“Oh—­oh—­Hattie!  Oh—­oh!”

She burrowed under her pillow to ease the trembling that seized her.  The moon had passed on, and darkness, which is allied to fear, closed her in—­the fear of unthinking youth who knows not that the grave is full of peace; the fear of abundant life for senile death; the cold agony that comes in the night-watches, when the business of the day is but a dream and Reality visits the couch.

Deeper burrowed Sara Juke, trembling with chill and night-sweat.

Drowsily Hattie Krakow turned on her pillow, but her senses were too weary to follow her mind’s dictate.

“Sara!  ’Smatter, Sara?  ’Smat-ter?” Hattie’s tired hand crept toward her friend; but her volition would not carry it across and it fell inert across the coverlet. “’Smatter, dearie?”

“N-nothing.”

“’Smat-ter, dear-ie?”

“N-nothing.”

* * * * *

In the watches of the night a towel flung across the bedpost becomes a gorilla crouching to spring; a tree-branch tapping at the window an armless hand, beckoning.  In the watches of the night fear is a panther across the chest, sucking the breath; but his eyes cannot bear the light of day, and by dawn he has shrunk to cat size.  The ghastly dreams of Orestes perished with the light; phosphorus is yellowish and waxlike by day.

So Sara Juke found new courage with the day, and in the subbasement of the Titanic Store, the morning following, her laughter was ready enough.  But when the midday hour arrived she slipped into her jacket, past the importunities of Hattie Krakow, and out into the sun-lashed noonday swarm of Sixth Avenue.

Down one block—­two, three; then a sudden pause before a narrow store-front liberally placarded with invitatory signs to the public, and with a red cross blazoning above the doorway.  And Sara Juke, whose heart was full of fear, faltered, entered.

The same thin file passed round the room, halting, sauntering, like grim visitors in a grim gallery.  At a front desk a sleek young interne, tiptilted in a swivel chair, read a pink sheet through horn-rimmed glasses.

Toward the rear the young man whose skin was the wind-lashed pink sorted pamphlets and circulars in tall, even piles on his desk.

Round and round the gallery walked Sara Juke; twice she read over the list of symptoms printed in inch-high type; her heart lay within her as though icy dead, and her eyes would blur over with tears.  Once, when she passed the rear desk, the young man paused in his stacking and regarded her with a warming glance of recognition.

“Hello!” he said.  “You back?”

“Yes.”  Her voice was the thin cry of quail.

“You must like our little picture-gallery, eh?”

“Oh!  Oh!” She caught at the edge of his desk, and tears lay heavy in her eyes.

“Eh?”

“Yes; I—­I like it.  I wanna buy it for my yacht.”  Her ghastly simulacrum of a jest died in her throat; and he said, quickly, a big blush suffusing his face: