That night she dreamed that she sat in the great yellowshot beehive of the Boston theatre and that Fanshaw sat on one side of her and Wenny on the other, both in evening dress, and she was a little girl in spotted calico with her hair in pigtails and on the stage was the orchestra of the Fadettes playing like mad and in front of them Mabel Worthington with her mouth open and her head thrown back and a sheet of music agitated in front of her and Nan kept turning to Wenny and to Fanshaw and saying: I can't hear a word, not a single word. Suddenly Wenny had slipped from her side and was in a taxi with his arms round the Worthington girl, kissing her, kissing her, and Nan was in another taxi driven by a young man with a red face and a diamond horseshoe in his tie and they were hurtling through red-flaring streets under a black sky, streets lined with faces staring and hands pointing and to all Nan's crying to them to tell her where he had gone there was no answer but hissing and stamping and catcalls. Nan sat up in bed rubbing her forehead trying to remember what she had been dreaming. The glow of the street-light in her window was full of furtive padded movement. Snow. * * * * Nan closed the front door gently behind them. "My, I'm glad to get in again," said Gertrude Fagan. "Why, dear?" "It's so horrible a night like this. I hate it all." "What do you mean? But we'd better go up to my room. We'll wake Aunt M. if we sit down here, and it's so hard to get her to sleep again." "I don't suppose she's much better, is she?" whispered Gertrude Fagan as they tiptoed up the heavily carpeted stairs. Nan winced when a board creaked on the second flight. "No," she was whispering over her shoulder, "though there doesn't seem to be any danger of another stroke just at present. There doesn't seem to be any cure for the aphasia, though Doctor Smythe talks wisely enough about it ... Whew, it's hot in here." Nan went to the window without turning on the light and pushed it up hard. A heavy scent of lilacs came in off the Public Garden where the occasional lights were misted with the green of young leaves. Beyond, the electric signs of Boylston and Tremont Streets sent a great glare up into the milky spring sky. An automobile whirred past. There were steps on the pavements. She turned back into the room. Gertrude Fagan sat on the bed with her hat on her knee. The reading lamp she had just switched on threw her eyes into shadow. "Look, Nancibel, at my shadow on the wall," she said harshly. "Wouldn't think I had a hooked beak like that, would you?" "How absurd, Gertrude! Look, this is the room I used to have when I was a little girl ... I'll put you up next door." "But, really, I ought to go home." "No, you'll be perfectly comfortable here. You know you don't like going home alone at night." "Not a night like this," said Gertrude Fagan shuddering. "But it's the finest night we've had this spring."