Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/76

 why she would lie. Tell us—" And so they started at Ket again.

Dawn discovered them still at Ket—dawn, which dimmed the waning moon, which cast a creeping edge of shadow and light on the floor below Joan Daisy's window.

Her room was high in a city hotel; below it spread roofs and chimneys. Joan Daisy lay desperately counting chimneys and watching the waft of early morning smoke, rare and scattered at this sunrise, since it was Sunday.

She was in bed; for Mrs. Hoswick, who guarded her, had counseled bed and sleep.

Sleep! when the police and the State—most particularly and personally that man who had come in the name of the State, Mr. Clarke, with his cold, confident, eastern accent—were trying to take Ket's life.

She pressed at her breast to oppose the strange sensation of emptiness within her. They had scooped out her dream of Ket, of honor and fame for him, of worth and usefulness for herself. They had Ket in their power and they would kill him, if they could. "Ketlar, Frederic. Born in Chicago. . . . He early showed talent . . . the composition of mere catchy dance pieces until he met Joan Royle, who willed and inspired him to . . ."

Fragments of her dream, broken and wrenched away, seemed afloat above her. With the power of her fingers, pressing upon her breast, she would put them together within her again.

She turned on her side and set once more to counting chimneys. The sun was up and sent long, slanting shafts over the roofs.

Calvin's host and classmate, Arthur Todd, stirred at the strike of the sun into his room in his Winnetka home