Outside they found a taxi, and sped back to their hotel. Above, Mrs.
Condon removed her hat; and, before the uncompromising mirror,
studied her wrecked hair--a frizzled vacancy was directly over her
left brow--and haggard face. When she finally turned to Linda, her
manner, her words, were solemn.

"I'm middle-aged," she said.

A dreary silence enveloped them sitting in the dark reception-room
while Mrs. Condon restlessly shredded unlighted cigarettes on the
floor. She had made no effort to repair the damages to her appearance,
and when the telephone bell sharply sounded, she reached out in a
slovenly negligence of manner. Linda could hear a blurred articulation
and her mother answering listlessly. The latter at last said: "Very
well, at seven then; you'll stop for us." She hung up the receiver,
stared blankly at Linda, and then went off into a harsh mirth. "Oh,
my God!" she cried; "the old ladies' home!"




XI


With her mother away on a wedding-trip with Mr. Moses Feldt, Linda
was suddenly projected into the companionship of his two daughters.
One, as he had said, was light, but a different fairness from Mrs.
Condon's--richly thick, like honey; while Judith, the elder, who
must have been twenty, was dark in skin, in everything but her eyes,
which were a contrasting ashen-violet. She spoke at once of Linda's