“Mamma,” she said, coming out of the circle of light and switching on the ceiling bulbs, “you stayed down so late.”

There was a slow prettiness to Alma.  It came upon you like a little dawn, palely at first and then pinkening to a pleasant consciousness that her small face was heart-shaped and clear as an almond, that the pupils of her gray eyes were deep and dark, like cisterns, and to young Leo Friedlander (rather apt the comparison, too) her mouth was exactly the shape of a small bow that had shot its quiverful of arrows into his heart.

And instead of her eighteen she looked sixteen, there was that kind of timid adolescence about her, and yet when she said, “Mamma, you stayed down so late,” the bang of a little pistol shot was back somewhere in her voice.

“Why—­Mr. Latz—­and—­I—­sat and talked.”

An almost imperceptible nerve was dancing against Mrs. Samstag’s right temple.  Alma could sense, rather than see, the ridge of pain.

“You’re all right, mamma?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Samstag, and sat down on a divan, its naked greenness relieved by a thrown scarf of black velvet stenciled in gold.

“You shouldn’t have remained down so long if your head is hurting,” said her daughter, and quite casually took up her mother’s beaded hand bag where it had fallen in her lap, but her fingers feeling lightly and furtively as if for the shape of its contents.

“Stop that,” said Mrs. Samstag, jerking it back, a dull anger in her voice.

“Come to bed, mamma.  If you’re in for neuralgia, I’ll fix the electric pad.”

Suddenly Mrs. Samstag shot out her arm, rather slim-looking in the invariable long sleeve she affected, drawing Alma back toward her by the ribbon sash of her pretty chiffon frock.

“Alma, be good to mamma to-night!  Sweetheart—­be good to her.”

The quick suspecting fear that had motivated Miss Samstag’s groping along the beaded hand bag shot out again in her manner.

“Mamma—­you haven’t—?”

“No, no!  Don’t nag me.  It’s something else, Alma.  Something mamma is very happy about.”

“Mamma, you’ve broken your promise again.”

“No!  No!  No!  Alma, I’ve been a good mother to you, haven’t I?”

“Yes, mamma, yes, but what—­”

“Whatever else I’ve been hasn’t been my fault—­you’ve always blamed Heyman.”

“Mamma, I don’t understand.”

“I’ve caused you worry, Alma—­terrible worry.  I know that.  But everything is changed now.  Mamma’s going to turn over such a new leaf that everything is going to be happiness in this family.”

“Dearest, if you knew how happy it makes me to hear you say that.”

“Alma, look at me.”

“Mamma, you—­you frighten me.”

“You like Louis Latz, don’t you, Alma?”

“Why, yes, mamma.  Very much.”

“We can’t all be young and handsome like Leo, can we?”