Darkness gathered about her with the closing of the day. She dreaded the night and the day, people and the absence of people. She knew no woman she could take her anguish to for sympathy; it would provoke only rebuke or laughter. The Church had rebuffed her. There remained only men, and what could she hope from them? Even Jim Dyckman had not been a friend merely. He had told her that she wasted herself as well as him. Beyond this night there were years of nights, years on years of days. She could not even be alone; for who was ever actually alone? Even in the hush and the gloom of the deepening twilight there were figures here, shadows that sighed, delicate insinuators. There were no satyrs or bassarids, but gentlemen in polo garb, in evening dress, in yachting flannels. There were moon-nights in Florida, electric floods on dancing-floors, this dim corner of this room with some one leaning on her chair, bending his head and whispering: “Charity, it's Jim. I love you.” She rose and thrust aside the arms that were not there. She could not order him away, because he was not there. And yet he was there. She was afraid that he still loved her and afraid that he did not. She was afraid that she had always loved him and that she never could. She was afraid that she would go to him or send for him, and afraid that she would be afraid to. She thrust away the phantom, but her palms pleaded against his departure. Softer than a whisper and noisier than a cry was her thought: “I don't want to be alone, I am afraid to be alone.” CHAPTER XXIV Kedzie wanted to be a lady, and with the ladies stand--a tall tiara in her hair, a lorgnette in her hand. She had succeeded dizzily, tremendously, in her cinema career. The timid thing that had watched the moving-picture director to see how he held his wineglass, and accepted his smile as a beam of sunshine breaking through the clouds about his godlike head, now found his gracefulness “actory,” his intimacy impudent, and his association compromising. Ferriday's very picturesqueness and artistry convinced her now that he was not quite the gentleman. Kedzie was beginning to imitate the upper dialect already. She who but a twelvemonth past was dividing people into “hicks” and “swells,” and whose epithets were “reub” and “classy,” was now a generation advanced. Ferriday saw it and raged. One day in discussing the cast of a picture he mentioned the screen-pet Lorraine Melnotte as the man for the principal male role. Kedzie sighed; “Oh, he is so hopelessly romantic, never quite the gentleman. In costume he gets by, but in evening clothes he always suggests the handsome waiter--don't you think?” Ferriday roared, with disgust: “Good Lord, but you're growing. What is this thing I've invented? Are you a _Frankenstein?_” Kedzie looked blank and sneered, “Are you implying that I have Yiddish blood in me?”