About noon she exclaimed, “Say, it looks lighter! Say, don’t it look lighter to you?” Then, “It is letting up. It looks to me as though it was letting up a little.” And finally, “Gosh, it’s going to clear off!” And it did!

At five o’clock that afternoon, when Stella, with a hundred or so other women, emerged from the big black building through the little opening at the bottom (like the opening cut at the bottom of a big black hogshead; every little while a thin dark stream of humanity would pour out of the building; it housed over a hundred small factories), the air was clear and crisp and cold. Stella stepped out of the little stream, once on the sidewalk, stood still, and gazed straight up. Yes! It was all right! The stars were shining like mad, up there, at the top of the canyon, beyond the dizzy precipices.

Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

1

THIS WAS STELLA’S fifth week at the shirt-waist factory. She must be getting used to it, she guessed. She didn’t feel a bit tired tonight. If it wasn’t so late, she wouldn’t have minded walking the whole way. Laurel would be all dressed now. People would be just beginning to arrive. Gracious, she must hustle. But she’d simply got to go over to the room a jiffy first. It wouldn’t take long. She had locked the door on Ed, but she always got feeling nervous after a whole day’s absence during the times he was bad.

Stella was pretty sure that this landlady guessed what was the matter with Ed, but she could never feel certain how many of the roomers were “on.” There are roomers who find it helps to pass away the time to make a fuss over a thing in the house like Ed. Stella didn’t want to have to make a move again. This landlady had been awfully decent about the rent since she had got a job. Gracious, but it hadn’t taken that thousand dollars long to fade away. It cost something to keep yourself and a sick man—who has to have a “particular kind of medicine”—going these days, though you didn’t buy yourself a single rag, nor spend a cent on theaters, or the movies, or desserts.

Everything was all right at the room, thank heaven! Stella stopped only long enough to light the candle placed upon a chair by the door, hold it aloft a moment, and gaze down upon the double bed. Ed was still there, still harmless, breathing heavily, inert and unconscious.