Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/83

 After a time Herbert came out and got Jake Mallory, and Jake went in and the door was closed again. When Jake came out his face looked tired and old; he stood on the verandah steps and looked all around, at the mountains and the yellowing cottonwoods, at the long row of shelter yards beyond the barn, and the creek which had "the best water in the state, sir."

Kay was there too, looking out, but he did not see her.

She met the next day with courage, carried off the good-byes with an air, was neither more talkative nor less than usual on the way into town. But never once did she lift her eyes to the mountains. She sat as she had sat on that journey out weeks before, in the front seat of the car. But now there was no lighted window ahead, no feeling of coming home. Only the Mariposa on a sidetrack, and William in a fresh white coat and a broad cheerful grin.

"Shuah am glad to see you fohks again," he said. "The old Mariposa, she's got stiff from sittin' so long."

Then her little room again, with its broad bed, and Nora laying out the things from her dressing case, the little gold brushes, the jars, the mirror, the boxes for this and that.

"I'll leave your perfume in the bag, Miss Kay. It might spill if I put it out."

"Thanks, Nora."

All set now, her hat covered, her traveling coat protected with a sheet, the far-away whistle of twenty-two, which was to pick up the car; Jake on the platform, Stetson in hand, anxiously receiving some last instructions from her father; her mother's low-pitched voice, speaking to Joe, the cook.

A little crowd outside, staring at this magnificence.

"Do they eat in there too? Or do they use the diner?"

And on the fringe of the group, standing by herself, a girl in a small pull-on hat and a very short skirt, surveying the preparations for departure with a peculiar intensity. Kay knew her. It was the girl Tom had been with under the lamp post. That was the last thing she was to see as the car moved out, the picture she was to carry with her over all the long miles of that journey East. Clare, on the station platform, waiting for her to go.