placed her hand to the almost unbearable flutter of her heart.

"Louis! You mustn't talk like that to--me!"

"Don't make me say something I'll regret. You! Only take this tip, you!
There's one of two things you better do. Quit trying to come between me
and her or--get out."

"I--She's sick."

"Naw, she ain't. Not as sick as you make out. You're trying, God knows
why, to keep us apart. I've watched you. I know your sneaking kind.
Still water runs deep. You've never missed a chance since we're married
to keep us apart. Shame!"

"I--She--"

"Now mark my word, if it wasn't to spare her I'd have invited you out
long ago. Haven't you got any pride?"

"I have. I have," she almost moaned, and could have crumpled up there
and swooned her humiliation.

"You're not a regular girl. You're a she-devil. That's what you are!
Trying to come between your mother and me. Ain't you ashamed? What is it
you want?"

"Louis--I don't--"

"First you turn down a fine fellow like Leo Friedlander, so he don't
come to the house any more, and then you take out on us whatever is
eating you, by trying to come between me and the finest woman that ever
lived. Shame! Shame!"

"Louis!" she said, "Louis!" wringing her hands in a dry wash of agony,
"can't you understand? She'd rather have me. It makes her nervous trying
to pretend to you that she's not suffering when she is. That's
all, Louis. You see, she's not ashamed to suffer before me. Why,
Louis--that's all! Why should I want to come between you and her? Isn't
she dearer to me than anything in the world, and haven't you been the
best friend to me a girl could have? That's all--Louis."

He was placated and a little sorry and did not insist further upon going
into the room.

"Funny," he said. "Funny," and, adjusting his spectacles, snapped open
his newspaper for a lonely evening.

The one thing that perturbed Alma almost more than anything else, as the
dreaded cravings grew, with each siege her mother becoming more brutish
and more given to profanity, was where she obtained the soluble tablets.

The well-thumbed old doctor's prescription she had purloined even back
in the hotel days, and embargo and legislation were daily making more
and more furtive and prohibitive the traffic in drugs.

Once Alma, mistakenly, too, she thought later, had suspected a chauffeur
of collusion with her mother and abruptly dismissed him, to Louis' rage.

"What's the idea?" he said, out of Carrie's heari