our room,
Blanche. I'll ring when I need you." The girl vanished, gratefully,
without a backward glance at the disorderly room. Martha Foote felt
herself dismissed, too. And yet she made no move to go. She stood there,
in the middle of the room, and every housekeeper inch of her yearned to
tidy the chaos all about her, and every sympathetic impulse urged her
to comfort the nerve-tortured woman before her. Something of this must
have shone in her face, for Geisha McCoy's tone was half-pettish,
half-apologetic as she spoke.

"You've no business allowing things like that, you know. My nerves are
all shot to pieces anyway. But even if they weren't, who could stand
that kind of torture? A woman like that ought to lose her job for that.
One word from me at the office and she--"

"Don't say it, then," interrupted Martha Foote, and came over to the
bed. Mechanically her fingers straightened the tumbled covers, removed a
jumble of magazines, flicked away the crumbs. "I'm sorry you were
disturbed. The scrubbing can't be helped, of course, but there is a
rule against unnecessary noise, and she shouldn't have been singing.
But--well, I suppose she's got to find relief, somehow. Would you
believe that woman is the cut-up of the top floor? She's a natural
comedian, and she does more for me in the way of keeping the other girls
happy and satisfied than--"

"What about me? Where do I come in? Instead of sleeping until eleven
I'm kept awake by this Polish dirge. I go on at the Majestic at four,
and again at 9.45 and I'm sick, I tell you! Sick!"

She looked it, too. Suddenly she twisted about and flung herself, face
downward, on the pillow. "Oh, God!" she cried, without any particular
expression. "Oh, God! Oh, God!"

That decided Martha Foote.

She crossed over to the other side of the bed, first flicking off the
glaring top lights, sat down beside the shaken woman on the pillows, and
laid a cool, light hand on her shoulder.

"It isn't as bad as that. Or it won't be, anyway, after you've told me
about it."

She waited. Geisha McCoy remained as she was, face down. But she did not
openly resent the hand on her shoulder. So Martha Foote waited. And as
suddenly as Six-eighteen had flung herself prone she twisted about and
sat up, breathing quickly. She passed a hand over her eyes and pushed
back her streaming hair with an oddly desperate little gesture. Her lips
were parted, her eyes wide.

"They've got away from me," she cried,