Edna stayed and dined with Mrs. Highcamp upon being urged to do so.
Arobin also remained and sent away his drag.
The dinner was quiet and uninteresting, save for the cheerful efforts
of Arobin to enliven things. Mrs. Highcamp deplored the absence of her
daughter from the races, and tried to convey to her what she had missed
by going to the "Dante reading" instead of joining them. The girl held
a geranium leaf up to her nose and said nothing, but looked knowing and
noncommittal. Mr. Highcamp was a plain, bald-headed man, who only
talked under compulsion. He was unresponsive. Mrs. Highcamp was full of
delicate courtesy and consideration toward her husband. She addressed
most of her conversation to him at table. They sat in the library after
dinner and read the evening papers together under the droplight; while
the younger people went into the drawing-room nearby and talked. Miss
Highcamp played some selections from Grieg upon the piano. She seemed to
have apprehended all of the composer's coldness and none of his poetry.
While Edna listened she could not help wondering if she had lost her
taste for music.
When the time came for her to go home, Mr. Highcamp grunted a lame offer
to escort her, looking down at his slippered feet with tactless concern.
It was Arobin who took her home. The car ride was long, and it was late
when they reached Esplanade Street. Arobin asked permission to enter for
a second to light his cigarette--his match safe was empty. He filled his
match safe, but did not light his cigarette until he left her, after she
had expressed her willingness to go to the races with him again.
Edna was neither tired nor sleepy. She was hungry again, for the
Highcamp dinner, though of excellent quality, had lacked abundance. She
rummaged in the larder and brought forth a slice of Gruyere and some
crackers. She opened a bottle of beer which she found in the icebox.
Edna felt extremely restless and excited. She vacantly hummed a
fantastic tune as she poked at the wood embers on the hearth and munched
a cracker.
She wanted something to happen--something, anything; she did not know
what. She regretted that she had not made Arobin stay a half hour to
talk over the horses with her. She counted the money she had won. But
there was nothing else to do, so she went to bed, and tossed there for
hours in a sort of monotonous agitation.
In the middle of the night she remembered that she had forgotten to
write her regular letter to her husband; and she decided to do so next
day and tell him about her afternoon at the Jockey Club. She lay wide
awake composing a letter which was nothing like the one which she wrote
next day. When the maid awoke her in the morning Edna was dreaming of
Mr. Highcamp playing the piano at the entrance of a music store on Canal
Street, while his wife was saying to Alcee Arobin, as they boarded an
Esplanade Street car: