She raised herself closer to the mouthpiece for a tighter clutch of it.

“I’m sick, dearie.  I—­I’m dog sick, dearie.  ’Ain’t been about in a week.  The limp is bad and I’m sick all over.  I am, dear.  Come up to supper to-night, dearie.  You ’ain’t been near for—­for a week.  I got to see you about something.  Just a quiet talk, dearie.  I—­I just got to see you, Max.  I—­I’m sick, dog sick.”

Her voice slipped up and away for the moment, and she crammed her lacy fribble of a handkerchief tight against her lips, tiptoeing closer to the transmitter.

“No, no, Max, I swear to God I won’t!  Just quiet and no rough stuff.  For my sake come home to supper to-night, dearie!  I swear.  It’s my thigh, and I got a fever, dearie, that’s eating me.  What?  Eight!  No, that ain’t too late.  Any time you can come ain’t too late.  I’ll wait.  Sure?  Good-by, dearie.  At eight sharp.  Good-by, dearie.”

When she replaced the receiver on its hook, points of light had come out in her eyes like water-lilies opening on a lake.  The ashen sheaf of anxiety folded back from her, color ran up into her face, and she flung open the door, calling down the length of hallway.

“Loo!  Oh, Loo!”

“Huh?”

“Put a couple of bottles of everything on ice before you go, dearie; order a double porterhouse; open a can of them imported sausages he sent up last month, and peel some sweet-potatoes.  Hurry, Loo, I wanna candy ’em myself.  Hurry, dearie!”

She snatched up her furry trifle of a dog, burying her warming face in his fleece.

“M-m-muvver loves her bow-bow.  Muvver loves whole world.  Muvver just loves whole world.  M-m-m-m, chocolate?  Just one ittsie bittsie piece and muvver eat half—­m-m-m!  La-la!  Bow-wow!  La!  La!”

Along that end of Riverside Drive which is so far up that rents begin to come down, night takes on the aspect of an American Venetian carnival.  Steamboats outlined in electric lights pass like phosphorescent phantoms up and down the Hudson River, which reflects with the blurry infidelity of moving waters light for light, deck for deck.  Running strings of incandescent bulbs draped up into festoons every so often by equidistant arc-lights follow the course of the well-oiled driveway, which in turn follows the course of the river as truly as a path made by a canal horse.  A ledge of park, narrow as a terrace, slants to the water’s edge, and of summer nights lovers drag their benches into the shadow of trees and turn their backs to the lampposts and to the world.

From the far side of the river, against the night sky and like an ablutionary message let slip from heaven, a soap-factory spells out its product in terms of electric bulbs, and atop that same industrial palisade rises the dim outline of stack and kiln.  Street-cars, reduced by distance to miniature, bob through the blackness.  At nine o’clock of October evenings the Knickerbocker River Queen, spangled with light and full of pride, moves up-stream with her bow toward Albany.  And from her window and over the waves of intervening roofs Mae Munroe cupped her hands blinker fashion about her eyes and followed its gay excursional passage, even caught a drift of music from its decks.