“Yes, but this is our last night here, and Gus wants me to—”
“Not me,” her brother denied quickly. “You needn’t come away on my account.”
“Well, I think I’d better, anyway.”
Her aunt repeated “Patricia.”
But the niece ignored her. She circled the table and shook the guest’s hand briskly, before he could rise. “Good-by,” she repeated. “Until next summer.” Her aunt said “Patricia” again, firmly. She turned again at the door and said politely: “Good night, Aunt Pat.”
Her brother had gone on up the stairs. She hurried after him, leaving her aunt to call “Patricia!” from the dining room, and reached the head of the stairs in time to see his door close behind him. When she tried the knob, the door was locked, so she came away and went quietly to her room.
She stripped off her clothes in the darkness and lay on her bed, and after a while she heard him banging and splashing in the connecting bathroom. When these sounds had ceased she rose and entered the bathroom quietly from her side, and quietly she tried his door. Unlocked.
She snapped on the light and spun the tap of the shower until needles of water drummed viciously into the bath. She thrust her hand beneath it at intervals: soon it was stinging and cold; and she drew her breath as for a dive and sprang beneath it, clutching a cake of soap, and cringed shuddering and squealing while the water needled her hard simple body in its startling bathing suit of white skin, matting her coarse hair, stinging and blinding her.
She whirled the tap again and the water ceased its antiseptic miniature thunder, and after toweling herself vigorously she found that she was hot as ever, though not sticky any longer; so moving more slowly she returned to her room
