Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/190



HAT night, although he had been sleeping extremely well, Tom slept very little. The car was closed, filled with the sour odor of old shoes, well-worn clothing and perspiring human bodies. The men slept heavily and noisily, and a track engine panted back and forth. Once he fell asleep, and dreamed that he was pointing cattle to the pens, and a switch engine had come along and scattered them. He wakened with the feel of the Miller still between his knees.

In the morning he made his way morosely to the lot. Yesterday's anger was gone, afid he felt only a deep dejection. What had he expected anyhow? She had shown him that she did not care for him, abandoned him to that bunch at the club and never come back. That call of hers from the street, that had been before she had time to think. She wouldn't follow it up.

He wandered to the dressing tent, promised his laundry to a waiting negress and went inside. When he had rolled it up he drew back the tent flap and handed it to the waiting figure.

"Here you are," he said gruffly. "And get it back tonight sure. We're leaving."

But the figure did not move to take it, and he stepped outside.

It was Kay.

He was too stunned for speech, and she too seemed to have nothing to say. She looked thinner than he remembered her, and her face was set and drawn. He stood there, staring at her.

"Well, here I am," she said finally, as if that explained everything.

And for all his later failures, that time at least he understood. He could not know what the step had cost her, or the finality of it. Perhaps he never did realize what that last