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Still, what she had feared most had not come to pass. Lise left her abruptly, darting down a street that led to a back entrance of the Bagatelle, and Janet pursued her way. Where, she wondered, would it all end? Lise had escaped so far, but drunkenness was an ominous sign. And "gentlemen"? What kind of gentlemen had taken her sister to Gruber's?
Say, you ain't going to tell 'em at home?" she cried with a fresh access of alarm. "If you do as I say, I won't tell anybody," Janet replied, in that odd, impersonal tone her voice had acquired. "You must write me as soon as soon as it is over. Do you understand?" "Honest to God I will," Lise assured her. "And you mustn't come back to a house like this." "Where'll I go?" Lise asked.
When we were together; we were condemned to silence, or to conversations which, I am sure, might have been carried on by animals. "'What time is it? It is bed-time. What is there for dinner to-day? Where shall we go? What is there in the newspaper? The doctor must be sent for, Lise has a sore throat.
Ah, I don't want to be hungry in Paris." "We'll dine all the better when we get to my parents'," I replied. "Well, let's work just as though we are buying another cow," urged Mattia. This was very wise advice but I must admit that I did not sing with the same spirit. To get the money to buy a cow for Mother Barberin or a doll for Lise was quite a different matter.
Forgetting her repugnance to the bed, Janet sat down beside Lise and put an arm around her. "He said he'd marry me, he swore he was rich and he was a spender all right. And then some guy came up to me one night at Gruber's and told me he was married already." "What?" Janet exclaimed. "Sure! He's got a wife and two kids here in Boston. That was a twenty-one round knockout!
And what would become of her, Janet?... So she clung, desperately, to her sister's hand until at last Lise roused herself, her hair awry, her face puckered and wet with tears and perspiration. "I can't stand it any more I've just got to go away anywhere," she said, and the cry found an echo in Janet's heart.... But the next morning Lise went back to the Bagatelle, and Janet to the mill....
Of late, in contrast to a former communicativeness, Lise had been singularly secretive as to her companions, and the manner in which her evenings were spent; and she, Janet, had grown too self-absorbed to be curious.
"Lise?" Janet repeated. "Hasn't she been home?" "Your father and I have been alone all day long. Not that it is so uncommon for Lise to be gone. I wish it wasn't! But you! When you didn't come home for supper I was considerably worried." Janet sat down between her mother and father and began to draw off her gloves. "I'm going to marry Mr. Ditmar," she announced.
"Enough for the first time," said the lady. "A little more," said the artist, forgetting himself. "No, it is time to stop. Lise, three o'clock!" said the lady, taking out a tiny watch which hung by a gold chain from her girdle. "How late it is!" "Only a minute," said Tchartkoff innocently, with the pleading voice of a child.
Wisps of her scant, whitening hair escaped from the ridiculous, tightly drawn knot at the back of her head; in the light of the flickering gas-jet she looked so old and worn that a sudden pity smote Janet and made her dumb pity for her mother, pity for herself, pity for Lise; pity that lent a staggering insight into life itself.
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