The next morning Hester carried about what she called “a head,” and, since it was Wheeler’s day at Rosencranz, remained in bed until three o’clock, Kitty curled at the foot of it the greater part of the forenoon.

“It was the rotten night did me up.  Dreams!  Ugh! dreams!”

“No wonder,” diagnosed Kitty, sweetly.  “Indigestion from having your cake and eating it.”

At three she dressed and called for her car, driving down to the Ivy Funeral Rooms, a Gothic Thanatopsis, set, with one of those laughs up her sleeves in which the vertical city so loves to indulge, right in the heart of the town, between an automobile-accessory shop and a quick-lunch room.  Gerald had been buried from there with simple flag-draped service in the Gothic chapel that was protected from the view and roar of the Elevated trains by suitably stained windows.  There was a check in Hester’s purse made out for an amount that corresponded to the statement she had received from the Ivy Funeral Rooms.  And right here again, for the sake of your elucidation, I could wish at least for the neurologist’s chart.  At the very door to the establishment—­with one foot across the threshold, in fact—­she paused, her face tilted toward the corner where wall and ceiling met, and at whatever she saw there her eyes dilated widely and her left hand sprang to her bosom as if against the incision of quick steel.  Then, without even entering, she rushed back to her car again, urging her chauffeur, at the risk of every speed regulation, homeward.

That was the beginning of purgatorial weeks that were soon to tell on Hester.  They actually brought out a streak of gray through her hair, which Lottie promptly dyed and worked under into the lower part of her coiffure.  For herself, Hester would have let it remain.

Wheeler was frankly perplexed.  God knows it was bad enough to be called upon to endure streaks of unreasonableness at Rosencranz, but Hester wasn’t there to show that side to him if she had it.  To be pretty frank about it, she was well paid not to.  Well paid!  He’d done his part.  More than nine out of ten would have done.  Been made a jay of, if the truth was known.  She was a Christmas-tree bauble and was expected to throw off holiday iridescence.  There were limits!

“You’re off your feed, girl.  Go off by yourself and speed up.”

“It’s the nights, Gerald.  Good God—­I mean Wheeler!  They kill me.  I can’t sleep.  Can’t you get a doctor who will give me stronger drops?  He doesn’t know my case.  Nerves, he calls it.  It’s this head.  If only I could get rid of this head!”

“You women and your nerves and your heads!  Are you all alike?  Get out and get some exercise.  Keep down your gasoline bills and it will send your spirits up.  There’s such a thing as having it too good.”

She tried to meet him in lighter vein after that, dressing her most bizarrely, and greeting him one night in a batik gown, a new process of dyeing that could be flamboyant and narrative in design.  This one, a long, sinuous robe that enveloped her slimness like a flame, beginning down around the train in a sullen smoke and rushing up to her face in a burst of crimson.