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 citement and recklessness would become mere stupidity; his head would drop heavy; he would be "out" for the rest of the night; the taxi-driver would need help merely to deposit him within his door. Then Diana Dewitt would be driven to her own room and to Ellen, much the same girl she had been.

It was calm and quiet in the night with snow smooth and shining in the moonlight as the cab traversed a park. It was like, for a moment, the moon on the snow of the field outside Diana Dewitt's window at home in Hoster.

She saw herself a little girl, kneeling beside her bed to say old, childish prayers—silly things about being always a good girl and her soul being kept while she slept.

Di shut her eyes but they only gave her a glimpse of her mother, pettish and complaining about her own troubles but always with a fond, lingering touch for Di. "Good," her mother wanted her to be. "Good." Her mother made a sort of fetish about being good. When she was younger, many a man with money had liked her. "But," her mother used to say, when she boasted of this, "whatever else I got or ain't, I got that. I've always been a good woman."

Well, what had it brought her?

The gin gurgled from the flask. Here was the Metten order; half a million, maybe, going, going. . . . Di snatched quickly and knocked the flask from him, and the gin drained upon the floor.

Jello bent for it but she blocked him; and he swore at her. "That's all I got."

"I know it."

"What y'do that for?"