“Aw, Charley!”

“And, to show you that I like you, I’m going to make up for this to-morrow night.  A real little Saturday-night blow!  And don’t forget Sunday afternoon—­two o’clock for us, down at Crissey’s Hall.  Two o’clock.”

“Two o’clock.”

“Good!”

“Oh, Charley, I—­”

“What, Sweetness?”

“Oh, nothing; I—­I’m just silly to-night.”

Her hand lay on his arm, white in the moonlight and light as a leaf; and he kissed her again, scorching her lips.

“Good night, Sweetness.”

“Good night, Charley.”

Then up three flights of stairs, through musty halls and past closed doors, their white china knobs showing through the darkness, and up to the fourth-floor rear, and then on tiptoe into a long, narrow room, with the moonlight flowing in.

Clothing lay about in grotesque heaps—­a woman’s blouse was flung across the back of a chair and hung limply; a pair of shoes stood beside the bed in the attitude of walking—­tired-looking shoes, run down at the heels and skinned at the toes.  And on the far side of the three-quarter bed the hump of an outstretched figure, face turned from the light, with sparse gray-and-black hair flowing over the pillow.

Carefully, to save the slightest squeak, Sara Juke undressed, folded her little mound of clothing across the room’s second chair, groping carefully by the stream of moonlight.  Severe as a sibyl in her straight-falling nightdress, her hair spreading over her shoulders, her bare feet pattered on the cool matting.  Then she slid into bed lightly, scarcely raising the covers.  From the mantelpiece the alarm-clock ticked with emphasis.

An hour she lay there.  Once she coughed, and smothered it in her pillow.  Two hours.  She slipped from under the covers and over to the littered dresser.  The pamphlet lay on top of her gloves; she carried it to the window and, with her limbs trembling and sending ripples down her nightrobe, read it.  Then again, standing there by the window in the moonlight, she quivered so that her knees bent under her.

After a while she raised the window slowly and without a creak, and a current of cool air rushed in and over her before she could reach the bedside.

On her pillow Hattie Krakow stirred reluctantly, her weary senses battling with the pleasant lethargy of sleep; but a sudden nip in the air stung her nose and found out the warm crevices of the bed.  She stirred and half opened her eyes.

“For Gawd’s sake, Sara, are you crazy?  Put that window down!  Tryin’ to freeze us out?  Opening a window with her cough and all!  Put it down!  Put—­it—­down!”

Sara Juke rose and slammed it shut, slipping back into the cold bed with teeth that clicked.  After a while she slept; but lightly, with her mouth open and her face upturned.  And after a while she woke to full consciousness all at once, and with a cough on her lips.  Her gown at the yoke was wet; and her neck, where she felt it, was damp with cold perspiration.