"Indeed you will do no such thing," I spoke playfully to hide my real indignation at the man. "Dicky is the only accredited waiter around this house."
"Card from the waiters' union right in my pocket," Dicky grinned, and stretched lazily as he followed me to the kitchen.
We served the coffee, and Lillian and her husband went home. As the door closed behind them Dicky came over to me and took me in his arms.
"Pretty exciting evening, wasn't it, sweetheart?" he said. "I'm afraid you are all done out."
He drew me to our chair and we sat down together. I found myself crying, something I almost never do. Dicky smoothed my hair tenderly, silently, until I wiped my eyes. Then his clasp tightened around me.
"Tonight has taught me a lesson," he said. "Sometimes I have dreamed of a little child of our own, Madge. But I would rather never have a child than go through the suffering those poor devils had tonight. It must be awful to lose a baby."
I hid my face in his shoulder. Not even to my husband could I confess just then how the touch of the naked, rigid little body of that other woman's child had sent a thrill of longing through me for a baby's hands that should be mine.
We were seated, Dicky and I, in the waiting room of the Long Island railroad a week after my dinner party that had almost ended in tragedy. Dicky had bought our tickets to Marvin, the little village which was to be the starting point of our country ramble, and we were putting in the time before our train was ready in gazing at the usual morning scene in a railroad station.
There were not many passengers going out on the island, but scores of commuters were hurrying through the station on their way to their offices and other places of employment.
"You don't see many of the commuters up here," Dicky remarked. "There's a passage direct from the trains to the subway on the lower level, and most of them take that. Some of the women come up to prink a bit in the waiting room, and some of the men come through here to get cigars or papers, but the big crowd is down on the train level."
I hardly heard him, for I was so interested in a girl who had just come into the waiting room. I had never seen so self-possessed a creature in my life. She was unusually beautiful, with golden hair that was so real the most captious person could not suspect that hair of being dyed. Her eyes were dark, and the unusual combination of eyes and hair fitted a face with regular features and a fair skin. I had seen Christmas and Easter cards with faces like hers. But I had never seen anyone like her in real life, and I am afraid I stared at her as hard as did everyone else in the waiting room.