Shame! Shame!"
"Louis!" she said, "Louis!" wringing her hands in a dry wash of agony,
"can't you understand? She'd rather have me. It makes her nervous trying
to pretend to you that she's not suffering when she is. That's
all, Louis. You see, she's not ashamed to suffer before me. Why,
Louis--that's all! Why should I want to come between you and her? Isn't
she dearer to me than anything in the world, and haven't you been the
best friend to me a girl could have? That's all--Louis."
He was placated and a little sorry and did not insist further upon going
into the room.
"Funny," he said. "Funny," and, adjusting his spectacles, snapped open
his newspaper for a lonely evening.
The one thing that perturbed Alma almost more than anything else, as the
dreaded cravings grew, with each siege her mother becoming more brutish
and more given to profanity, was where she obtained the soluble tablets.
The well-thumbed old doctor's prescription she had purloined even back
in the hotel days, and embargo and legislation were daily making more
and more furtive and prohibitive the traffic in drugs.
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