A cold tear oozed through one of Miss Munroe’s closed eyes, zigzagged down her face, and she laid her cheek pat against the white wool.

“Muvver just wishes she was dead, Snookie.  God! don’t she just!”

An hour she lay so.  The morning sunshine receded, leaving a certain grayness in the cluttered room.  From the rear of the flat came the clatter of dishes and the harsh sing of water plunging from a faucet.  The book slid from its incline on the pillow to the floor and lay with its leaves crumpled under.  The dog fell to snoring.  Another while ticked past—­loudly.  And as if the ticking were against her brain like drops of water, she rose to a half-sitting posture, reached for the small onyx clock on the mantelpiece and smothered it beneath one of the red sateen sofa-pillows.  When she relaxed again two fresh tears waggled heavily down her cream-colored cheeks.  Then for a while she slept, with her mouth ever so slightly open and revealing the white line of her teeth.  The tears slid off her cheeks to the mussed frills of her negligee and dried there.

The little dog emerged from his sleep gaping and stretching backward his hind legs.  Mae Munroe yawned, extending her arms at full length before her; regarded her fair ringed fingers and the four dimples across the back of each hand; reached for a cigarette and with the wry face of nausea tossed it back into its box; swung to a sitting posture on the side of the sofa, the dog springing from the curve of her arm to the floor, shaking himself.

Her blowsy hair, burned at the ends but the color of corn-silk, came unloosed of its morning plait and she braided it over one shoulder, her blue eyes fixed on space.  Tears would come.

Then she rose and crossed to the golden-oak piano between the windows, her negligee open its full length and revealing her nightdress; crossed with a slight limp and the dog yapping at the soiled and lacy train; fell to manipulating the self-playing attachment, peddling out a metallic avalanche of popular music.

At its conclusion she swung around on the bench, her back drooping as if under pressure of indolence; yawned; crossed to the window and between the parted lace curtains stood regarding the street two stories beneath, and, beyond the patches of intervening roofs, a limited view of the Hudson River, a barge of coal passing leisurely up center stream, a tug suckling at its side.

From the hallway and in the act of mopping a margin of floor, a maid-of-all-work swung back from all-fours and sat upright on her heels, inserting a head of curl-papers through the open doorway.

“Play that over again, Miss Mae.  That Mustard Glide’ sure does tickle my soles.”

Miss Munroe turned to the room with the palm of her hand placed pat against her brow.  “God!” said she, “my head!”

“Aw, Miss Mae, can’t you get yourself in a humor?  What’s the matter with you and me going to a movie this afternoon, eh?”