Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/217

 and showered her slim, white body with cold water. She switched off the living-room light and, clad in pajamas, she swung wide the window, welcoming the stinging cold of the dry, January night.

Snow lay upon the stone sill and clung to the copings; a white sheen shrouded the sod of the court, glittering where it caught the glint of the street lamps and over all spread the magic, silver refulgence of the midwinter moon.

The air had a metallic tang; and underfoot, or rather underwheel, where the dry snow was pressed beneath the tires of a truck, was a creaking cold. People passed briskly upon the walk with breath like smoke and their voices floated up, articulate and amazingly distinct.

"Come in and get warm," a man invited a girl to his room.

"No; I gotta go home," objected the girl.

"Come in; you can say you was at a show," commanded the man; and Joan Daisy bent forward and saw him escorting her into the first entry.

It reminded Joan Daisy of Ket and herself, of Ket and of other girls similarly led up to the room below hers. Many a one of them, she knew, had not run out when Ket sat on the couch beside her. Joan Daisy drew back; she stretched up to tiptoe, turned and ran on light tiptoe to bed, slipped under the soft covers and lay, shivering slightly.

Sleep, Max Elmen had commanded; and she shut her eyes, but her mind visited in the empty room below and ran the rounds of the walls covered with women's pictures; and she thought of Ket in his cell in jail, where he had lain every night for three months.

She opened her eyes and turned over.

A taxi, with clinking chains, halted and the driver said with deference, "a dollar ten, sir."