"No, no, I'd rather go with you and mama, Louis."
Even her mother had smiled rather strainedly. Louis' invitation, politely uttered, had said so plainly: "Are we two never to be alone. Your mother and I?"