imbed out of the car and put a hand on the smart bags strapped
on a running-board, the accumulated weariness struck her in a shock. She
could have driven on for hours, but the instant the car was safe for the
night, she went to pieces. Her ears rang, her eyes were soaked in fire,
her mouth was dry, the back of her neck pinched. It was her father who
took the lead as they rambled to the one tolerable hotel in the town.

In the hotel Claire was conscious of the ugliness of the poison-green
walls and brass cuspidors and insurance calendars and bare floor of the
office; conscious of the interesting scientific fact that all air had
been replaced by the essence of cigar smoke and cooking cabbage; of the
stares of the traveling men lounging in bored lines; and of the lack of
welcome on the part of the night clerk, an oldish, bleached man with
whiskers instead of a collar.

She tried to be important: "Two rooms with bath, please."

The bleached man stared at her, and shoved forward the register and a
pen clotted with ink. She signed. He took the bags, led the way to the
stairs. Anxiously she asked, "Both rooms are with bath?"

From the second step the night clerk looked down at her as though she
were a specimen that ought to be pinned on the corks at once, and he
said loudly, "No, ma'am. Neither of 'em. Got no rooms vacant with bawth,
or bath either! Not but what we got 'em in the house. This is an
up-to-date place. But one of 'm's took, and the other has kind of been
out of order, the last three-four months."

From the audience of drummers below, a delicate giggle.

Claire was too angry to answer. And too tired. When, after miles of
stairs, leagues of stuffy hall, she reached her coop, with its iron bed
so loose-jointed that it rattled to a breath, its bureau with a list to
port, and its anemic rocking-chair, she dropped on the bed, panting, her
eyes closed but still brimming with fire. It did not seem that she could
ever move again. She felt chloroformed. She couldn't even coax herself
off the bed, to see if her father was any better off in the next room.

She was certain that she was not going to drive to Seattle. She wasn't
going to drive anywhere! She was going to freight the car back to
Minneapolis, and herself go back by train--Pullman!--drawing-room!

But for the thought of her father she would have fallen asleep, in her
drenched tweeds. When she did force the energy to rise, she had to
support herself by the bur