When he failed to return for supper, other possible explanations crept quietly into the corners of her imagination, but none of them were ugly enough to subdue her own high spirits. She served Clinton a simple meal in the kitchen—the real gorging did not begin, traditionally, until Christmas itself—but her own appetite was small. A taste of soup and half a slice of bread was all she could manage.

When dishes were out of the way, Annabel took a long hot bath. Then, as if she were dressing for a lover, she spent forty minutes applying make-up and removing curlers from her hair. She put on a new dress, a dark blue one with a full skirt that rustled when she moved; matching earrings and necklace, set with false sapphires; and her high-heeled shoes.

It was not until she made her appearance in the living room and, with an elaborate crinkling and whooshing of her skirts, arranged herself on a pouf at the foot of the Christmas tree, that she admitted to herself the existence of some doubt as to Berry-berry’s returning for the holiday. If she had thought by her elaborate preparations to exclude from her mind this painful possibility, Annabel’s error was great. But if her private wish had been to set up a vivid backdrop against which to play her Christmas Eve drama of the mother who sits in her chair, waiting, candle in the window, for the return of the prodigal who never arrives, then her labors had not gone unrewarded. For the garish carnival trappings of the holiday seemed only to call attention to the emptiness of all of his places in the house. Who can say for sure which of these ends she had envisioned? perhaps both. For a woman’s heart is known to be a battleground of conflicting sentiments, and her deepest wishes are often a mystery even to herself.

At any rate, Annabel wept inconsolably. When Clinton entered the living room he found her in the last stages of her sorrow, blowing her nose. She smiled brightly: “Merry Christmas, precious.”

Clinton sensed something of insincerity in both her gaiety and her tears. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“Oh, it’s just I’m so happy. Mothers are crazy creatures, you know that. —Isn’t the tree perfect? It’s beautifully shaped. We always have such well-shaped trees, I lose my mind deciding which part to face to the wall. And my favorite ornament is still that lovely angel. What time is it?”

“Ten o’clock.”

“Oh, just ten o’clock? That’s the shank of the evening. Now, which is your favorite?”

“Favorite what?”

“Ornament.”

“I guess the angel,” Clinton said, without considering the matter at all. Then he glanced at the top of the tree: a haggard old doll with misshapen wings perched there in the branches, smiling benignly upon the room. It was like the image of a dilapidated chorus girl who had gone mad and fled to the top of the tree to escape her keepers.

Clinton handed his mother a small package. “Here. Merry Christmas.”