She felt bathed in a colorless fluid of unreality. Those Swiss window curtains! To what era of her consciousness did their purchase belong? She and her mother had shopped them at Gentle's. They hung now lightly against the darkness. The blond girl who had sold them to her must be sleeping now, too, in this same curious pool of unreality. She lay sunk in a strange pause. Once she propped herself on an elbow, gazing across the street to the blank front of her parents' house. They were sleeping behind that middle upper window, their clothing folded across chairs, as if waiting. How eagerly they would greet their new day of small duties, small pleasures, and small emotions. What gave them the courage to meet the years of days cut off one identical pattern, like a whole regiment of paper dolls cut from a folded newspaper? She began to count. Uncle Buck, five hundred. Grandma Ploag, one hundred. Mamma and papa, one hundred and fifty. Seven hundred and fifty in the bank in her name! Her own little checking account. The tan-bound check book. The new tan valise, monogrammed, L.B.P. The stack of music marked "Repertoire." New York! She fell to trembling, forcing herself into rigidity when the figure beside her stirred. She was burning with fever and wanted to plunge from the cool sheets. She could have run a mile--two. Instead, she lay the long night through, her mind a loom weaving a tapestry of her plan of action, and dawn came up pink, hot, and cloudless. CHAPTER XIV At seven o'clock her husband awakened with an ejaculation that landed him sitting on the bed edge. She lay with her eyes closed, wanting not to blink. He dressed silently, but she could hear him tiptoeing about, and finally lay with her hands clenched against the gargling noises that came through the closed door of the bathroom. At last she was conscious that, fully dressed, he was standing beside her, looking down. She could tell by the aroma of mouth wash. "Lilly?" he said, in a coarse whisper. She continued to simulate sleep. "Lilly!" She did not employ the deception of a start, but opened her eyes quietly to meet his. "Lazy!" he said. "It is twenty-six minutes past seven." "So late?" she said, twisting into a long, luxurious yawn. He kissed her directly on that yawn between the open lips. "You stay in bed this morning. Rest up." "I think I will, Albert, if you don't mind." "You turn right over and have your nap out. I'll be home at six-forty-six." "Good-by, Albert," she said into the crotch of her elbow. He kissed her again on the ear lobe and the nape of her neck. "Good-by, Lilly, and if I were you I'd have a little talk with mother if I found myself not feeling just right. I'm sending Joe up with a pair of granite scrub buckets and that stopper for the bathtub. All right?" "Yes."