None the less, it was with some misgivings and red lights burning high
on her cheek bones that Mrs. Samstag at just after ten that evening
turned the knob of the door that entered into her little sitting room.

The usual horrific hotel room of tight green-plush upholstery,
ornamental portières on brass rings that grated, and the equidistant
French engravings of lavish scrollwork and scroll frames.

But in this case a room redeemed by an upright piano with a
green-silk-and-gold-lace-shaded floor lamp glowing by. Two gilt-framed
photographs and a cluster of ivory knickknacks on the white mantel.
A heap of handmade cushions. Art editions of the gift poets and some
circulating-library novels. A fireside chair, privately owned and drawn
up, ironically enough, beside the gilded radiator, its headrest worn
from kindly service to Mrs. Samstag's neuralgic brow.

From the nest of cushions in the circle of lamp glow Alma sprang up at
her mother's entrance. Sure enough, she had been reading, and her cheek
was a little flushed and crumpled from where it had been resting in the
palm of her hand.

"Mamma," she said, coming out of the circle of light and switching on
the ceiling bulbs, "you stayed down so late."

There was a slow prettiness to Alma. It came upon you like a little
dawn, palely at first and then pinkening to a pleasant consciousness
that her small face was heart-shaped and clear as an almond, that the
pupils of her gray eyes were deep and dark, like cisterns, and to young
Leo Friedlander (rather apt the comparison, too) her mouth was exactly
the shape of a small bow that had shot its quiverful of arrows into his