By this time dusk had fallen, and it was nearly six o'clock. As she came out of the house she glanced toward the west—the instinctive gesture of people who live in rainy climates. Her face brightened; she saw an omen in the long broad streak of reddened evening sky.
SHE went down to Fourth Street, along it to Race, to theCommercialbuilding. At the entrance to the corridor at the far side of which were elevator and stairway, she paused and considered. She turned into the business office.
"Is Mr. Roderick Spenser here?" she asked of a heavily built, gray-bearded man in the respectable black of the old-fashioned financial employee, showing the sobriety and stolidity of his character in his dress.
"He works upstairs," replied the old man, beaming approvingly upon the pretty, stylish young woman.
"Is he there now?"
"I'll telephone." He went into the rear office, presently returned with the news that Mr. Spenser had that moment left, was probably on his way down in the elevator. "And you'll catch him if you go to the office entrance right away."
Susan, the inexperienced in the city ways of men with women, did not appreciate what a tribute to her charms and to her character, as revealed in the honest, grave eyes, was the old man's unhesitating assumption that Spenser would wish to see her. She lost no time in retracing her steps. As she reached the office entrance she saw at the other end of the long hall two young men coming out of the elevator. After the habit of youth, she had rehearsed speech and manner for this meeting; but at sight of him she was straightway trembling so that she feared she would be unable to speak at all. The entrance light was dim, but as he glanced at her in passing he saw her looking at him and his hand moved toward his hat. His face had not changed—the same frank, careless expression, the same sympathetic, understanding look out of the eyes. But he was the city man in dress now—notably the city man.
"Mr. Spenser," said she shyly.
He halted; his companion went on. He lifted his hat, looked inquiringly at her—the look of the enthusiast and connoisseur on the subject of pretty women, when he finds a new specimen worthy of his attention.
"Don't you know me?"
His expression of puzzled and flirtatious politeness gradually cleared away. The lighting up of his eyes, the smile round his mouth delighted her; and she grew radiant when he exclaimed eagerly, "Why, it's the little girl of the rock again! How you've grown—in a year—less than a year!"
"Yes, I suppose I have," said she, thinking of it for the first time. Then, to show him at once what a good excuse she had for intruding again, she hastened to add, "I've come to pay you that money you loaned me."
He burst out laughing, drew her into the corridor where the light was brighter. "And you've gone back to your husband," he said—she noted the quick, sharp change in his voice.
"Why do you think that?" she said.
The way his eyes lingered upon the charming details toilet that indicated anything but poverty might of a have given her a simple explanation. He offered another.
"I can't explain. It's your different expression—a kind of experienced look."
The color flamed and flared in Susan's face.
"You are—happy?" he asked.
"I've not seen—him," evaded she. "Ever since I left CarrolltonI've been wandering about."
"Wandering about?" he repeated absently, his eyes busy with her appearance.
"And now," she went on, nervous and hurried, "I'm here in town—for a while."
"Then I may come to see you?"
"I'd be glad. I'm alone in a furnished room I've taken—out nearLincoln Park."
"Alone! You don't mean you're still wandering?"
"Still wandering."
He laughed. "Well, it certainly is doing you no harm. The reverse." An embarrassed pause, then he said with returning politeness: "Maybe you'll dine with me this evening?"
She beamed. "I've been hoping you'd ask me."
"It won't be as good as the one on the rock."
"There never will be another dinner like that," declared she."Your leg is well?"
Her question took him by surprise. In his interest and wonder as to the new mystery of this mysterious young person he had not recalled the excuses he made for dropping out of the entanglement in which his impulses had put him. The color poured into his face. "Ages ago," he replied, hurriedly. "I'd have forgotten it, if it hadn't been for you. I've never been able to get you out of my head." And as a matter of truth she had finally dislodged his cousin Nell—without lingering long or vividly herself. Young Mr. Spenser was too busy and too self-absorbed a man to bother long about any one flower in a world that was one vast field abloom with open-petaled flowers.
"Nor I you," said she, as pleased as he had expected, and showing it with a candor that made her look almost the child he had last seen. "You see, I owed you that money, and I wanted to pay it."
"Oh—thatwas all!" exclaimed he, half jokingly. "Wait here a minute." And he went to the door, looked up and down the street, then darted across it and disappeared into the St. Nicholas Hotel. He was not gone more than half a minute.
"I had to see Bayne and tell him," he explained when he was with her again. "I was to have dined with him and some others—over in the café. Instead, you and I will dine upstairs. You won't mind my not being dressed?"
It seemed to her he was dressed well enough for any occasion. "I'd rather you had on the flannel trousers rolled up to your knees," said she. "But I can imagine them."
"What a dinner that was!" cried he. "And the ride afterward," with an effort at ease that escaped her bedazzled eyes. "Why didn't you ever write?"
He expected her to say that she did not know his address, and was ready with protests and excuses. But she replied:
"I didn't have the money to pay what I owed you." They were crossing Fourth Street and ascending the steps to the hotel. "Then, too—afterward—when I got to know a little more about life I——Oh, no matter. Really, the money was the only reason."
But he had stopped short. In a tone so correctly sincere that a suspicious person might perhaps have doubted the sincerity of the man using it, he said:
"What was in your mind? What did you think? What did you—suspect me of? For I see in that honest, telltale face of yours that it was a suspicion."
"I didn't blame you," protested the girl, "even if it was so. I thought maybe you got to thinking it over—and—didn't want to be bothered with anyone so troublesome as I had made myself."
"Howcouldyou suspectmeof such a thing?"
"Oh, I really didn't," declared she, with all the earnestness of a generous nature, for she read into his heightened color and averted eyes the feelings she herself would have had before an unjust suspicion. "It was merely an idea. And I didn't blame you—not in the least. It would have been the sensible——"
Next thing, this child-woman, this mysterious mind of mixed precocity and innocence, would be showing that she had guessed a Cousin Nell.
"You are far too modest," interrupted he with a flirtatious smile. "You didn't realize how strong an impression you made. No, I really broke my leg. Don't you suppose I knew the twenty-five in the pocketbook wouldn't carry you far?" He saw—and naturally misunderstood—her sudden change of expression as he spoke of the amount. He went on apologetically, "I intended to bring more when I came. I was afraid to put money in the note for fear it'd never be delivered, if I did. And didn't I tell you to write—and didn't I give you my address here? Would I have done that, if I hadn't meant to stand by you?"
Susan was convinced, was shamed by these smooth, plausible assertions and explanations. "Your father's house—it's a big brick, with stone trimmings, standing all alone outside the little town—isn't it?"
Spenser was again coloring deeply. "Yes," admitted he uneasily.
But Susan didn't notice. "I saw the doctor—and your family—on the veranda," she said.
He was now so nervous that she could not but observe it. "They gave out that it was only a sprain," said he, "because I told them I didn't want it known. I didn't want the people at the office to know I was going to be laid up so long. I was afraid I'd lose my job."
"I didn't hear anything about it," said she. "I only saw as I was going by on a boat."
He looked disconcerted—but not to her eyes. "Well—it's far in the past now," said he. "Let's forget—all but the fun."
"Yes—all but the fun." Then very sweetly, "But I'll never forget what I owe you. Not the money—not that, hardly at all—but what you did for me. It made me able to go on."
"Don't speak of it," cried he, flushed and shamefaced. "I didn't do half what I ought." Like most human beings he was aware of his more obvious—if less dangerous—faults and weaknesses. He liked to be called generous, but always had qualms when so called because he knew he was in fact of the familiar type classed as generous only because human beings are so artless in their judgments as to human nature that they cannot see that quick impulses quickly die. The only deep truth is that there are no generous natures but just natures—and they are rarely classed as generous because their slowly formed resolves have the air of prudence and calculation.
In the hotel she went to the dressing-room, took twenty-five dollars from the money in her stocking. As soon as they were seated in the restaurant she handed it to him.
"But this makes it you who are having me to dinner—and more," he protested.
"If you knew what a weight it's been on me, you'd not talk that way," said she.
Her tone compelled him to accept her view of the matter. He laughed and put the money in his waistcoat pocket, saying: "Then I'll still owe you a dinner."
During the past week she had been absorbing as only a young woman with a good mind and a determination to learn the business of living can absorb. The lessons before her had been the life that is lived in cities by those who have money to spend and experience in spending it; she had learned out of all proportion to opportunity. At a glance she realized that she was now in a place far superior to the Bohemian resorts which had seemed to her inexperience the best possible. From earliest childhood she had shown the delicate sense of good taste and of luxury that always goes with a practical imagination—practical as distinguished from the idealistic kind of imagination that is vague, erratic, and fond of the dreams which neither could nor should come true. And the reading she had done—the novels, the memoirs, the books of travel, the fashion and home magazines—had made deep and distinct impressions upon her, had prepared her—as they have prepared thousands of Americans in secluded towns and rural regions where luxury and even comfort are very crude indeed—for the possible rise of fortune that is the universal American dream and hope. She felt these new surroundings exquisitely—the subdued coloring, the softened lights, the thick carpets, the quiet elegance and comfort of the furniture. She noted the good manners of the well-trained waiter; she listened admiringly and memorizingly as Spenser ordered the dinner—a dinner of French good taste—small but fine oysters, a thick soup, a guinea henen casserole, a fruit salad, fresh strawberry ice cream, dry champagne. She saw that Spenser knew what he was about, and she was delighted with him and proud to be with him and glad that he had tastes like her own—that is, tastes such as she proposed to learn to have. Of the men she had known or known about he seemed to her far and away the best. It isn't necessary to explain into what an attitude of mind and heart this feeling of his high superiority immediately put her—certainly not for the enlightenment of any woman.
"What are you thinking?" he asked—the question that was so often thrust at her because, when she thought intensely, there was a curiosity-compelling expression in her eyes.
"Oh—about all this," replied she. "I like this sort of thing so much. I never had it in my life, yet now that I see it I feel as if I were part of it, as if it must belong to me." Her eyes met his sympathetic gaze. "You understand, don't you?" He nodded. "And I was wondering"—she laughed, as if she expected even him to laugh at her—"I was wondering how long it would be before I should possess it. Do you think I'm crazy?"
He shook his head. "I've got that same feeling," said he. "I'm poor—don't dare do this often—have all I can manage in keeping myself decently. Yet I have a conviction that I shall—shall win. Don't think I'm dreaming of being rich—not at all. I—I don't care much about that if I did go into business. But I want all my surroundings to be right."
Her eyes gleamed. "And you'll get it. And so shall I. I know it sounds improbable and absurd for me to say that about myself. But—I know it."
"I believe you," said he. "You've got the look in your face—in your eyes. . . . I've never seen anyone improve as you have in this less than a year."
She smiled as she thought in what surroundings she had apparently spent practically all that time. "If you could have seen me!" she said. "Yes, I was learning and I know it. I led a sort of double life. I——" she hesitated, gave up trying to explain. She had not the words and phrases, the clear-cut ideas, to express that inner life led by people who have real imagination. With most human beings their immediate visible surroundings determine their life; with the imaginative few their horizon is always the whole wide world.
She sighed, "But I'm ignorant. I don't know how or where to take hold."
"I can't help you there, yet," said he. "When we know each other better, then I'll know. Not that you need me to tell you. You'll find out for yourself. One always does."
She glanced round the attractive room again, then looked at him with narrowed eyelids. "Only a few hours ago I was thinking of suicide. How absurd it seems now!—I'll never do that again. At least, I've learned how to profit by a lesson. Mr. Burlingham taught me that."
"Who's he?"
"That's a long story. I don't feel like telling about it now."
But the mere suggestion had opened certain doors in her memory and crowds of sad and bitter thoughts came trooping in.
"Are you in some sort of trouble?" said he, instantly leaning toward her across the table and all aglow with the impulsive sympathy that kindles in impressionable natures as quickly as fire in dry grass. Such natures are as perfect conductors of emotion as platinum is of heat—instantly absorbing it, instantly throwing it off, to return to their normal and metallic chill—and capacity for receptiveness. "Anything you can tell me about?"
"Oh, no—nothing especial," replied she. "Just loneliness and a feeling of—of discouragement." Strongly, "Just a mood. I'm never really discouraged. Something always turns up."
"Please tell me what happened after I left you at that wretched hotel."
"I can't," she said. "At least, not now."
"There is——" He looked sympathetically at her, as if to assure her that he would understand, no matter what she might confess. "There is—someone?"
"No. I'm all alone. I'm—free." It was not in the least degree an instinct for deception that made her then convey an impression of there having been no one. She was simply obeying her innate reticence that was part of her unusual self-unconsciousness.
"And you're not worried about—about money matters?" he asked. "You see, I'm enough older and more experienced to give me excuse for asking. Besides, unless a woman has money, she doesn't find it easy to get on."
"I've enough for the present," she assured him, and the stimulus of the champagne made her look—and feel—much more self-confident than she really was. "More than I've ever had before. So I'm not worried. When anyone has been through what I have they aren't so scared about the future."
He looked the admiration he felt—and there was not a little of the enthusiasm of the champagne both in the look and in the admiration—"I see you've already learned to play the game without losing your nerve."
"I begin to hope so," said she.
"Yes—you've got the signs of success in your face. Curious about those signs. Once you learn to know them, you never miss in sizing up people."
The dinner had come. Both were hungry, and it was as good a dinner as the discussion about it between Spenser and the waiter had forecast. As they ate the well-cooked, well-served food and drank the delicately flavored champagne, mellow as the gorgeous autumn its color suggested, there diffused through them an extraordinary feeling of quiet intense happiness—happiness of mind and body. Her face took on a new and finer beauty; into his face came a tenderness that was most becoming to its rather rugged features. And he had not talked with her long before he discovered that he was facing not a child, not a child-woman, but a woman grown, one who could understand and appreciate the things men and women of experience say and do.
"I've always been expecting to hear from you every day since we separated," he said—and he was honestly believing it now. "I've had a feeling that you hadn't forgotten me. It didn't seem possible I could feel so strongly unless there was real sympathy between us."
"I came as soon as I could."
He reflected in silence a moment, then in a tone that made her heart leap and her blood tingle, he said: "You say you're free?"
"Free as air. Only—I couldn't fly far."
He hesitated on an instinct of prudence, then ventured. "Far asNew York?"
"What is the railroad fare?"
"Oh, about twenty-five dollars—with sleeper."
"Yes—I can fly that far."
"Do you mean to say you've no ties of any kind?"
"None. Not one." Her eyes opened wide and her nostrils dilated. "Free!"
"You love it—don't you?"
"Don't you?"
"Above everything!" he exclaimed. "Only the freelive."
She lifted her head higher in a graceful, attractive gesture of confidence and happiness. "Well—I am ready to live."
"I'm afraid you don't realize," he said hesitatingly. "People wouldn't understand. You've your reputation to think of, you know."
She looked straight at him. "No—not even that. I'm even free from reputation." Then, as his face saddened and his eyes glistened with sympathy, "You needn't pity me. See where it's brought me."
"You're a strong swimmer—aren't you?" he said tenderly. "But then there isn't any safe and easy crossing to the isles of freedom. It's no wonder most people don't get further than gazing and longing."
"Probably I shouldn't," confessed Susan, "if I hadn't been thrown into the water. It was a case of swim or drown."
"But most who try are drowned—nearly all the women."
"Oh, I guess there are more survive than is generally supposed.So much lying is done about that sort of thing."
"What a shrewd young lady it is! At any rate, you have reached the islands."
"But I'm not queen of them yet," she reminded him. "I'm only a poor, naked, out-of-breath castaway lying on the beach."
He laughed appreciatively. Very clever, this extremely pretty young woman. "Yes—you'll win. You'll be queen." He lifted his champagne glass and watched the little bubbles pushing gayly and swiftly upward. "So—you've cast over your reputation."
"I told you I had reached the beach naked." A reckless light in her eyes now. "Fact is, I had none to start with. Anybody has a reason for starting—or for being started. That was mine, I guess."
"I've often thought about that matter of reputation—in a man or a woman—if they're trying to make the bold, strong swim. To care about one's reputation means fear of what the world says. It's important to care about one's character—for without character no one ever got anywhere worth getting to. But it's very, very dangerous to be afraid for one's reputation. And—I hate to admit it, because I'm hopelessly conventional at bottom, but it's true—reputation—fear of what the world says—has sunk more swimmers, has wrecked more characters than it ever helped. So—the strongest and best swimmers swim naked."
Susan was looking thoughtfully at him over the rim of her glass. She took a sip of the champagne, said: "If I hadn't been quite naked, I'd have sunk—I'd have been at the bottom—with the fishes——"
"Don't!" he cried. "Thank God, you did whatever you've done—yes, I mean that—whatever you've done, since it enabled you to swim on." He added, "And I know it wasn't anything bad—anything unwomanly."
"I did the best I could—nothing I'm ashamed of—or proud of either. Just—what I had to do."
"But you ought to be proud that you arrived."
"No—only glad," said she. "So—sofrightfullyglad!"
In any event, their friendship was bound to flourish; aided by that dinner and that wine it sprang up into an intimacy, a feeling of mutual trust and of sympathy at every point. Like all women she admired strength in a man above everything else. She delighted in the thick obstinate growth of his fair hair, in the breadth of the line of his eyebrows, in the aggressive thrust of his large nose and long jawbone. She saw in the way his mouth closed evidence of a will against which opposition would dash about as dangerously as an egg against a stone wall. There was no question of his having those birthmarks of success about which he talked. She saw them—saw nothing of the less obtrusive—but not less important—marks of weakness which might have enabled an expert in the reading of faces to reach some rather depressing conclusion as to the nature and the degree of that success.
Finally, he burst out with, "Yes, I've made up my mind. I'll do it! I'm going to New York. I've been fooling away the last five years here learning a lot, but still idling—drinking—amusing myself in all kinds of ways. And about a month ago—one night, as I was rolling home toward dawn—through a driving sleet storm—do you remember a line in 'Paradise Lost'"
"I never read it," interrupted Susan.
"Well—it's where the devils have been kicked out of Heaven and are lying in agony flat on the burning lake—and Satan rises up—and marches haughtily out among them—and calls out, 'Awake! Arise! Or forever more be damned!' That's what has happened to me several times in my life. When I was a boy, idling about the farm and wasting myself, that voice came to me—'Awake! Arise! Or forever more be damned!' And I got a move on me, and insisted on going to college. Again—at college—I became a dawdler—poker—drink—dances—all the rest of it. And suddenly that voice roared in my ears, made me jump like a rabbit when a gun goes off. And last month it came again. I went to work—finished a play I've been pottering over for three years. But somehow I couldn't find the—the—whatever I needed—to make me break away. Well—you'vegiven me that. I'll resign from theCommercialand with all I've got in the world—three hundred dollars and a trunk full of good clothes, I'll break into Broadway."
Susan had listened with bright eyes and quickened breath, as intoxicated and as convinced as was he by his eloquence. "Isn't that splendid!" she exclaimed in a low voice.
"And you?" he said meaningly.
"I?" she replied, fearing she was misunderstanding.
"Will you go?"
"Do you want me?" she asked, low and breathlessly.
With a reluctance which suggested—but not to her—that his generosity was winning a hard-fought battle with his vanity, he replied: "I need you. I doubt if I'd dare, without you to back me up."
"I've got a trunk full of fairly good clothes and about a hundred dollars. But I haven't got any play—or any art—or any trade even. Of course, I'll go." Then she hastily added, "I'll not be a drag on you. I pay my own way."
"But you mustn't be suspicious in your independence," he warned her. "You mustn't forget that I'm older than you and more experienced and that it's far easier for a man to get money than for a woman."
"To get it without lowering himself?"
"Ah!" he exclaimed, looking strangely at her. "You mean, without bowing to some boss? Without selling his soul? I had no idea you were so much of a woman when I met you that day."
"I wasn't—then," replied she. "And I didn't know where I'd got till we began to talk this evening."
"And you're very young!"
"Oh, but I've been going to a school where they make you learn fast."
"Indeed I do need you." He touched his glass to hers. "On toBroadway!" he cried.
"Broadway!" echoed she, radiant.
"Together—eh?"
She nodded. But as she drank the toast a tear splashed into her glass. She was remembering how some mysterious instinct had restrained her from going with John Redmond, though it seemed the only sane thing to do. What if she had disobeyed that instinct! And then—through her mind in swift ghostly march—past trailed the persons and events of the days just gone—just gone, yet seeming as far away as a former life in another world. Redmond and Gulick—Etta—yes, Etta, too—all past and gone—forever gone——
"What are you thinking about?"
She shook her head and the spectral procession vanished into the glooms of memory's vistas. "Thinking?—of yesterday. I don't understand myself—how I shake off and forget what's past. Nothing seems real to me but the future."
"Not even the present?" said he with a smile.
"Not even the present," she answered with grave candor. "Nothing seems to touch me—the real me. It's like—like looking out of the window of the train at the landscape running by. I'm a traveler passing through. I wonder if it'll always be that way. I wonder if I'll ever arrive where I'll feel that I belong."
"I think so—and soon."
But she did not respond to his confident smile. "I—I hope so," she said with sad, wistful sweetness. "Then again—aren't there some people who don't belong anywhere—aren't allowed to settle down and be happy, but have to keep going—on and on—until——"
"Until they pass out into the dark," he finished for her. "Yes." He looked at her in a wondering uneasy way. "You do suggest that kind," said he. "But," smilingly, to hide his earnestness, "I'll try to detain you."
"Please do," she said. "I don't want to go on—alone."
He dropped into silence, puzzled and in a way awed by the mystery enveloping her—a mystery of aloofness and stoniness, of complete separation from the contact of the world—the mystery that incloses all whose real life is lived deep within themselves.
LIKE days later, on the Eastern Express, they were not so confident as they had been over the St. Nicholas champagne. As confident about the remoter future, it was that annoying little stretch near at hand which gave them secret uneasiness. There had been nothing but dreaming and sentimentalizing in those four days—and that disquietingly suggested the soldier who with an impressive flourish highly resolves to give battle, then sheathes his sword and goes away to a revel. Also, like all idlers, they had spent money—far more money than total net cash resources of less than five hundred dollars warranted.
"We've spent an awful lot of money," said Susan.
She was quick to see the faint frown, the warning that she was on dangerous ground. Said he:
"Do you regret?"
"No, indeed—no!" cried she, eager to have that cloud vanish, but honest too.
She no more than he regretted a single moment of the dreaming and love-making, a single penny of the eighty and odd dollars that had enabled them fittingly to embower their romance, to twine myrtle in their hair and to provide Cupid's torch-bowls with fragrant incense. Still—with the battle not begun, there gaped that deep, wide hollow in the war chest.
Spenser's newspaper connection got them passes over one of the cheaper lines to New York—and he tried to console himself by setting this down as a saving of forty dollars against the eighty dollars of the debit item. But he couldn't altogether forget that they would have traveled on passes, anyhow. He was not regretting that he had indulged in the extravagance of a stateroom—but he couldn't deny that it was an extravagance. However, he had only to look at her to feel that he had done altogether well in providing for her the best, and to believe that he could face with courage any fate so long as he had her at his side.
"Yes, I can face anything with you," he said. "What I feel for you is the real thing. The real thing, at last."
She had no disposition to inquire curiously into this. Her reply was a flash of a smile that was like a flash of glorious light upon the crest of a wave surging straight from her happy heart.
They were opposite each other at breakfast in the restaurant car. He delighted in her frank delight in the novelty of travel—swift and luxurious travel. He had never been East before, himself, but he had had experience of sleepers and diners; she had not, and every moment she was getting some new sensation. She especially enjoyed this sitting at breakfast with the express train rushing smoothly along through the mountains—the first mountains either had seen. At times they were so intensely happy that they laughed with tears in their eyes and touched hands across the table to get from physical contact the reassurances of reality.
"How good to eat everything is!" she exclaimed. "You'll think me very greedy, I'm afraid. But if you'd eaten the stuff I have since we dined on the rock!"
They were always going back to the rock, and neither wearied of recalling and reminding each other of the smallest details. It seemed to them that everything, even the least happening, at that sacred spot must be remembered, must be recorded indelibly in the book of their romance. "I'm glad we were happy together in such circumstances," she went on. "It was a test—wasn't it, Rod?"
"If two people don't love each other enough to be happy anywhere, they could be happy nowhere," declared he.
"So, we'll not mind being very, very careful about spending money in New York," she ventured—for she was again bringing up the subject she had been privately revolving ever since they had formed the partnership. In her wanderings with Burlingham, in her sojourn in the tenements, she had learned a great deal about the care and spending of money—had developed that instinct for forehandedness which nature has implanted in all normal women along with the maternal instinct—and as a necessary supplement to it. This instinct is more or less futile in most women because they are more or less ignorant of the realities as to wise and foolish expenditure. But it is found in the most extravagant women no less than in the most absurdly and meanly stingy.
"Of course, we must be careful," assented Rod. "But I can't let you be uncomfortable."
"Now, dear," she remonstrated, "you mustn't treat me that way.I'm better fitted for hardship than you. I'd mind it less."
He laughed; she looked so fine and delicate, with her transparent skin and her curves of figure, he felt that anything so nearly perfect could not but easily be spoiled. And there he showed how little he appreciated her iron strength, her almost exhaustless endurance. He fancied he was the stronger because he could have crushed her in his muscular arms. But exposures, privations, dissipations that would have done for a muscularly stronger man than he would have left no trace upon her after a few days of rest and sleep.
"It's the truth," she insisted. "I could prove it, but I shan't.I don't want to remember vividly. Rod, wemustlive cheaply inNew York until you sell a play and I have a place in some company."
"Yes," he conceded. "But, Susie, not too cheap. A cheap way of living makes a cheap man—gives a man a cheap outlook on life. Besides, don't forget—if the worst comes to the worst, I can always get a job on a newspaper."
She would not have let him see how uneasy this remark made her. However, she could not permit it to pass without notice. Said she a little nervously:
"But you've made up your mind to devote yourself to plays—to stand or fall by that."
He remembered how he had thrilled her and himself with brave talk about the necessity of concentrating, of selecting a goal and moving relentlessly for it, letting nothing halt him or turn him aside. For his years Rod Spenser was as wise in the philosophy of success as Burlingham or Tom Brashear. But he had done that brave and wise talking before he loved her as he now did—before he realized how love can be in itself an achievement and a possession so great that other ambitions dwarf beside it. True, away back in his facile, fickle mind, behind the region where self-excuse and somebody-else-always-to-blame reigned supreme, a something—the something that had set the marks of success so strongly upon his face—was whispering to him the real reason for his now revolving a New York newspaper job. Real reasons as distinguished from alleged reasons and imagined reasons, from the reasons self-deception invents and vanity gives out—real reasons are always interesting and worth noting. What was Rod's? Not his love for her; nothing so superior, so superhuman as that. No, it was weak and wobbly misgivings as to his own ability to get on independently, the misgivings that menace every man who has never worked for himself but has always drawn pay—the misgivings that paralyze most men and keep them wage or salary slaves all their lives. Rod was no better pleased at this sly, unwelcome revelation of his real self to himself than the next human being is in similar circumstances. The whispering was hastily suppressed; love for her, desire that she should be comfortable—those must be the real reasons. But he must be careful lest she, the sensitive, should begin to brood over a fear that she was already weakening him and would become a drag upon him—the fear that, he knew, would take shape in his own mind if things began to go badly. "You may be sure, dearest," he said, "I'll do nothing that won't help me on." He tapped his forehead with his finger. "This is a machine for making plays. Everything that's put into it will be grist for it."
She was impressed but not convinced. He had made his point about concentration too clear to her intelligence. She persisted:
"But you said if you took a place on a newspaper it would make you fight less hard."
"I say a lot of things," he interrupted laughingly. "Don't be frightened about me. What I'm most afraid of is that you'll desert me.Thatwould be a real knock-out blow."
He said this smilingly; but she could not bear jokes on that one subject.
"What do you mean, Rod?"
"Now, don't look so funereal, Susie. I simply meant that I hate to think of your going on the stage—or at anything else. I want you to helpme. Selfish, isn't it? But, dear heart, if I could feel that the plays wereours, that we were both concentrated on the one career—darling. To love each other, to work together—not separately but together—don't you understand?"
Her expression showed that she understood, but was not at all in sympathy. "I've got to earn my living, Rod," she objected. "I shan't care anything about what I'll be doing. I'll do it simply to keep from being a burden to you——"
"A burden, Susie! You! Why, you're my wings that enable me to fly. It's selfish, but I want all of you. Don't you think, dear, that if it were possible, it would be better for you to make us a home and hold the fort while I go out to give battle to managers—and bind up my wounds when I come back—and send me out the next day well again? Don't you think we ought to concentrate?"
The picture appealed to her. All she wanted in life now was his success. "But," she objected, "it's useless to talk of that until we get on our feet—perfectly useless."
"It's true," he admitted with a sigh.
"And until we do, we must be economical."
"What a persistent lady it is," laughed he. "I wish I were like that."
In the evening's gathering dusk the train steamed into Jersey City; and Spenser and Susan Lenox, with the adventurer's mingling hope and dread, confidence and doubt, courage and fear, followed the crowd down the long platform under the vast train shed, went through the huge thronged waiting-room and aboard the giant ferryboat which filled both with astonishment because of its size and luxuriousness.
"I am a jay!" said she. "I can hardly keep my mouth from dropping open."
"You haven't any the advantage of me," he assured her. "Are you trembling all over?"
"Yes," she admitted. "And my heart's like lead. I suppose there are thousands on thousands like us, from all over the country—who come here every day—feeling as we do."
"Let's go out on the front deck—where we can see it."
They went out on the upper front deck and, leaning against the forward gates, with their traveling bags at their feet, they stood dumb before the most astounding and most splendid scene in the civilized world. It was not quite dark yet; the air was almost July hot, as one of those prematurely warm days New York so often has in March. The sky, a soft and delicate blue shading into opal and crimson behind them, displayed a bright crescent moon as it arched over the fairyland in the dusk before them. Straight ahead, across the broad, swift, sparkling river—the broadest water Susan had ever seen—rose the mighty, the majestic city. It rose direct from the water. Endless stretches of ethereal-looking structure, reaching higher and higher, in masses like mountain ranges, in peaks, in towers and domes. And millions of lights, like fairy lamps, like resplendent jewels, gave the city a glory beyond that of the stars thronging the heavens on a clear summer night.
They looked toward the north; on and on, to the far horizon's edge stretched the broad river and the lovely city that seemed the newborn offspring of the waves; on and on, the myriad lights, in masses, in festoons, in great gleaming globes of fire from towers rising higher than Susan's and Rod's native hills. They looked to the south. There, too, rose city, mile after mile, and then beyond it the expanse of the bay; and everywhere the lights, the beautiful, soft, starlike lights, shedding a radiance as of heaven itself over the whole scene. Majesty and strength and beauty.
"I love it!" murmured the girl. "Already I love it."
"I never dreamed it was like this," said Roderick, in an awed tone.
"The City of the Stars," said she, in the caressing tone in which a lover speaks the name of the beloved.
They moved closer together and clasped hands and gazed as if they feared the whole thing—river and magic city and their own selves—would fade away and vanish forever. Susan clutched Rod in terror as she saw the vision suddenly begin to move, to advance toward her, like apparitions in a dream before they vanish. Then she exclaimed, "Why, we are moving!" The big ferryboat, swift, steady as land, noiseless, had got under way. Upon them from the direction of the distant and hidden sea blew a cool, fresh breeze. Never before had either smelled that perfume, strong and keen and clean, which comes straight from the unbreathed air of the ocean to bathe New York, to put life and hope and health into its people. Rod and Susan turned their faces southward toward this breeze, drank in great draughts of it. They saw a colossal statue, vivid as life in the dusk, in the hand at the end of the high-flung arm a torch which sent a blaze of light streaming out over land and water.
"That must be Liberty," said Roderick.
Susan slipped her arm through his. She was quivering with excitement and joy. "Rod—Rod!" she murmured. "It's the isles of freedom. Kiss me."
And he bent and kissed her, and his cheek felt the tears upon hers. He reached for her hand, with an instinct to strengthen her. But when he had it within his its firm and vital grasp sent a thrill of strength through him.
A few minutes, and they paused at the exit from the ferry house. They almost shrank back, so dazed and helpless did they feel before the staggering billows of noise that swept savagely down upon them—roar and crash, shriek and snort; the air was shuddering with it, the ground quaking. The beauty had vanished—the beauty that was not the city but a glamour to lure them into the city's grasp; now that city stood revealed as a monster about to seize and devour them.
"God!" He shouted in her ear. "Isn't thisfrightful!"
She was recovering more quickly than he. The faces she saw reassured her. They were human faces; and while they were eager and restless, as if the souls behind them sought that which never could be found, they were sane and kind faces, too. Where others of her own race lived, and lived without fear, she, too, could hope to survive. And already she, who had loved this mighty offspring of the sea and the sky at first glance, saw and felt another magic—the magic of the peopled solitude. In this vast, this endless solitude she and he would be free. They could do as they pleased, live as they pleased, without thought of the opinion of others. Here she could forget the bestial horrors of marriage; here she would fear no scornful pointing at her birth-brand of shame. She and Rod could be poor without shame; they could make their fight in the grateful darkness of obscurity.
"Scared?" he asked.
"Not a bit," was her prompt answer. "I love it more than ever."
"Well, it frightens me a little. I feel helpless—lost in the noise and the crowd. How can I do anything here!"
"Others have. Others do."
"Yes—yes! That's so. We must take hold!" And he selected a cabman from the shouting swarm. "We want to go, with two trunks, to the Hotel St. Denis," said he.
"All right, sir! Gimme the checks, please."
Spenser was about to hand them over when Susan said in an undertone, "You haven't asked the price."
Spenser hastened to repair this important omission. "Ten dollars," replied the cabman as if ten dollars were some such trifle as ten cents.
Spenser laughed at the first experience of the famous New York habit of talking in a faint careless way of large sums of money—other people's money. "You did save us a swat," he said to Susan, and beckoned another man. The upshot of a long and arduous discussion, noisy and profane, was that they got the carriage for six dollars—a price which the policeman who had been drawn into the discussion vouched for as reasonable. Spenser knew it was too high, knew the policeman would get a dollar or so of the profit, but he was weary of the wrangle; and he would not listen to Susan's suggestion that they have the trunks sent by the express company and themselves go in a street car for ten cents. At the hotel they got a large comfortable room and a bath for four dollars a day. Spenser insisted it was cheap; Susan showed her alarm—less than an hour in New York and ten dollars gone, not to speak of she did not know how much change. For Roderick had been scattering tips with what is for some mysterious reason called "a princely hand," though princes know too well the value of money and have too many extravagant tastes ever to go far in sheer throwing away.
They had dinner in the restaurant of the hotel and set out to explore the land they purposed to subdue and to possess. They walked up Broadway to Fourteenth, missed their way in the dazzle and glare of south Union Square, discovered the wandering highway again after some searching. After the long, rather quiet stretch between Union Square and Thirty-fourth Street they found themselves at the very heart of the city's night life. They gazed in wonder upon the elevated road with its trains thundering by high above them. They crossed Greeley Square and stood entranced before the spectacle—a street bright as day with electric signs of every color, shape and size; sidewalks jammed with people, most of them dressed with as much pretense to fashion as the few best in Cincinnati; one theater after another, and at Forty-second Street theaters in every direction. Surely—surely—there would be small difficulty in placing his play when there were so many theaters, all eager for plays.
They debated going to the theater, decided against it, as they were tired from the journey and the excitement of crowding new sensations. "I've never been to a real theater in my life," said Susan. "I want to be fresh the first time I go."
"Yes," cried Rod. "That's right. Tomorrow night. Thatwillbe an experience!" And they read the illuminated signs, inspected the show windows, and slowly strolled back toward the hotel. As they were recrossing Union Square, Spenser said, "Have you noticed how many street girls there are? We must have passed a thousand. Isn't it frightful?"
"Yes," said Susan.
Rod made a gesture of disgust, and said with feeling, "How low a woman must have sunk before she could take to that life!"
"Yes," said Susan.
"So low that there couldn't possibly be left any shred of feeling or decency anywhere in her." Susan did not reply.
"It's not a question of morals, but of sensibility," pursued he. "Some day I'm going to write a play or a story about it. A woman with anything to her, who had to choose between that life and death, wouldn't hesitate an instant. She couldn't. A streetwalker!" And again he made that gesture of disgust.
"Before you write," said Susan, in a queer, quiet voice, "you'll find out all about it. Maybe some of these girls—most of them—all of them—are still human beings. It's not fair to judge people unless you know. And it's so easy to say that someone else ought to die rather than do this or that."
"You can't imagine yourself doing such a thing," urged he.
Susan hesitated, then—"Yes," she said.
Her tone irritated him. "Oh, nonsense! You don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes," said Susan.
"Susie!" he exclaimed, looking reprovingly at her.
She met his eyes without flinching. "Yes," she said. "I have."
He stopped short and his expression set her bosom to heaving. But her gaze was steady upon his. "Why did you tell me!" he cried. "Oh, it isn't so—it can't be. You don't mean exactly that."
"Yes, I do," said she.
"Don't tell me! I don't want to know." And he strode on, she keeping beside him.
"I can't let you believe me different from what I am," replied she. "Not you. I supposed you guessed."
"Now I'll always think of it—whenever I look at you. . . . I simply can't believe it. . . . You spoke of it as if you weren't ashamed."
"I'm not ashamed," she said. "Not before you. There isn't anything I've done that I wouldn't be willing to have you know. I'd have told you, except that I didn't want to recall it. You know that nobody can live without getting dirty. The thing is to want to be clean—and to try to get clean afterward—isn't it?"
"Yes," he admitted, as if he had not been hearing. "I wish you hadn't told me. I'll always see it and feel it when I look at you."
"I want you to," said she. "I couldn't love you as I do if I hadn't gone through a great deal."
"But it must have left its stains upon you," said he. Again he stopped short in the street, faced her at the curb, with the crowd hurrying by and jostling them. "Tell me about it!" he commanded.
She shook her head. "I couldn't." To have told would have been like tearing open closed and healed wounds. Also it would have seemed whining—and she had utter contempt for whining. "I'll answer any question, but I can't just go on and tell."
"You deliberately went and did—that?"
"Yes."
"Haven't you any excuse, any defense?"
She might have told him about Burlingham dying and the need of money to save him. She might have told him about Etta—her health going—her mind made up to take to the streets, with no one to look after her. She might have made it all a moving and a true tale—of self-sacrifice for the two people who had done most for her. But it was not in her simple honest nature to try to shift blame. So all she said was:
"No, Rod."
"And you didn't want to kill yourself first?"
"No. I wanted to live. I was dirty—and I wanted to be clean. I was hungry—and I wanted food. I was cold—that was the worst. I was cold, and I wanted to get warm. And—I had been married—but I couldn't tell even you about that—except—after a woman's been through what I went through then, nothing in life has any real terror or horror for her."
He looked at her long. "I don't understand," he finally said."Come on. Let's go back to the hotel."
She walked beside him, making no attempt to break his gloomy silence. They went up to their room and she sat on the lounge by the window. He lit a cigarette and half sat, half lay, upon the bed. After a long time he said with a bitter laugh, "And I was so sure you were a good woman!"
"I don't feel bad," she ventured timidly. "Am I?"
"Do you mean to tell me," he cried, sitting up, "that you don't think anything of those things?"
"Life can be so hard and cruel, can make one do so many——"
"But don't you realize that what you've done is the very worst thing a woman can do?"
"No," said she. "I don't. . . . I'm sorry you didn't understand. I thought you did—not the details, but in a general sort of way. I didn't mean to deceive you. That would have seemed to me much worse than anything I did."
"I might have known! I might have known!" he cried—rather theatrically, though sincerely withal—for Mr. Spenser was a diligent worker with the tools of the play-making trade. "I learned who you were as soon as I got home the night I left you in Carrolton. They had been telephoning about you to the village. So I knew about you."
"About my mother?" asked she. "Is that what you mean?"
"Oh, you need not look so ashamed," said he, graciously, pityingly.
"I am not ashamed," said she. But she did not tell him that her look came from an awful fear that he was about to make her ashamed of him.
"No, I suppose you aren't," he went on, incensed by this further evidence of her lack of a good woman's instincts. "I really ought not to blame you. You were born wrong—born with the moral sense left out."
"Yes, I suppose so," said she, wearily.
"If only you had lied to me—told me the one lie!" cried he. "Then you wouldn't have destroyed my illusion. You wouldn't have killed my love."
She grew deathly white; that was all.
"I don't mean that I don't love you still," he hurried on. "But not in the same way. That's killed forever."
"Are there different ways of loving?" she asked."How can I give you the love of respect and trust—now?"
"Don't you trust me—any more?"
"I couldn't. I simply couldn't. It was hard enough before on account of your birth. But now—— Trust a woman who had been a—a—I can't speak the word. Trust you? You don't understand a man."
"No, I don't." She looked round drearily. Everything in ruins. Alone again. Outcast. Nowhere to go but the streets—the life that seemed the only one for such as she. "I don't understand people at all. . . . Do you want me to go?"
She had risen as she asked this. He was beside her instantly."Go!" he cried. "Why I couldn't get along without you."
"Then you love me as I love you," Said she, putting her arms round him. "And that's all I want. I don't want what you call respect. I couldn't ever have hoped to get that, being born as I was—could I? Anyhow, it doesn't seem to me to amount to much. I can't help it, Rod—that's the way I feel. So just love me—do with me whatever you will, so long as it makes you happy. And I don't need to be trusted. I couldn't think of anybody but you."
He felt sure of her again, reascended to the peak of the moral mountain. "You understand, we can never get married. We can never have any children."
"I don't mind. I didn't expect that. We canlove—can't we?"
He took her face between his hands. "What an exquisite face it is," he said, "soft and smooth! And what clear, honest eyes! Where isit?Whereisit? Itmustbe there!"
"What, Rod?"
"The—the dirt."
She did not wince, but there came into her young face a deeper pathos—and a wan, deprecating, pleading smile. She said:
"Maybe love has washed it away—if it was there. It never seemed to touch me—any more than the dirt when I had to clean up my room."
"You mustn't talk that way. Why you are perfectly calm! You don't cry or feel repentant. You don't seem to care."
"It's so—so past—and dead. I feel as if it were another person. And it was, Rod!"
He shook his head, frowning. "Let's not talk about it," he said harshly. "If only I could stop thinking about it!"
She effaced herself as far as she could, living in the same room with him. She avoided the least show of the tenderness she felt, of the longing to have her wounds soothed. She lay awake the whole night, suffering, now and then timidly and softly caressing him when she was sure that he slept. In the morning she pretended to be asleep, let him call her twice before she showed that she was awake. A furtive glance at him confirmed the impression his voice had given. Behind her pale, unrevealing face there was the agonized throb of an aching heart, but she had the confidence of her honest, utter love; he would surely soften, would surely forgive. As for herself—she had, through loving and feeling that she was loved, almost lost the sense of the unreality of past and present that made her feel quite detached and apart from the life she was leading, from the events in which she was taking part, from the persons most intimately associated with her. Now that sense of isolation, of the mere spectator or the traveler gazing from the windows of the hurrying train—that sense returned. But she fought against the feeling it gave her.
That evening they went to the theater—to see Modjeska in "Magda."
Susan had never been in a real theater. The only approach to a playhouse in Sutherland was Masonic Hall. It had a sort of stage at one end where from time to time wandering players gave poor performances of poor plays or a minstrel show or a low vaudeville. But none of the best people of Sutherland went—at least, none of the women. The notion was strong in Sutherland that the theater was of the Devil—not so strong as in the days before they began to tolerate amateur theatricals, but still vigorous enough to give Susan now, as she sat in the big, brilliant auditorium, a pleasing sense that she, an outcast, was at last comfortably at home. Usually the first sight of anything one has dreamed about is pitifully disappointing. Neither nature nor life can build so splendidly as a vivid fancy. But Susan, in some sort prepared for the shortcomings of the stage, was not disappointed. From rise to fall of curtain she was so fascinated, so absolutely absorbed, that she quite forgot her surroundings, even Rod. And between the acts she could not talk for thinking. Rod, deceived by her silence, was chagrined. He had been looking forward to a great happiness for himself in seeing her happy, and much profit from the study of the viewpoint of an absolutely fresh mind. It wasn't until they were leaving the theater that he got an inkling of the true state of affairs with her.
"Let's go to supper," said he.
"If you don't mind," replied she, "I'd rather go home. I'm very tired."
"You were sound asleep this morning. So you must have slept well," said he sarcastically.
"It's the play," said she.
"Whydidn't you like it?" he asked, irritated.
She looked at him in wonder. "Like what? The play?" She drew a long breath. "I feel as if it had almost killed me."
He understood when they were in their room and she could hardly undress before falling into a sleep so relaxed, so profound, that it made him a little uneasy. It seemed to him the exhaustion of a child worn out with the excitement of a spectacle. And her failure to go into ecstasies the next day led him further into the same error. "Modjeska is very good asMagda," said he, carelessly, as one talking without expecting to be understood. "But they say there's an Italian woman—Duse—who is the real thing."
Modjeska—Duse—Susan seemed indeed not to understand. "I hated her father," she said. "He didn't deserve to have such a wonderful daughter."
Spenser had begun to laugh with her first sentence. At the second he frowned, said bitterly: "I might have known! You get it all wrong. I suppose you sympathize withMagda?"
"I worshiped her," said Susan, her voice low and tremulous with the intensity of her feeling.
Roderick laughed bitterly. "Naturally," he said. "You can't understand."
An obvious case, thought he. She was indeed one of those instances of absolute lack of moral sense. Just as some people have the misfortune to be born without arms or without legs, so others are doomed to live bereft of a moral sense. A sweet disposition, a beautiful body, but no soul; not a stained soul, but no soul at all. And his whole mental attitude toward her changed; or, rather, it was changed by the iron compulsion of his prejudice. The only change in his physical attitude—that is, in his treatment of her—was in the direction of bolder passion. of complete casting aside of all the restraint a conventional respecter of conventional womanhood feels toward a woman whom he respects. So, naturally, Susan, eager to love and to be loved, and easily confusing the not easily distinguished spiritual and physical, was reassured. Once in a while a look or a phrase from him gave her vague uneasiness; but on the whole she felt that, in addition to clear conscience from straightforwardness, she had a further reason for being glad Chance had forced upon her the alternative of telling him or lying. She did not inquire into the realities beneath the surface of their life—neither into what he thought of her, nor into what she thought of him—thought in the bottom of her heart. She continued to fight against, to ignore, her feeling of aloneness, her feeling of impending departure.
She was aided in this by her anxiety about their finances. In his efforts to place his play he was spending what were for them large sums of money—treating this man and that to dinners, to suppers—inviting men to lunch with him at expensive Broadway restaurants. She assumed that all this was necessary; he said so, and he must know. He was equally open-handed when they were alone, insisting on ordering the more expensive dishes, on having suppers they really did not need and drink which she knew she would be better off without—and, she suspected, he also. It simply was not in him, she saw, to be careful about money. She liked it, as a trait, for to her as to all the young and the unthinking carelessness about money seems a sure, perhaps the surest, sign of generosity—when in fact the two qualities are in no way related. Character is not a collection of ignorant impulses but a solidly woven fabric of deliberate purposes. Carelessness about anything most often indicates a tendency to carelessness about everything. She admired his openhanded way of scattering; she wouldn't have admired it in herself, would have thought it dishonest and selfish. But Rod was different.Hehad the "artistic temperament," while she was a commonplace nobody, who ought to be—and was—grateful to him for allowing her to stay on and for making such use of her as he saw fit. Still, even as she admired, she saw danger, grave danger, a disturbingly short distance ahead. He described to her the difficulties he was having in getting to managers, in having his play read, and the absurdity of the reasons given for turning it down. He made light of all these; the next manager would see, would give him a big advance, would put the play on—and then, Easy Street!
But experience had already killed what little optimism there was in her temperament—and there had not been much, because George Warham was a successful man in his line, and successful men do not create or permit optimistic atmosphere even in their houses. Nor had she forgotten Burlingham's lectures on the subject with illustrations from his own spoiled career; she understood it all now—and everything else he had given her to store up in her memory that retained everything. With that philippic against optimism in mind, she felt what Spenser was rushing toward. She made such inquiries about work for herself as her inexperience and limited opportunities permitted. She asked, she begged him, to let her try to get a place. He angrily ordered her to put any such notion out of her head. After a time she nerved herself again to speak. Then he frankly showed her why he was refusing.
"No," said he peremptorily, "I couldn't trust you in those temptations. You must stay where I can guard you."
A woman who had deliberately taken to the streets—why, she thought nothing of virtue; she would be having lovers with the utmost indifference; and while she was not a liar yet—"at least, I think not"—how long would that last? With virtue gone, virtue the foundation of woman's character—the rest could no more stand than a house set on sand.
"As long as you want me to love you, you've got to stay with me," he declared. "If you persist, I'll know you're simply looking for a chance to go back to your old ways."
And though she continued to think and cautiously to inquire about work she said no more to him. She spent not a penny, discouraged him from throwing money away—as much as she could without irritating him—and waited for the cataclysm. Waited not in gloom and tears but as normal healthy youth awaits any adversity not definitely scheduled for an hour close at hand. It would be far indeed from the truth to picture Susan as ever for long a melancholy figure to the eye or even wholly melancholy within. Her intelligence and her too sympathetic heart were together a strong force for sadness in her life, as they cannot but be in any life. In this world, to understand and to sympathize is to be saddened. But there was in her a force stronger than either or both. She had superb health. It made her beautiful, strong body happy; and that physical happiness brought her up quickly out of any depths—made her gay in spite of herself, caused her to enjoy even when she felt that it was "almost like hard-heartedness to be happy." She loved the sun and in this city where the sun shone almost all the days, sparkling gloriously upon the tiny salt particles filling the air and making it delicious to breathe and upon the skin—in this City of the Sun as she called it, she was gay even when she was heavy-hearted.
Thus, she was no repellent, aggravating companion to Rod as she awaited the cataclysm.
It came in the third week. He spent the entire day away from her, toward midnight he returned, flushed with liquor. She had gone to bed. "Get up and dress," said he with an irritability toward her which she had no difficulty in seeing was really directed at himself. "I'm hungry—and thirsty. We're going out for some supper."
"Come kiss me first," said she, stretching out her arms. Several times this device had shifted his purpose from spending money on the needless and expensive suppers.
He laughed. "Not a kiss. We're going to have one final blow-out. I start to work tomorrow. I've taken a place on theHerald—on space, guaranty of twenty-five a week, good chance to average fifty or sixty."
He said this hurriedly, carelessly, gayly—guiltily. She showed then and there what a surpassing wise young woman she was, for she did not exclaim or remind him of his high resolve to do or die as a playwright. "I'll be ready in a minute," was all she said.
She dressed swiftly, he lounging on the sofa and watching her. He loved to watch her dress, she did it so gracefully, and the motions brought out latent charms of her supple figure. "You're not so sure-fingered tonight as usual," said he. "I never saw you make so many blunders—and you've got one stocking on wrong side out."