otesque heaps--a woman's blouse was flung across
the back of a chair and hung limply; a pair of shoes stood beside the
bed in the attitude of walking--tired-looking shoes, run down at the
heels and skinned at the toes. And on the far side of the three-quarter
bed the hump of an outstretched figure, face turned from the light, with
sparse gray-and-black hair flowing over the pillow.

Carefully, to save the slightest squeak, Sara Juke undressed, folded
her little mound of clothing across the room's second chair, groping
carefully by the stream of moonlight. Severe as a sibyl in her
straight-falling night-dress, her hair spreading over her shoulders,
her bare feet pattered on the cool matting. Then she slid into bed
lightly, scarcely raising the covers. From the mantelpiece the alarm
clock ticked with emphasis.

An hour she lay there. Once she coughed, and smothered it in her pillow.
Two hours. She slipped from under the covers and over to the littered
dresser. The pamphlet lay on top of her gloves; she carried it to the
window and, with her limbs trembling and sending ripples down her night
robe, read it. Then again, standing there by the window in the
moonlight, she quivered so that her knees bent under her.

After a while she raised the window slowly and without a creak, and a
current of cool air rushed in and over her before she could reach the
bedside.

On her pillow Hattie Krakow stirred reluctantly, her weary senses
battling with the pleasant lethargy of sleep; but a sudden nip in the
air stung her nose and found out the warm crevices of the bed. She
stirred and half opened her eyes.

"For Gawd's sake, Sara, are you crazy? Put that window down! Tryin' to
freeze us out? Opening a window with her cough and all! Put it down!
Put--it--down!"

Sara Juke rose and slammed it shut, slipping back into the cold bed
with teeth that clicked. After a while she slept; but lightly, with
her mouth open and her face upturned. And after a while she woke to
full consciousness all at once, and with a cough on her lips. Her gown
at the yoke was wet; and her neck, where she felt it, was damp with
cold perspiration.

"Oh--oh--Hattie! Oh--oh!"

She burrowed under her pillow to ease the trembling that seized her.
The moon had passed on, and darkness, which is allied to fear, closed
her in--the fear of unthinking youth who knows not that the grave is
full of peace; the fear of abundant life for senile death; the cold
agony that co