“Hester,” he said, suddenly, and a little weakly, “lean down, sweetheart, and kiss me—­long—­long—­”

She did, and it was with the pressure of her lips to his that he died.

* * * * *

It was about a week after the funeral that Wheeler came back.  She was on the chaise-longue that had been dragged out into the parlor, in the webbiest of white negligees, a little large-eyed, a little subdued, but sweetening the smile she turned toward him by a trick she had of lifting the brows.

“Hel-lo, Wheeler!” she said, raising her cheek to be kissed.

He trailed his lips, but did not seek her mouth, sitting down rather awkwardly and in the spread-kneed fashion he had.

“Well, girl—­you all right?”

“You helped,” she said.

“It gave me a jolt, too.  I made over twenty-five thousand to the Red Cross on the strength of it.”

“Thank you, Wheeler.”

“Lord!” he said, rising and rubbing his hands together.  “Give us a couple of fingers to drink, honey; I’m cotton-mouthed.”

She reached languidly for a blue-enameled bell, lying back, with her arms dangling and her smile out.  Then, as if realizing that the occasion must be lifted, turned her face to him.

“Old bummer!” she said, using one of her terms of endearment for him and two-thirds closing her eyes.  Then did he stoop and kiss her roundly on the lips.

* * * * *

For the remainder of this tale, I could wish for a pen supernally dipped, or for a metaphysician’s plating to my vernacular, or for the linguistic patois of that land off somewhere to the west of Life.  Or maybe just a neurologist’s chart of Hester’s nerve history would help.

In any event, after an evening of musical comedy and of gelatinous dancing, Hester awoke at four o’clock the next morning out of an hour of sound sleep, leaping to her knees there in bed like a quick flame, her gesture shooting straight up toward the jointure of wall and ceiling.

“Gerald!” she called, her smoky black hair floating around her and her arms cutting through the room’s blackness.  “Gerald!” Suddenly the room was not black.  It was light with the Scandinavian blondness of Gerald, the head of him nebulous there above the pink-satin canopy of her dressing table, and, more than that, the drained lakes of his sockets were deep with eyes.  Yes, in all their amazing blueness, but queerly sharpened to steel points that went through Hester and through her as if bayonets were pushing into her breasts and her breathing.

“Gerald!” she shrieked, in one more cry that curdled the quiet, and sat up in bed, trembling and hugging herself, and breathing in until her lips were drawn shudderingly against her teeth like wind-sucked window shades.

“Gerald!” And then the picture did a sort of moving-picture fade-out, and black Lottie came running with her hair grotesquely greased and flattened to take out the kink, and gave her a drink of water with the addition of two drops from a bottle, and turned on the night light and went back to bed.