ts beautiful silk-velvet leaves
concealing its cotton heart. She regarded it through a hot blur of tears
that stung her eyeballs. Her throat grew tighter. Suddenly she sprang to
her feet and to the hallway. A full-length coat hung from the antlers
and a filmy scarf, carelessly flung. She slid into the coat, cramming
the sleeves of her negligee in at the shoulders, wrapping the scarf
about her head and knotting it at the throat in a hysteria of sudden
decision. Then down the flight of stairs, her knees trembling as she
ran. When she reached the bubbly sidewalk, cool rain slanted in her
face. She gathered her strength and plunged against it.

At the corner, in the white flare of an arc-light, chin sunk on his
chest against the onslaught of rain, and head leading, Alphonse
Michelson stepped across the shining sea of asphalt. She broke into
a run, the uneven careen of the weak, keeping to the shadow of the
buildings; doubling her pace.

When he reached the hooded descent to the Subway, she was almost in his
shadow; then cautiously after him down the iron stairs, and when he
paused to buy his ticket, he might have touched her as she held herself
taut against the wall and out of his vision. A passer-by glanced back at
her twice. From the last landing of the stairway and leaning across the
balustrade, she could follow him now with her eyes, through the iron
gateway and on to the station platform.

From behind a pillar, a hen pheasant's tail in her hat raising her above
the crowd, her shoulders rain-spotted and a dripping umbrella held well
away from her, emerged Gertie Dobriner, a reproach in her expression,
but meeting him with a pantomime of laughs and sallies. A tangle of
passengers closed them in. A train wild with speed tore into the
station, grinding to a stop on shrieking wheels. A second later it tore
out again, leaving the platform empty.

Then Madam Moores turned her face to the rainswept street and retraced
her steps, except that a vertigo fuddled her progress and twice she
swayed. When she climbed the staircase to her apartment she was obliged
to rest midway, sitting huddled against the banister, her soaked scarf
fallen backward across her shoulders. She unlatched her door carefully,
to save the squeak and to avoid the small maid who sang over and above
the clatter of her dishes. The yellow lamp diffused its quiet light the
length of the hallway, and she tottered down and into the bedroom at the
far end.

A n