corresponded
to the statement she had received from the Ivy Funeral Rooms. And right
here again, for the sake of your elucidation, I could wish at least for
the neurologist's chart. At the very door to the establishment--with
one foot across the threshold, in fact--she paused, her face tilted
toward the corner where wall and ceiling met, and at whatever she saw
there her eyes dilated widely and her left hand sprang to her bosom as
if against the incision of quick steel. Then, without even entering, she
rushed back to her car again, urging her chauffeur, at the risk of every
speed regulation, homeward.

That was the beginning of purgatorial weeks that were soon to tell on
Hester. They actually brought out a streak of gray through her hair,
which Lottie promptly dyed and worked under into the lower part of her
coiffure. For herself, Hester would have let it remain.

Wheeler was frankly perplexed. God knows it was bad enough to be called
upon to endure streaks of unreasonableness at Rosencranz, but Hester
wasn't there to show that side to him if she had it. To be pretty frank
about it, she was well paid not to. Well paid! He'd done his part. More
than nine out of ten would have done. Been made a jay of, if the truth
was known. She was a Christmas-tree bauble and was expected to throw off
holiday iridescence. There were limits!

"You're off your feed, girl. Go off by yourself and speed up."

"It's the nights, Gerald. Good God--I mean Wheeler! They kill me. I
can't sleep. Can't you get a doctor who will give me stronger drops? He
doesn't know my case. Nerves, he calls it. It's this head. If only I
could get rid of this head!"

"You women and your nerves and your heads! Are you all alike? Get out
and get some exercise. Keep down your gasoline bills and it will send
your spirits up. There's such a thing as having it too good."

She tried to meet him in lighter vein after that, dressing her most
bizarrely, and greeting him one night in a batik gown, a new process of
dyeing that could be flamboyant and narrative in design. This one, a
long, sinuous robe that enveloped her slimness like a flame, beginning
down around the train in a sullen smoke and rushing up to her face in a
burst of crimson.

He thought her so exquisitely rare that he was not above the poor, soggy
device of drinking his dinner wine from the cup of her small crimson
slipper, and she dangled on his knee like the dangerous little flame she
none too subtly