There had been one little rift in the gray fog of her daily life, however.  And through it she had seen Edith well married, with perhaps a girl to do the house work, and a room where Edith’s mother could fold her hands and sit in the long silences without thought that were her sanctuary against life.

“Is that the place, mother?”

“Yes.”  Edith’s unwonted solicitude gave her courage.

“Edie, I want to ask you something.”

“Well?” But the girl stiffened.

“Lou hasn’t been round, lately.”

“That’s all over, mother.”

“You mean you’ve quarreled?  Oh, Edie, and me planning you’d have a nice home and everything.”

“He never meant to marry me, if that’s what you mean.”

Mrs. Boyd turned on her back impatiently.

“You could have had him.  He was crazy about you.  Trouble is with you, you think you’ve got a fellow hard and fast, and you begin acting up.  Then, first thing you know—­”

Some of that strange new tolerance persisted in the girl.  “Listen, mother,” she said.  “I give you my word, Lou’d run a mile if he thought any girl wanted to marry him.  I know him better than you do.  If any one ever does rope him in, he’ll stick about three months, and then beat it.”

“I don’t know why we have to have men, anyhow.  Put out the gas, Edie.  No, don’t open the window.  The night air makes me cough.”

Edith started downstairs and set to work in the kitchen.  Something would have to be done about the house.  Dan was taking to staying out at nights, because the untidy rooms repelled him.  And there was the question of food.  Her mother had never learned to cook, and recently more and more of the food had been something warmed out of a tin.  If only they could keep a girl, one who would scrub and wash dishes.  There was a room on the third floor, an attic, full now of her mother’s untidy harborings of years, that might be used for a servant.  Or she could move up there, and they could get a roomer.  The rent would pay a woman to come in now and then to clean up.

She had played with that thought before, and the roomer she had had in mind was Willy Cameron.  But the knowledge that he knew the Cardews had somehow changed all that.  She couldn’t picture him going from this sordid house to the Cardew mansion, and worse still, returning to it afterwards.  She saw him there, at the Cardews, surrounded by bowing flunkies—­a picture of wealth gained from the movies—­and by women who moved indolently, trailing through long vistas of ball room and conservatory in low gowns without sleeves, and draped with ropes of pearls.  Women who smoked cigarettes after dinner and played bridge for money.

She hated the Cardews.

On her way to her room she paused at her mother’s door.

“Asleep yet, mother?”

“No.  Feel like I’m not going to sleep at all.”