With Albert it was strangely easier; there was a pause as wide as a hair while he stood there blinking, and weighted with his unsurrendered luggage. "Albert," she said, finding the word at last. At that moment, a "red cap," wild for fee, made for one of the brand-new leather cases. "Let go," he cried, in small anger. "That is a six-dollar-and-ninety-eight-cent bag you are jerking." Then he brought his gaze back to Lilly, his Adam's apple above the gray necktie throbbing so that it seemed to her his entire body must reverberate to the pistonlike process. "Well," he said. "Well, well," the words dropping down into the dry well of a gulp. But somehow after the episode of the luggage, everything was easier, for Lilly at least. She could smile now. Very presently they were actually in a taxicab together, the talk of the moment echoing against the silence of unspoken words taking shape between them. "Papa!" she said, finally, from the little folding seat opposite him, stroking his hands and steadying herself with them against the throw of the cab. "Oh, papa, papa!" He smiled back through crinkles that were new to her, patting her in turn and looking off. Mrs. Becker fell to crying, pressing her handkerchief up against her eyes and trying to lift her veil above the tears. "After all these years," she kept repeating. "Years. Years." "Now, now, Carrie--you promised." "What hotel?" asked Penny, one of the bags across his knees and one weather eye for the other on the driver's seat. "The Astor; that is one of the best. I've your rooms all arranged for. My--my place is too small." "A less expensive would do, wouldn't it, mother?" addressing himself, without once meeting Lilly's eye, to his mother-in-law. "You're my guests," she said, trying to smile down old aversions. "This is my party." "Years--" sobbed Mrs. Becker. "She looks the same, but I'm a stranger to my own child. Ben, we're strangers." They were all suddenly in tears, Mr. Becker laying a clumsy hand to his wife's arm. "Carrie, you promised--" "Can't help it--can't help it," her lips bubbling. "I'm bursting with it. All these years. I can't hold in. What mother could?" Only their arrival at the hotel stemmed the rising tide, but, once up in their aerial suite of rooms, the last bell hop tipped out, then broke the storm wave, flaying them all. "Lilly--Lilly let me look at you. Baby--are you my baby--are you mine? Years--O God--years--" "Mamma--mamma--" "Feel my heart. Ben--tell her--what I've suffered--" "Carrie--now--now--what is past is past; we must look to the present now." "Papa dear--you look so changed and yet so--natural--"