THE AMATEUR LOVER
until she had reached the street floor. Then, drop ping down weak-kneed upon the last step, she sat staring out into the dingy patch of snow that flared now and then through the swinging doorway. Somewhere out in that vista Aleck Reese was wait ing and watching for her. Two or three of her hus band's business acquaintances paused and accosted her. "Anything the matter?" they probed.
"Oh, no," she answered brightly. "I'm just thinking."
After a while she jumped up abruptly and stole back through a box-cluttered hall to the rear door of the building, and slid out unnoticed into a side street, gathering her great fur coat Drew's latest gift closer and closer around her shivering body. The day was gray and bleak and scarily incomplete, like the work of some amateur creator who had slipped up on the one essential secret of how to make the sun shine. The jingliest sound of sleigh- bells, the reddest flare of holiday shop windows, could not cheer her thoughts away from the sting ing, shuddering memory of Drew's crumpled shoul ders, the gasping catch of his breath, the strange new flicker of gray at his temples. Over and over to herself she kept repeating dully : "I've hurt Drew just the way that Aleck hurt me. It must n't be. It must n't be it must n't! There's got to
be some way out!"
238
