"Good Heavens!" she exclaimed as he shut himself out. "Good Heavens!"
Ephraim Herrick waited in the hall at a window which looked toward the city. He heard doors open behind him; he never turned to see but he imagined women in negligee passing back and forth and he stood straighter and more sternly in his black coat to rebuke them. He looked down upon the calm, languid lake upon which little boats idled out from the green and yellow shore. He looked upon luxurious dwellings, some of them separate mansions with gay, striped awnings spread to the sun, with pergolas and gardens above the water; some of them were aggregations of many dwellings under one roof, apartment buildings which fostered the idle, indulgent habits which Ephraim Herrick deplored. Strong as was his feeling against these rows and rows of flats, yet it was nothing in intensity compared to his abomination of the hotel and of the idle, self-indulgent life lived by those who made the hotel their home.
His feeling of the sloth of these surroundings, just now exacerbated by the sight of his son's wife seated in a painted chair with her hair down and playing with cards at half past ten in the morning, was whipped again by the soft, indolent voices of other women and by his view, from the window, of the luxurious and seductive shore.
Fidelia came into the hall. Her hair was now up and she wore a plain, white skirt and white linen blouse and she had changed from her slippers to white oxfords; but since Ephraim Herrick was not turning
