Afterward, just for a moment or two, she would linger under the gas jet, her face still smiling, for a last look.

A last good-night.

Then darkness.
Darkness settling over her spirit, together with loneliness and fatigue.
She would go into Betsy's room and throw herself dressed on her daughter's bed, and a dull complete indifference to everything under the moon and the stars would creep from her body up into her mind.

At times she would try to fight it off.

To-night at dinner she must not be what she knew she had been the night before, a wet blanket upon all the talk.