Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/16

 Most of its windows were dark, but as she approached a light went on within a room on the first floor. The blind was up and Joan Daisy looked in and saw a man and girl standing close together in the room.

The man stepped to the window and drew down the blind and Joan Daisy recognized him as Fred Ketlar. She halted, staring up at the window.

She had recognized the girl, who was Adele, his wife. This was Adele's apartment; and Joan Daisy told herself that she ought to be glad that he was with his wife; but she moved away without any gladness and went to the street, down which she had drawn the moon, without even a glance at the moon.

When she reached the big building in which she lived, she entered the court and was going to the second door when a young man stepped from a shadow and eagerly hailed her, "Jo!"

"Why, Ket!" she cried and started back, with her heart racing.

"Look here! Where you been?" he demanded, seizing her arm with his strong, impulsive fingers.

"Why, Ket!" she cried again in her excitement from her belief that she had seen him, only a minute or two ago, in his wife's apartment near the lake. Jo was trying to reckon how he could have run here ahead of her, without having passed her on the street; and she reckoned that he could not have done it and consequently that it could not have been he whom she had seen with Adele.

"You been down to the lake," Ket accused her, jealously. "Who was you down there with?"

"Nobody, Ket."

"Then what was you doing down there?"

"What's it to you?" she retorted with too much heat, and she shook off his grasp.