Latz--anything but his ideal--Alma, you won't tell! Kill me, but don't
tell--don't tell!"

"Why, you know I wouldn't, sweetheart, if it is so terrible to you.
Never."

"Say it again."

"Never."

"As if it hasn't been terrible enough that you should have to know. But
it's over, Alma. Your bad times with me are finished. I'm cured."

"But wait a little while, mama, just a year."

"No. No."

"A few months."

"Now. He wants it soon. The sooner the better at our age. Alma, mama's
cured! What happiness. Kiss me, darling. So help me God, to keep my
promises to you. Cured, Alma, cured."

And so in the end, with a smile on her lips that belied almost to
herself the little run of fear through her heart, Alma's last kiss to
her mother that night was the long one of felicitation.

And because love, even the talk of it, is so gamey on the lips of woman
to woman, they lay in bed that night heart-beat to heart-beat, the
electric pad under her pillow warm to the hurt of Mrs. Samstag's brow
and talked, these two, deep into the stillness of the hotel night.

"My little baby, who's helped me through such bad times, it's your turn
now, Alma, to be care-free, like other girls."

"I'll never leave you mama, even if--he shouldn't want me."

"He will, darling, and does! Those were his words. 'A room for Alma.'"

"I'll never leave you!"

"You will! Much as Louis and me want you with us every minute, we won't
stand in your way! That's another reason I'm so happy, Alma. I'm not
alone, any more now. Leo's so crazy over you, just waiting for the
chance to--pop--"

"Shh-sh-h-h."

"Don't tremble so, darling. Mama knows. He told Mrs. Gronauer last night
when she was joking him to buy a ten dollar carnation for the
Convalescent Home Bazaar, that he would only take one if it was white,
because little white flowers reminded him of Alma Samstag."

"Oh, mama--"

"Say, it is as plain as the nose on your face. He can't keep his eyes
off you. He sells goods to Doctor Gronauer's clinic and he says the same
thing about him. It makes me so happy, Alma, to think you won't have to
hold him off any more."

"I'll never leave you. Never!"

None the less she was the first to drop off to sleep, pink, there in the
dark, with the secret of her blushes.

Then for Mrs. Samstag the travail set in. Lying there with her raging
head tossing this way and that on the heated pillow, she heard with
cruel awareness, the _minutiae_, all the faint but c