omises 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 gamy on the lips of woman
to woman, they lay in bed, heartbeat to heartbeat, the electric pad
under her pillow warm to the hurt of Mrs. Samstag's brow, and talked,
these two, deep into the stilliness of the hotel night.

"I'm going to be the best wife to him, Alma. You see, the woman that
marries Louis has to measure up to the grand ideas of her he got from
his mother."

"You were a good wife once, mamma. You'll be it again."

"That's another reason, Alma; it means my--cure. Living up to the ideas
of a good man."

"Mamma! Mamma! you can't backslide now--ever."

"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, mamma, even if--he--Latz--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 I 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. Mamma 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, mamma!"

"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!"

Nevertheless, 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 clarified noises that
can make a night seem so long. The distant click of the elevator
depositing a nighthawk. A plong of the bedspring. Somebody's cough. A
train's shriek. The jerk of plumbing. A window being raised.