Ten minutes later there came the sound of blithe whistling from Jock’s room.  Jock always whistled when he went to bed and when he rose.  Even these years of living in a New York apartment had not broken him of the habit.  It was a cheerful, disconnected whistling, sometimes high and clear, sometimes under the breath, sometimes interspersed with song, and sometimes ceasing altogether at critical moments, say, during shaving, or while bringing the four-in-hand up tight and snug under the collar.  It was one of those comfortable little noises that indicate a masculine presence; one of those pleasant, reassuring, man-in-the-house noises that every woman loves.

Emma McChesney, putting herself to bed in her room across the hall, found herself listening, brush poised, lips parted, as though to the exquisite strains of celestial music.  There came the thump of a shoe on the floor.  An interval of quiet.  Then another thump.  Without having been conscious of it, Emma McChesney had grown to love the noises that accompanied Jock’s retiring and rising.  His dressing was always signalized by bangings and thumpings.  His splashings in the tub were tremendous.  His morning plunge could be heard all over the six-room apartment.  Mrs. McChesney used to call gayly through the door: 

“Mercy, Jock!  You sound like a school of whales coming up for air.”

“You’ll think I’m a school of sharks when it comes to breakfast,” Jock would call back.  “Tell Annie to make enough toast, Mum.  She’s the tightest thing with the toast I ever did—­”

The rest would be lost in a final surging splash.

The noises in the room across the hall had subsided now.  She listened more intently.  No, a drawer banged.  Another.  Then: 

“Hasn’t my gray suit come back from the tailor’s?”

“It was to be sponged, too, you know.  He said he’d bring it Wednesday.  This is Tuesday.”

“Oh!” Another bang.  Then:  ’"Night, Mother!”

“Good night, dear.”  Creaking sounds, then a long, comfortable sigh of complete relaxation.

Emma McChesney went on with her brushing.  She brushed her hair with the usual number of swift even strokes, from the top of the shining head to the waist.  She braided her hair into two plaits, Gretchen fashion.  Millions of scanty-locked women would have given all they possessed to look as Emma McChesney looked standing there in kimono and gown.  She nicked out the light.  Then she, too, relaxed upon her pillow with a little sigh.  Quiet fell on the little apartment.  The street noises came up to her, now roaring, now growing faint.  Emma McChesney lay there sleepless.  She lay flat, hands clasped across her breast, her braids spread out on the pillow.  In the darkness of the room the years rolled before her in panorama:  her girlhood, her marriage, her unhappiness, Jock, the divorce, the struggle for work, those ten years on the road.  Those ten years on the road!  How she had hated them—­and