“Now there you go, borrowing trouble, mother,” Edward exclaimed.  He could not take his eyes from Janet, but continued to regard her with benevolence.  “Lise’ll get married some day.  I don’t suppose we can expect another Mr. Ditmar....”

“Well,” said Hannah, presently, “there’s no use sitting up all night.”  She rose and kissed Janet again.  “I just can’t believe it,” she declared, “but I guess it’s so if you say it is.”

“Of course it’s so,” said Edward.

“I so want you should be happy, Janet,” said Hannah....

Was it so?  Her mother and father, the dwarfed and ugly surroundings of Fillmore Street made it seem incredible once more.  And—­what would they say if they knew what had happened to her this day?  When she had reached her room, Janet began to wonder why she had told her parents.  Had it not been in order to relieve their anxiety—­especially her mother’s—­on the score of her recent absences from home?  Yes, that was it, and because the news would make them happy.  And then the mere assertion to them that she was to marry Ditmar helped to make it more real to herself.  But, now that reality was fading again, she was unable to bring it within the scope of her imagination, her mind refused to hold one remembered circumstance long enough to coordinate it with another:  she realized that she was tired—­too tired to think any more.  But despite her exhaustion there remained within her, possessing her, as it were overshadowing her, unrelated to future or past, the presence of the man who had awakened her to an intensity of life hitherto unconceived.  When her head touched the pillow she fell asleep....

When the bells and the undulating scream of the siren awoke her, she lay awhile groping in the darkness.  Where was she?  Who was she?  The discovery of the fact that the nail of the middle finger on her right hand was broken, gave her a clew.  She had broken that nail in reaching out to save something—­a vase of roses—­that was it!—­a vase of roses on a table with a white cloth.  Ditmar had tipped it over.  The sudden flaring up of this trivial incident served to re-establish her identity, to light a fuse along which her mind began to run like fire, illuminating redly all the events of the day before.  It was sweet to lie thus, to possess, as her very own, these precious, passionate memories of life lived at last to fulness, to feel that she had irrevocably given herself and taken—­all.  A longing to see Ditmar again invaded her:  he would take an early train, he would be at the office by nine.  How could she wait until then?

With a movement that had become habitual, subconscious, she reached out her hand to arouse her sister.  The coldness of the sheets on the right side of the bed sent a shiver through her—­a shiver of fear.