purported to be, and he spanked her quickly and softly
across the wrists because she was too nervous to hold the match steadily
enough for his cigar to take light, and then kissed away all the mock
sting.

But the next morning, at the fateful four o'clock, and in spite of four
sleeping-drops, Lottie on the cot at the foot of her bed, and the night
light burning, she awoke on the crest of such a shriek that a stiletto
might have slit the silence, the end of the sheet crammed up and into
her mouth, and, ignoring all of Lottie's calming, sat up on her knees,
her streaming eyes on the jointure of wall and ceiling, where the open,
accusing ones of Gerald looked down at her. It was not that they were
terrible eyes. They were full of the sweet blue, and clear as lakes. It
was only that they knew. Those eyes _knew. They knew!_ She tried the
device there at four o'clock in the morning of tearing up the still
unpaid check to the Ivy Funeral Rooms, and then she curled up in bed
with her hand in the negro maid's and her face half buried in the
pillow.

"Help me, Lottie!" she begged; "help me!"

"Law! Pore child! Gettin' the horrors every night thisaway! I've been
through it before with other ladies, but I never saw a case of the sober
horrors befoh. Looks like they's the worst of all. Go to sleep, child.
I's holdin'."

You see, Lottie had looked in on life where you and I might not. A
bird's-eye view may be very, very comprehensive, but a domestic's-eye
view can sometimes be very, very close.

And then, one night, after Hester had beat her hands down into the
mattress and implored Gerald to close his accusing eyes, she sat up in
bed, waiting for the first streak of dawn to show itself, railing at the
pain in her head.

"God! My head! Rub it, Lottie! My head! My eyes! The back of my neck!"

The next morning she did what you probably have been expecting she would
do. She rose and dressed, sending Lottie to bed for a needed rest.
Dressed herself in the little old blue-serge suit that had been hanging
in the very back of a closet for four years, with a five-and two
ten-dollar bills pinned into its pocket, and pressed the little blue
sailor hat down on the smooth, winglike quality of her hair. She looked
smaller, peculiarly, indescribably younger. She wrote Wheeler a note,
dropping it down the mail-chute in the hall, and then came back, looking
about rather aimlessly for something she might want to pack. There was
nothing; so