“Say, did I wake you?” she asked.  “I did my best not to make any noise—­honest to God.”

“It wasn’t the noise that woke me up,” said Janet.

“It couldn’t have been.”

“You’ve been drinking!” said Janet, slowly.

Lise giggled.

“What’s it to you, angel face!” she inquired.  “Quiet down, now, and go bye-bye.”

Janet sprang from the bed, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her.  She was limp.  She began to whimper.

“Cut it out—­leave me go.  It ain’t nothing to you what I do—­I just had a highball.”

Janet released her and drew back.

“I just had a highball—­honest to God!”

“Don’t say that again!” whispered Janet, fiercely.

“Oh, very well.  For God’s sake, go to bed and leave me alone—­I can take care of myself, I guess—­I ain’t nutty enough to hit the booze.  But I ain’t like you—­I’ve got to have a little fun to keep alive.”

“A little fun!” Janet exclaimed.  The phrase struck her sharply.  A little fun to keep alive!

With that same peculiar, cautious movement she had observed, Lise approached a chair, and sank into it,—­jerking her head in the direction of the room where Hannah and Edward slept.

“D’you want to wake ’em up?  Is that your game?” she asked, and began to fumble at her belt.  Overcoming with an effort a disgust amounting to nausea, Janet approached her sister again, little by little undressing her, and finally getting her into bed, when she immediately fell into a profound slumber.  Janet, too, got into bed, but sleep was impossible:  the odour lurked like a foul spirit in the darkness, mingling with the stagnant, damp air that came in at the open window, fairly saturating her with horror:  it seemed the very essence of degradation.  But as she lay on the edge of the bed, shrinking from contamination, in the throes of excitement inspired by an unnamed fear, she grew hot, she could feel and almost hear the pounding of her heart.  She rose, felt around in the clammy darkness for her wrapper and slippers, gained the door, crept through the dark hall to the dining-room, where she stealthily lit the lamp; darkness had become a terror.  A cockroach scurried across the linoleum.  The room was warm and close, it reeked with the smell of stale food, but at least she found relief from that other odour.  She sank down on the sofa.

Her sister was drunk.  That in itself was terrible enough, yet it was not the drunkenness alone that had sickened Janet, but the suggestion of something else.  Where had Lise been?  In whose company had she become drunk?  Of late, in contrast to a former communicativeness, Lise had been singularly secretive as to her companions, and the manner in which her evenings were spent; and she, Janet, had grown too self-absorbed to be curious.  Lise, with her shopgirl’s cynical knowledge of life and its pitfalls and the high valuation at which she held her