in; Jay would call to him and leap up with arms out. When he had had to go to bed, before his father was back from the office, he used to try to keep awake (and often succeeded) so as to have his arms about his father's neck, his kiss on his father's cheek. How had so much dropped away? And who had been to blame? Indeed, when had it happened? Gradually, too gradually for Jay to assign so much as a time to it; too gradually, indeed, for him to have realized, at the time, what was going on.
Never had he felt the force of it so much, when his father had been holding the whip over him; but to-night, he—Lida and he—held a certain power over his father; and he did not want it used.
"Lida," he said—he had closed the door—"father means to go for us."
"Have you a drink here, Jay?" she asked.
"Not here," said Jay. "I made an agreement with him not to bring it into the house—outside me."
"Then give me a cigarette, Jay, and kiss me."
He kissed her, quivering under his hands at her shoulder blades; he kissed her again; and he lit her cigarette.
"You can make him, Lida, a lot of trouble."
"Make it for you, too!"
"Yes," said Jay, "of course for me."
"I don't want to. Damn it, Jay, I'd stick it and grin in that opera box every night of the week for you, if I could."
"Lida!"
She thrust back his arms. "No; listen to me. You love this room, don't you?"
"It's been mine; that's all," said Jay.
