Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/213

 come. She could not call. Too vividly upon her consciousness was blazed the memory of a woman who had called down the stairs and of a girl who had worn a white pleated skirt and had carried a ukulele. What the girl had said of the woman, Dot remembered well. She closed the door. She could spare Eddie that.

He came back from the store. He had remembered the butter. He had brought ham and cheese and pickles and coleslaw and a Ward's cake. They ate in silence. Still silent, they cleared up the few dishes. Eddie tuned in on WEAF, and the silence finally broke up in comments on the program.

Dot bathed and went to bed. Eddie lingered in the living-room tinkering with his set. He was not conscious of his reluctance to undress. The night so fraught with possibilities had made him restless, but he was not aware of it. Twice, after she had gone to sleep, he went quietly in to look at her. She was breathing deeply, and there was an expression on her face that asked a question. The blessed bulge beneath the sheet drew his attention. The baby. Surely three weeks from now he would be lying in his bassinet, crying perhaps, but still the baby he had dreamed of, despaired of, and longed for. Why didn't she want it? His own face wore a question as he looked at Dot's closed eyes. Why didn't she want it? Why did she speak so lightly of that little life that breathed and fed inside her? How could it live there and not win her love? She had sewed for the baby, had sewed tirelessly; but as she said herself, the baby couldn't go naked. She didn't want the baby. That much was evident in every word that she spoke on the subject. Well, he could love it secretly. No use in making her unhappy by going into ecstasies of delight over something that she didn't feel that way about.

He went back to the living-room and picked up a book he had borrowed from the boss. A book on radio. He lit a