Page:To-morrow Morning (1927).pdf/169



VELYN opened her eyes and saw her dress lying on the floor, a pool of moonlit water, saw kicked off silver slippers, spilled powder on the dressing table, Ralph's gardenias broken and brown in a toothbrush glass. Happy, happy! Had it really happened? What proved it? Nothing but this singing surge within, this fizzing, bubbling

She couldn't stay in bed, though it was only half past eight. The shades were still down in the living room. Spilled ashes, last night's paper, crushed sofa pillows. They had taken the awful little furnished apartment because it was cheap and the address was good. She shapped up the shades, letting in pale March sunlight on the gas log framed in mustard-colored tiles, with its fire screen of imitation tapestry—an Italian peasant girl with a basket of grapes—the chairs, so large, so uncomfortable, long in the wrong places, sloping just too much, the ceiling light in its ground-glass wash basin. But they never lit that; they had made a lamp from a big creamy jar, shaded in pink; they had put around photographs, signed dashingly in blackest ink, "Tout à vous, de Casserelli," or, "Toujours, ta Berthe," and had replaced the "Lady with the Fan" in sepia by the painting of Mrs.