“Nothing doing in vaudeville for our kind of talent.  It’s cabaret where the money and easy hours is these days.  Just a plain little solo act—­contralto is what you can put over.  A couple of ‘Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night’ sob-solos is all you need.  I’ll let you meet Billy Howe of the Bijou.  Billy’s a great one for running in a chaser act or two.”

“I—­How much would it cost, Kittie, to—­to—­”

“Hundred and fifty done it for me, wardrobe and all.”

“Kittie, I—­Would you—­”

“Sure I would!  Only, remember, I ain’t responsible.  I don’t tell anybody how to run his life.  That’s something everybody’s got to decide for herself.”

“I—­have—­decided, Kittie.”

At something after that stilly one-o’clock hour when all the sleeping noises of lath and wainscoting creak out, John Burkhardt lifted his head to the moving light of a lamp held like a torch over him, even the ridge of his body completely submerged beneath the great feather billow of an oceanic walnut bedstead.

“Yes, Hanna?”

“Wake up!”

“I been awake—­”

She set the lamp down on the brown-marble top of a wash-stand, pushed back her hair with both hands, and sat down on the bed-edge, heavily breathing from a run through deserted night’s streets.

“I gotta talk to you, Burkhardt—­now—­to-night.”

“Now’s no time, Hanna.  Come to bed.”

“Things can’t go on like this, John.”

He lay back slowly.

“Maybe you’re right, Hanna.  I been layin’ up here and thinkin’ the same myself.  What’s to be done?”

“I’ve got to the end of my rope.”

“With so much that God has given us, Hanna—­health and prosperity—­it’s a sin before Him that unhappiness should take root in this home.”

“If you’re smart, you won’t try to feed me up on gospel to-night!”

“I’m willin’ to meet you, Hanna, on any proposition you say.  How’d it be to move down to Schaefer’s boardin’-house for the winter, where it’ll be a little recreation for you evenings, or say we take a trip down to Cincinnati for a week.  I—­”

“Oh no,” she said, looking away from him and her throat throbbing.  “Oh no, you don’t!  Them things might have meant something to me once, but you’ve come too late with ’em.  For eight years I been eatin’ out my heart with ’em.  Now you couldn’t pay me to live at Schaefer’s.  I had to beg too long for it.  Cincinnati!  Why, its New-Year’s Eve is about as lively as a real town’s Monday morning.  Oh no, you don’t!  Oh no!”

“Come on to bed, Hanna.  You’ll catch cold.  Your breath’s freezin’.”

“I’m goin’—­away, for good—­that’s where—­I’m goin’!”

Her words threatened to come out on a sob, but she stayed it, the back of her hand to her mouth.

Her gaze was riveted, and would not move, from a little curtain above the wash-stand, a guard against splashing crudely embroidered in a little hand-in-hand boy and girl.