Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/119

Rh She didn't look pale and tired and wistful, the way most mothers of young babies looked, and go home early. "See," her bright cheeks announced, her ecstatic manner proclaimed, "it hasn't made any difference. I can dance just as well, I can flirt just as well!" She and her partner had been one of the half-dozen couples still dancing on the ballroom floor to the music of a solitary piano at 3 A.M., when the janitor began turning off the lights. Stephen, waiting patiently below, outside the ladles' dressing-room, had been the parent who was wondering—and wondering bitterly too—if the baby had slept through.

Stella returned to the arena of her ambitions with a determination to make up for lost time as quickly and as emphatically as possible. And Stephen returned to the valley of shame and humiliation. During this period the cloak he wore to cover the shivering nakedness of his mortification concealed at the same time much of his natural camaraderie. It was impossible for him to participate in mild hilarities of whatever kind, in Milhampton, under the constant ban of his relationship to one whose hilarity was so often overdone. He became extremely subdued in manner, reserved, short of speech, disinclined to respond to friendly approaches. Some people in Milhampton called him glum and ill-humored.

Outside Milhampton, however, there was nothing glum and ill-humored about Stephen Dallas. In another city he met amiability more than half way. His old charm, of which he possessed no small amount, returned to him shining and bright the minute that he escaped his relationship to Stella. He