She slipped it out and looked at it, then she slid it under her flank and lay motionless, her legs straight, her hands behind her head, her eyes focussing into black pinheads at every sound on the stairs.
At nine she rose.
She picked up the pistol again; after a moment she thrust it beneath the mattress and undressed and in a spurious Chinese robe splotched with gold dragons and jade and scarlet flowers she left the room.
When she returned her hair curled damply about her face.
She went to the washstand and took up the tumbler, holding it in her hands, but she set it down again.
She dressed, retrieving the bottles and jars from the corner.
Her motions before the glass were furious yet painstaking.
She went to the washstand and took up the glass, but again she paused and went to the corner and got her coat and put it on and put the platinum bag in the pocket and leaned once more to the mirror.
Then she went and took up the glass and gulped the gin and left the room, walking swiftly.
A single light burned in the hall.
It was empty.
She could hear voices in Miss Reba’s room, but the lower hall was deserted.
She descended swiftly and silently and gained the door.
She believed that it would be at the door that they would stop her and she thought of the pistol with acute regret, almost pausing, knowing that she would use it without any compunction whatever, with a kind of pleasure.
She sprang to the door and pawed at the bolt, her head turned over her shoulder.
It opened.
She sprang out and out the lattice door and ran down the walk and out the gate.
As she did so a car, moving slowly along the curb, stopped opposite her.
Popeye sat at the wheel.
Without any apparent movement from him the door swung open.
He made no movement, spoke no word.
He just sat there, the straw hat slanted a little aside.
“I wont!” Temple said.
“I wont!”
He made no movement, no sound.
She came to the car.
“I wont, I tell you!”
Then she cried wildly: “You’re scared of him!
You’re scared to!”
“I’m giving him his chance,” he said.
“Will you go back in that house, or will you get in this car?”
“You’re scared to!”
“I’m giving him his chance,” he said, in his cold soft voice.
“Come on.
Make up your mind.”
She leaned forward, putting her hand on his arm.
“Popeye,” she said; “daddy.”
His arm felt frail, no larger than a child’s, dead and hard and light as a stick.
“I dont care which you do,” he said.
“But do it.
Come on.”
She leaned toward him, her hand on his arm.
Then she got into the car.
“You wont do it.
You’re afraid to.
He’s a better man than you are.”
He reached across and shut the door.
“Where?” he said.
“Grotto?”
“He’s a better man than you are!” Temple said shrilly.