None the less, it was with some misgivings and red lights burning high on her cheek-bones that Mrs. Samstag, at just after ten that evening, turned the knob of the door that entered into her little sitting-room, but in this case, a room redeemed by an upright piano with a green silk and gold-lace shaded floor lamp glowing by it. Two gilt-framed photographs and a cluster of ivory knickknacks on the white mantel. A heap of hand-made cushions. Art editions of the gift-poets and some circulating library novels. A fireside chair, privately owned and drawn up, ironically enough, beside the gilded radiator, its head rest worn from kindly service to Mrs. Samstag's neuralgic brow. From the nest of cushions in the circle of lamp glow, Alma sprang up at her mother's entrance. Sure enough she had been reading and her cheek was a little flushed and crumpled from where it has been resting in the palm of her hand. "Mama," she said, coming out of the circle of light and switching on the ceiling bulbs, "you stayed down so late." There was a slow prettiness to Alma. It came upon you like a little dawn, palely at first and then pinkening to a pleasant consciousness that her small face was heart-shaped and clear as an almond, that the pupils of her gray eyes were deep and dark like cisterns and to young Leo Friedlander, rather apt his comparison, too, her mouth was exactly the shape of a small bow that had shot its quiverful of arrows into his heart. And instead of her eighteen she looked sixteen. There was that kind of timid adolescence about her, yet when she said, "Mama, you stayed down so late," the bang of a little pistol-shot was back somewhere in her voice. "Why--Mr. Latz--and I--sat and talked." An almost imperceptible nerve was dancing against Mrs. Samstag's right temple. Alma could sense, rather than see the ridge of pain. "You're all right, mama?" "Yes," said Mrs. Samstag, and plumped rather than sat herself down on a divan, its naked greenness relieved by a thrown scarf of black velvet, stenciled in gold. "You shouldn't have remained down so long if your head is hurting," said her daughter, and quite casually took up her mother's beaded hand-bag where it had fallen in her lap, but her fingers feeling lightly and furtively as if for the shape of its contents. "Stop that," said Mrs. Samstag, jerking it back, a dull anger in her voice. "Come to bed, mama. If you're in for neuralgia, I'll fix the electric pad." Suddenly Mrs. Samstag shot out her arm, rather slim looking in the invariable long sleeve she affected, drawing Alma back toward her by the ribbon sash of her pretty chiffon frock. "Alma, be good to mama tonight! Sweetheart--be good to her." The quick suspecting fear that had motivated Miss Samstag's groping along the beaded hand-bag shot out again in her manner. "Mama--you haven't?" "No, no. Don't nag me. It's something else, Alma. Something mama is very happy about." "Mama, you've broken your promise again."