Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/213

 One evening she went back to that lonely hotel room of hers, to open the door and find Bessie settled in a chair by the window, and the room full of cigarette smoke. But Bessie, who was wise with the wisdom of the serpent, avoided any emotion by receiving her very casually.

"Hello, Kay. Had your dinner yet?"

"I was going to order something up here."

"Then order for two," said Bessie. "I'm over on some business about poor Ronald. I didn't even know he was sick. Well, how's your husband coming on?"

Bessie's matter-of-fact manner did her good. She missed nothing, did Bessie, from the handkerchiefs pasted to dry on the mirror to the strain on the girl's face. The hotel bedroom was "awful." But she brought Kay the news from home that she had been hungering for. Henry had locked up her clothes; she had tried to bring her some, but she could not. But her mother was less unhappy than Kay probably imagined. She was not as well as she might be. She had gone over to the cemetery and taken cold. Kay ought to write to her.

It was only when she learned that Tom's injury was a permanent one that she became grave.

"Then—what will you do?"

"I don't know. They haven't told him yet."

"What your father ought to do is to give him an allowance. I'll see what I can do, Kay."

"It wouldn't be any good. Tom wouldn't touch it, or allow me to."

Later on, after her own worldly fashion, Bessie tried to be helpful.

"You see, Kay, you have a lot to learn. This thing about love, now—you think everything's over, I daresay. You've got him and he's got you! But it isn't, you know. The greatest love stories come after marriage. If I hadn't married poor Ronald" She checked herself.

And again, over the meal served in that dingy room:

"You can divide any woman's life into three parts: up to twenty, anticipation; from twenty to forty, fulfillment—if she's lucky. Usually it is compromise and resignation.