mine. You're making an awful fool of
yourself, McCallum."

And then she closed the door.

Mary Louise walked blindly down the hall. She stumbled into the
elevator and did not answer when the elevator boy spoke to her. When
she gained the street the rush of the night air against her face
steadied her a bit. She turned off promptly north and struck out for
the down-town district.

By the time she had walked a block her faculties were returning. It
had all been preposterous, crude. She had blindly lost her temper.
Something kept crying out to her that she was an old maid. Perhaps she
shouldn't have minded. She was finicky and squeamish. A girl had to
have some privacy in the place she entertained her company. But
Maida--and the cook! The thought of that flat, pasty, sullen face
stirred in her a sudden repulsion.

She crossed Broadway and turned west toward Fourth, walking rapidly.
Maida! Maida! The girl she had known for eighteen months in the Red
Cross tea room! The girl who had sat through a year of war without
ever changing the vacuity of her smile! Sat--that was it, positively
sat. A woman with a figure like that had no right to a lover. And a
cook! An ordinary cook, hired out by the week! His beady, close-set
eyes and hair sleeked back. Like a rat! And _she_ was mixed directly
up in it, _she_--Mary Louise McCallum, the daughter of Angus McCallum.
She shuddered and hurried on.

As she passed Chestnut Street they were going into the "movie"
theatre. There was a long queue stringing out on the pavement. She was
hardly aware of it but kept on walking straight north. More than one
head was turned to watch her as she plunged resolutely on. Her
apparent fixity of purpose was incongruous for that time of the
evening.

The preposterousness of the whole affair kept hammering at her
thoughts. To think that she had tied herself up with such a creature.
To think that she had been so blind to the coarseness, the commonness
that must have been there all along. What would Aunt Susie think about
it? What would they all think? And in her own room! The brazen,
callous nerve of the creature! Like a big, fat, lumbering ox. She
trembled all over with sensitiveness.

Before she knew it she had come to Main Street. Beyond her dipped the
hill that led to the river. The lamps were dim, and sparsely lighted
the alleyways and loading platforms of the dark, forbidding
warehouses. She realized suddenly that she must make some decision.