Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/220

 former girl-friend and brings up children not her own. The doorman had defined Claire's age shrewdly enough.

She had shivered a little upon leaving twenty-three for twenty-four, as if at the touch of an October breeze in August; yet autumnal gayety was easily possible for twenty-four. Twenty-four was not so bad of itself; its sinister quality resided in its border, and, as she approached nearer and nearer that border, she more and more often incredulously murmured the dread numeral to herself, wondering and dismayed to find it upon her lips.

"Twenty-five!" she thus whispered in the elevator. "Twenty-five!"

The elevator man did not hear her. What he said was only a coincidence; her apartment was upon the eighteenth floor. "Eighteen, Miss Ambler?"

"Twenty, Henry, please."

He nodded affably. "Mrs. Allyngton's, I expect. She seems to be having quite a tea this afternoon. Quite a tea at Mrs. Allyngton's this afternoon, Miss Ambler." And he added, in an admiring tone, though his purpose was merely to make a little more conversation with this favoured resident: "I was pretty sure you wouldn't miss it, Miss Ambler. I told Joe; I said