She stood just inside the doorway, wearing a dark velvet house coat—how well I remember it!—and if ever I saw a devil in a woman I saw it then.

“Another thing,” she said. “I’m not divorcing Tony, and he’s not divorcing me. He won’t even try, Pat Abbott. Wait and see!”

“I’m not interested,” I said, and she laughed and went out.

I don’t know whether she told Tony or not. I know I never did. The whole thing was too degrading. But I dare say he knew as well as I did that things could not go on as they were.

“Stay on for a few days anyhow,” he said, looking wretched when I told him I was going. “Sleep at Miss Mattie’s if you like, but—well, finish up here if you can bear it. You needn’t see Bessie. I’ll attend to that. And she’ll be gone before long,” he added grimly. “I’ll attend to that too.”

I thought it over that night, sleeping at Miss Mattie’s for the first time in almost seven months. Whatever club Bessie held over his head, he certainly did not know it then.

I slept better than I had for a long time. It was as though I had passed through a reign of terror and it was over. The great quiet house, with O’Brien making his rounds after dark, a flashlight in his hand and his automatic in a holster on his belt, had been a constant reminder of what had happened. Yet I missed O’Brien. His passages with Pierre had been one of my few amusements. He would stand by the huge refrigerator, eyeing its contents.

“Yes, Frenchie! How about that cold lobster?”

“It is for lunch tomorrow. Salad.”

“I’ll bet you’ve got some Scotch in you, and I don’t mean liquor.”

He had a quick reach. Once I saw Pierre chase him into the dining room, O’Brien holding to a whole roasted chicken while Pierre brandished a knife. “I cut off your ears,” Pierre was yelling. “I cut out that stomach of yours. You are all stomach. Never have I seen one like you. C’est terrible!”

Nevertheless, they were good friends. On the night when O’Brien was shot it was Pierre who went with him to the hospital. Pierre, too, who saw as he recovered that he had the squabs, the sweetbreads, and so on, bought with French thrift out of the Cloisters house money but cooked by himself.

“Guess what I bring today.”

“I’ll bet it’s canned salmon. Why don’t you loosen up, you old buzzard?”

And Pierre, grinning proudly, would open his box.

“It is breast of guinea hen, my boy.”

“Those birds that need oiling? What are you doing? Playing a joke on me?”

Yes, I missed even O’Brien, lying in my familiar bed that night. But I was more calm than I had been since Bessie’s attack on me. For one thing, Miss Mattie’s pleasure at having me back had soothed me. While I unpacked she gave me the small talk of the town. Audrey and Larry Hamilton were supposed to be engaged. The Theodore Earles had taken a house at Miami for the rest of the winter. Old Joe Berry had gone to Arizona. All harmless, all part of an ordered suburban life.