“Do take a cab, Marna,” she urged.  “My treat!  Please.”

“No, no,” said Marna in a strained voice.  “I’ll not do that.  A five-cent ride in the car will take me almost to my door; and besides the cars are warm, which is an advantage.”

It was understood tacitly that Kate was the protector, and the one who wouldn’t mind being on the street alone.  They had but a moment to wait for Marna’s car, but in that moment Kate was thinking how terrible it would be for Marna, in her worn evening gown, to be crowded into that common conveyance and tormented with those futile regrets which must be her so numerous companions.

She was not surprised when Marna snatched her hand, crying:—­

“Oh, Kate!”

“Yes, yes, I know,” murmured Kate soothingly.

“No, you don’t,” retorted Marna.  “How can you?  It’s—­it’s the milk.”

There was a catch in her voice.

“The milk!” echoed Kate blankly.  “What milk?  I thought—­”

“Oh, I know,” Marna cried impatiently.  “You thought I was worrying about that old opera, and that I wanted to be up there behind that screen stabbing myself.  Well, of course, knowing the score so well, and having hoped once to do so much with it, the notes did rather try to jump out of my throat.  But, goodness, what does all that matter?  It’s the baby’s milk that I’m carrying on about.  I don’t believe I told George to warm it.”  Her voice ceased in a wail.

The car swung around the corner, and Kate half lifted Marna up the huge step, and saw her go reeling down the aisle as the cumbersome vehicle lurched forward.  Then she turned her own steps toward the stairs of the elevated station.

“The milk!” she ejaculated with commingled tenderness and impatience.  “Then that’s why she didn’t say anything about going behind the scenes.  I thought it was because she couldn’t endure the old surroundings and the pity of her associates of the opera-days.  The milk!  I wonder—­”

What she wondered she did not precisely say; but more than one person on the crowded elevated train noticed that the handsome woman in black velvet (it really was velveteen, purchased at a bargain) had something on her mind.

XXV

Kate slept lightly that night.  She had gone to bed with a sense of gentle happiness, which arose from the furtive conviction that she was going to surrender to Ray and to his point of view.  He could take all the responsibility if he liked and she would follow the old instincts of woman and let the Causes of Righteousness with which she had allied herself contrive to get along without her.  It was nothing, she told herself, but sheer egotism for her to suppose that she was necessary to their prosperity.