Justin was in Chicago—the fact was verified—and he would start for home on the morrow. There seemed to be no details, save the comforting one that Billy Snow was with him. After that first sharp immediate relief from suspense, Lois again felt its filminess settling down upon her.
Girard had gone back very early to the Snows' to breakfast. He talked to Lois by telephone, but he did not come to the house; while Dosia, wrapped in an outward abstraction that concealed a whirl within, went about her daily tasks, living over and over the scene of the night before. The shattering of the pitcher seemed to have shattered something else. Once he had felt, then, as she had done; once—so far away that night of disaster had gone, so long was it since she had held that protecting hand in her dreams, that the touch brought a strange resurrection of the spirit. She had an upwelling new sense of gratitude to him for something unexpressed, some quality which she passionately revered, and which other men had not always used toward her.
"Oh, he's good, he's good!" she whispered to herself, with the tears blinding her, as she picked up Redge's blocks from the floor. She felt Lawson's kisses on her lips, her throat—that cross of shame that she held always close to her; George Sutton's fat face thrust itself leeringly before her. How many girls have passages in their lives to which they look back with the shame that only purity and innocence can feel! Yet the sense of Girard's presence before was as nothing to her sense of it now—it blotted out the world. She saw him sitting alone in the dining-room, with his head resting on his hand, the attitude informed with life. The turn of his head, the shape of his hand, were insistent things. She saw him standing in front of her, long-limbed, erect of mien. She saw—If she looked pale and inert, it was because that inner thought of her lived so hard that the body was worn out with it.
Neither telegram nor any other message came from Justin, except the bare word that he had started home. On the second morning, just as Lois had finished dressing, she heard the hall door open and shut. She called, but cautiously, for fear of disturbing her baby, who had dropped off to sleep again.
Justin was standing by the table, looking at the newspaper, as she entered the dining-room. With a cry, she ran toward him. "Justin!"
He turned, and she put her arms around him passionately. He held her for a moment, and then said, "You'd better sit down."
"But, Justin—oh, my dearest, how ill you look!" She clung to him. "Where have you been? Why didn't you send me any word?"
"I've been to Chicago."
"Yes, yes, I know. Why did you go?"
"I don't know."