This particular one started with a pain in her side. An annoying
neuralgic one, against which she usually carried tablets in a beautiful
gold-and-enamel snuff-box (Napoleona) which she had begged from
Rarick’s collection.
Rarick, who had slept no better and no worse than usual, and whose
night had been a procession of projects for the Rarick Building,
dropped into one of his brief deep slumbers just as Jenny beside him
flew awake, her lids popping back suddenly.
The flooding memory of the night before, when she had dared, because
the chauffeur was new, to drive home from the opera with Ramon by
way of three circumferences of the Park, came sparkling over her in
goose-flesh.
It made her shudder. It made her lift eyes that were still brilliant
from the night before, up to the sound-eating radiations of shirred
brocade that hung in a canopy over the bed and then dropped in more
sound-eating drapes between her and the vista of six full-length
windows that looked out on Fifth Avenue.
There was a small blue-enamel French telephone, a blue-enamel thermos
carafe, a blue-enamel engagement-pad, and the blue-enamel box of
tablets on the night table beside her. One of these tablets she
presently swallowed.
This habit of her early awaking was still abominable to her. Precious
hours of needed rest, even when they were filled with contemplations
that were sweet to her, were wasted lying in bed thus, waiting for her
day to begin.
How he slept! Deep in the cave of his pillow, with his face upward.
“Little man, you! What do you know of me--here--lying by your
side--sharing your bed? Nothing!”
A fear smote her. What if he knew more than she realized! That was
absurd. He was not astute.
How strange, after all these years of the disillusionment of a
love-life that had spluttered out like a feeble match, that a Ramon
should find her desirable. It made her lie slim and straight in bed,
with arms folded across her breast in the beatific attitude of feeling
herself desirable.
The aspirin made one pleasantly at ease.