Half an hour later, when Lindley had gone, Cora closed the front doors in a manner which drew an immediate cry of agony from the room where her father was trying to sleep. She stood on tiptoe to turn out the gas-light in the hall; but for a time the key resisted the insufficient pressure of her finger-tips: the little orange flame, with its black-green crescent over the armature, so maliciously like the "eye" of a peacock feather, limned the exquisite planes of the upturned face; modelled them with soft and regular shadows; painted a sullen loveliness. The key turned a little, but not enough; and she whispered to herself a monosyllable not usually attributed to the vocabulary of a damsel of rank. Next moment, her expression flashed in a brilliant change, like that of a pouting child suddenly remembering that tomorrow is Christmas. The key surrendered instantly, and she ran gayly up the familiar stairs in the darkness.
The transom of Laura's door shone brightly; but the knob, turning uselessly in Cora's hand, proved the door itself not so hospitable. There was a brief rustling within the room; the bolt snapped, and Laura opened the door.
"Why, Laura," said Cora, observing her sister with transient curiosity, "you haven't undressed. What have you been doing?
Something's the matter with you. I know what it is," she added, laughing, as she seated herself on the edge of the old black-walnut bed. "You're in love with Wade Trumble!"
"He's a strong man," observed Laura. "A remarkable throat."
"Horrible little person!" said Cora, forgetting what she owed the unfortunate Mr. Trumble for the vocal wall which had so effectively sheltered her earlier in the evening. "He's like one of those booming June-bugs, batting against the walls, falling into lamp-chimneys-----'
"He doesn't get very near the light he wants," said Laura.
"Me? Yes, he would like to, the rat! But he's consoled when he can get any one to listen to his awful chatter. He makes up to himself among women for the way he gets sat on at the club. But he has his use: he shows off the other men so, by contrast. Oh, Laura!" She lifted both hands to her cheeks, which were beautiful with a quick suffusion of high colour.
"Isn't he gorgeous!"
"Yes," said Laura gently, "I've always thought so.
"Now what's the use of that?" asked Cora peevishly, "with ME? I didn't mean Richard Lindley. You KNOW what I mean."
"Yes--of course--I do," Laura said.
Cora gave her a long look in which a childlike pleading mingled with a faint, strange trouble; then this glance wandered moodily from the face of her sister to her own slippers, which she elevated to meet her descending line of vision.
"And you know I can't help it," she said, shifting quickly to the role of accuser. "So what's the use of behaving like the Pest?" She let her feet drop to the floor again, and her voice trembled a little as she went on: "Laura, you don't know what I had to endure from him to-night. I really don't think I can stand it to live in the same house any longer with that frightful little devil. He's been throwing Ray Vilas's name at me until--oh, it was ghastly to-night! And then--then----" Her tremulousness increased. "I haven't said anything about it all day, but I MET him on the street downtown, this morning----"
"You met Vilas?" Laura looked startled. "Did he speak to you?"
"`Speak to me!'" Cora's exclamation shook with a half-laugh of hysteria. "He made an awful SCENE! He came out of the Richfield Hotel barroom on Main Street just as I was going into the jeweller's next door, and he stopped and bowed like a monkey, square in front of me, and--and he took off his hat and set it on the pavement at my feet and told me to kick it into the gutter!
Everybody stopped and stared; and I couldn't get by him. And he said--he said I'd kicked his heart into the gutter and he didn't want it to catch cold without a hat! And wouldn't I please be so kind as to kick----" She choked with angry mortification. "It was horrible! People were stopping and laughing, and a rowdy began to make fun of Ray, and pushed him, and they got into a scuffle, and I ran into the jeweller's and almost fainted."
"He is insane!" said Laura, aghast.
"He's nothing of the kind; he's just a brute. He does it to make people say I'm the cause of his drinking; and everybody in this gossipy old town DOES say it--just because I got bored to death with his everlasting do-you-love-me-to-day-as-well-as-yesterday style of torment, and couldn't help liking Richard better. Yes, every old cat in town says I ruined him, and that's what he wants them to say. It's so unmanly! I wish he'd die! Yes, I DO wish he would! Why doesn't he kill himself?"
"Ah, don't say that," protested Laura.
"Why not? He's threatened to enough. And I'm afraid to go out of the house because I can't tell when I'll meet him or what he'll do. I was almost sick in that jeweller's shop, this morning, and so upset I came away without getting my pendant.
There's ANOTHER thing I've got to go through, I suppose!"
She pounded the yielding pillow desperately. "Oh, oh, oh! Life isn't worth living--it seems to me sometimes as if everybody in the world spent his time trying to think up ways to make it harder for me! I couldn't have worn the pendant, though, even if I'd got it," she went on, becoming thoughtful. "It's Richard's silly old engagement ring, you know," she explained, lightly.
"I had it made up into a pendant, and heaven knows how I'm going to get Richard to see it the right way. He was so unreasonable tonight."
"Was he cross about Mr. Corliss monopolizing you?"
"Oh, you know how he is," said Cora. "He didn't speak of it exactly. But after you'd gone, he asked me----" She stopped with a little gulp, an expression of keen distaste about her mouth.
