Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/287

Rh if she wasn't attractive to him any more? She was a whole year older, and a whole year after you're forty—well!

He'd find her alimony attractive, anyway, she guessed. Ed hadn't been very successful in his various business ventures. But say—look here, there wouldn't be any alimony, would there, if she married again? Hadn't there been some such clause? She had never given it much thought because she had been so dead sure she never was going to marry again. Gracious, she hadn't thought of that. Well, never mind, she could contribute something in the way of funds. She had a savings-bank account amounting to over a thousand dollars. That wasn't to be sneezed at. Last time she had seen Ed, it looked to her as if he hadn't a bank-account amounting to anything.

"I'm sort of out of luck this year," he'd told her apologetically. (The lining of his overcoat had been frayed and ragged round the cuffs. He had caught her looking at it.) "But I can still give you a good time, little girl, just the same. See?" He had opened his overcoat. She had caught a glimpse of a bottle shining. He had patted it tenderly. "More where this comes from, too," he had winked, "but say, it's awful expensive stuff now. Awful! Dearer 'n a woman! Prohibition has played the devil and all with my capital, Stella." No. Ed might not scorn her little nest-egg.

She became more and more convinced he might not as she approached the vicinity of the address on the card. She had never been down this way before. Why, it was slums—regular slums! North