A door opened at the far end of the room, letting in a patch of hall light and a dark figure coming into silhouette against it.

“You there?”

She sprang up.

“Yes, Harry—­yes.”

“Good Lord! sitting in the dark again!” He turned a wall key, three pink-shaded lamps, a cluster of pink-glass grapes, and a center bowl of alabaster flashing up the familiar spectacle of Louis Fourteenth and the interior decorator’s turpitude; a deep-pink brocade divan backed up by a Circassian-walnut table with curly legs; a maze of smaller tables; a marble Psyche holding out the cluster of pink grapes; a gilt grand piano, festooned in rosebuds.  Around through these Mr. Ross walked quickly, winding his hands, rubbing them.

“Well, here I am!”

“Had your supper—­dinner, Harry?”

“No.  What’s the idea calling me off when I got a business dinner on hand?  What’s the hurry call this time?  I have to get back to it.”

She clasped her hands to her bare throat, swallowing with effort.

“I—­Harry—­I—­”

“You’ve got to stop this kind of thing, Millie, getting nervous spells like all the other women do the minute they get ten cents in their pocket.  I ain’t got the time for it—­that’s all there is to it.”

“I can’t help it, Harry.  I think I must be going crazy.  I can’t stop myself.  All of a sudden everything comes over me.  I think I must be going crazy.”

Her voice jerked up to an off pitch, and he flung himself down on the deep-cushioned couch, his stiff expanse of dress shirt bulging and straining at the studs.  A bit redder and stouter, too, he was constantly rearing his chin away from the chafing edge of his collar.

“O Lord!” he said.  “I guess I’m let in for some cutting-up again!  Well, fire away and have it over with!  What’s eating you this time?”

She was quivering so against sobs that her lips were drawn in against her teeth by the great draught of her breathing.

“I can’t stand it, Harry.  I’m going crazy.  I got to get relief.  It’s killing me—­the lonesomeness—­the waiting.  I can’t stand no more.”

He sat looking at a wreath of roses in the light carpet, lips compressed, beating with fist into palm.

“Gad!  I dunno!  I give up.  You’re too much for me, woman.”

“I can’t go on this way—­the suspense—­can’t—­can’t.”

“I don’t know what you want.  God knows I give up!  Thirty-eight-hundred-dollar-a-year apartment—­more spending-money in a week than you can spend in a month.  Clothes.  Jewelry.  Your son one of the high-fliers at college—­his automobile—­your automobile.  Passes to every show in town.  Gad!  I can’t help it if you turn it all down and sit up here moping and making it hot for me every time I put my foot in the place.  I don’t know what you want; you’re one too many for me.”

“I can’t stand—­”

“All of a sudden, out of a clear sky, she sends for me to come home.  Second time in two weeks.  No wonder, with your long face, your son lives mostly up at the college.  I ’ain’t got enough on my mind yet with the ’Manhattan Revue’ opening to-morrow night.  You got it too good, if you want to know it.  That’s what ails women when they get to cutting up like this.”