Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/332

 a way of coming within him; and this projected before Charles Hale an image of his mother knowing what he recently had been doing. How she would pray and pray for him.

He sat up in bed and stared out his window. Sunday, and Sybil wanted him to spend such days as Sunday with her; she wanted themselves alone, far away out in the country, a long, peaceful, happy day. He swore at the thought of it. Sunday; he dropped back on his pillow and again closed his eyes. Sunday now in that little flat where Marjorie was born; he could not afford à servant, so Sunday was a day he helped about the apartment and played with the baby; hmm, how he could hear her, almost feel her, warm and quick—he always was proud of the quickness of her and her laugh and her straight look into his eyes. Hmm; he opened his eyes to stop seeing that. Sunday; now he was in a little clapboard house in Irving Park where he used to cut the lawn and do odd jobs about the place; now in Evanston on Sunday, where he began lying in bed longer and there came Marjorie's little, quick rap at his door. "Hello, Margy; come in!" Her little cry in response and her rush to have her arms about him and her kiss, "Oh, father, you're so fine!" And she thought that about him, felt that down to the night he went away and she came and found him at that flat.

Well, this Sunday here he was in his club and Marjorie was up there on Clearedge Street—a right enough street, as he had said to Billy. Because it was generally decent, Sybil and he had chosen it for their flat and somebody else, who also passed as a husband, had chosen it for his home with that girl who had taken poison. Hale had her street number, having traced it through the newspaper mention of the poison case; con-