The least excitement will only prolong her pain."
He trotted off, then, down the hotel corridor, with a strut to his
resentment that was bantam and just a little fighty.
That night as Alma lay beside her mother, holding off sleep and
watching, Carrie rolled her eyes side-wise with the plea of a stricken
dog in them.
"Alma," she whispered, "for God's sake! Just this once. To tide me over.
One shot--darling. Alma, if you love me?"
Later there was a struggle between them that hardly bears relating. A
lamp was overturned. But toward morning, when Carrie lay exhausted, but
at rest in her daughter's arms, she kept muttering in her sleep:
"Thank you, baby. You saved me. Never leave me, Alma.
Never--never--never. You saved me, Alma."
And then the miracle of those next months. The return to New York. The
happily busy weeks of furnishing and the unlimited gratifications of the
well-filled purse. The selection of the limousine with the special body
that was fearfully and wonderfully made in mulberry upholstery with
mother-of-pearl caparisons.
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