He took off his hat and overcoat and threw them across a wooden bed.
Then he sat down tensely in a rocker and leaned forward, holding his trembling fingers to the heat.
There was no light save that of the coals; but, by their dim steady glow, he could make out the old and ugly wall-paper, stained with long streaks of water rust, and scaling, in dry tattered scrolls, here and there.
He sat quietly, bent forward, but he shook violently, as with an ague, from time to time.
Why am I here?
This is not I, he thought.
Presently he heard the woman’s slow heavy tread upon the stairs: she entered in a swimming tide of light, bearing a lamp before her.
She put the lamp down on a table and turned the wick.
He could see her now more plainly.
Lily was a middle-aged country woman, with a broad heavy figure, unhealthily soft.
Her smooth peasant face was mapped with fine little traceries of wrinkles at the corners of mouth and eyes, as if she had worked much in the sun.
She had black hair, coarse and abundant.
She was whitely plastered with talcum powder.
She was dressed shapelessly in a fresh loose dress of gingham, unbelted. She was dressed like a housewife, but she conceded to her profession stockings of red silk, and slippers of red felt, trimmed with fur, in which she walked with a flat-footed tread.
The woman fastened the door, and returned to the hearth where the boy was now standing.
He embraced her with feverish desire, fondling her with his long nervous hands.
Indecisively, he sat in the rocker and drew her down clumsily on his knee.
She yielded her kisses with the coy and frigid modesty of the provincial harlot, turning her mouth away.
She shivered as his cold hands touched her.
“You’re cold as ice, son,” she said.
“What’s the matter?”
She chafed him with rough embarrassed professionalism.
In a moment she rose impatiently.
“Let’s git started,” she said. “Where’s my money?”
He thrust two crumpled bills into her hand.
Then he lay down beside her.
He trembled, unnerved and impotent.
Passion was extinct in him.
The massed coals caved in the hearth.
The lost bright wonder died.
When he went down stairs, he found Jim Trivett waiting in the hall, holding Thelma by the hand.
Lily led them out quietly, after peering through the lattice into the fog, and listening for a moment.
“Be quiet,” she whispered, “there’s a man across the street.
They’ve been watching us lately.”
“Come again, Slats,” Thelma murmured, pressing his hand.
They went out softly, treading gently until they reached the road.
The fog had thickened: the air was saturated with fine stinging moisture.
At the corner, in the glare of the street-lamp, Jim Trivett released his breath with loud relief, and stepped forward boldly.
“Damn!” he said.
“I thought you were never coming.
What were you trying to do with the woman, Legs?”
Then, noting the boy’s face, he added quickly, with warm concern: “What’s the matter, ‘Gene?
Don’t you feel good?”
“Wait a minute!” said Eugene thickly.
“Be all right!”
He went to the curb, and vomited into the gutter.
Then he straightened, mopping his mouth with a handkerchief.
“How do you feel?” asked Jim Trivett.
“Better?”
“Yes,” said Eugene,