"Tell us about Harry Strauss and his nickel," said Blake to her.

"Oh, yes. The other day I was telephoning and Harry, as usual, was

listening. Before I got through he called, 'Don't hang up; I want to

talk to him.' Well, you know how it is when you're--busy and you're

telephoning. When I was through I--instinctively hung up, just as

Harry made a move to grab the phone. He shook his head, went 'Teh.

Teh,' and I said, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I'll get him right back,' and I

started to--call the number again. And Harry said, shaking his

finger at me, 'Listen, my dear, you ought to be more careful. Every

time you do that it costs a nickel!'"

Letty trilled laughter. "Oh, my Gosh! Why'n't you tell him you'd

give him the nickel?"

"Oh, I couldn't do that, Letty," said Grace reprovingly. "But Blake

and I--" she began to curl her lips and arch her shoulders, looking

from person to person--"Blake and I--have decided to call him

It-costs-a-nickel-Harry!" And she began her deep, prolonged,

continuous snigger.

Then Blake told them about another publicity man who had the habit of

adding, at the top of each news note, an impassioned plea for its

publication, concluding with the bribe of eternal gratitude from him

and his employer. His first name was Mike, so, as he and the

employer were both notorious for their piety, some of the dramatic

editors had nicknamed him For-Christ's-sake-print-this-Mike.

When he was done he looked solely at Grace and she rewarded him.

They were, or considered themselves to be, too unsentimental to use

endearments in front of other people, but they began a sort of

wrestling match which was a form of endearment. It was a

sophisticated wrestling match; merely a pulling and bending of arms

with a vast deal of deliberate mirth on Grace's part. There was none

of the apparent indelicacy of a pair cooing before others, yet they

were so self-sufficient, they erased everyone else so completely,

that even Letty sought to detach their interest from each other. As

for Harold, he looked out of the window and smoked, first cigarettes,

then a pipe. Harold would have liked Blake by himself; with Grace he

frequently found him insufferable.

Finally Letty attracted Blake's attention by some question about what

he would like to eat.

He paused in the wrestling match and said with complete naturalness,

"I can't stay."

"You can't stay to-night?" cried Letty. "But----"

Grace was slowly disengaging herself. It was understood that Blake

had to filch these Sunday afternoons from his wife; he was always

supposed to be working on his play at a friend's house and he usually

had to be back for supper. But--the same thought was in the minds of

both girls--this was the first Sunday of his wife's absence, the

first day in months which he and Grace had had absolutely to

themselves.

She said, "Don't you want any supper?" It was a carefully surprised

question, not a demand.

"Bill asked me over there for supper."

Something of Grace's rigidity penetrated even to him.

He glanced at her and muttered, as if against his will, "We were

going to work to-night anyway."

For a second she could not answer. She had planned this Sunday to be

so perfect, unmarred by that shade of prior claim, unjarred by the

necessity for departure at a set hour. Sudden sensations of revolt

swarmed within her like a disturbed hornet's nest. She felt her

voice freezing with the effort to keep it tearless and unexacting.

Presently, she said, "Oh. I wish--you'd tell me those things in

time--so I could--make--my own plans."

"Well, you can stay here now, can't you?" said Blake through tighter

lips.

"So I can--now," she said quietly, "but I might have made--other

arrangements."

She did not mean to let Blake depart in sullenness, however. It was

one of her axioms never to permit even the slightest breach to remain

unadjusted overnight, "never to sleep on a quarrel." No telling what

depths it might borrow from the thoughtful spaciousness of the night!

She followed him to the entrance, from which could be heard her

special laughter accompanying their lingering embrace.

Then Grace, Harold, and Letty were left alone.

"You might go down and get something to eat," suggested Letty,

speaking to Harold for the first time. "Everything's a lot cheaper

at that little delicatessen on Broadway and they won't deliver. I've

argued and argued with them and they won't."

"Of course they won't," grumbled Harold. "That's how they can afford

to sell cheaper. Can't you get it through your head that when

production costs are higher, prices must rise? You're like all

consumers----"

"Oh, you and your old production costs!" cried Letty. "Very well.

I'm a consumer and I don't care who knows it! I don't give a rap

about producers. I'm a consumer. I consume." She flounced over to

the telephone in the alcove.

Grace began to talk amicably to Harold, trying to "smooth him over."

"Speaking of production costs," she said, "do you know--you have an

admirer? Remember that Miss Vestry who held forth on potteries? She

was all het up--when I told her you were a manager in an underwear

factory. Said she'd like to know one person in New York who didn't

have some job connected with words."

"That's a funny idea," said Harold unwillingly.

And, "What was that?" demanded Letty as she flung herself back on the

couch. "Have you been seeing her?"

"Yes. I had dinner with her last week. She's a funny girl but--sort

of interesting. She's all alone here, lives in a weird rooming

house. I asked her why she didn't try for a job in the Fashion

Department and she said she hated the _Dress Daily_ and hated all the

jobs that had sprung up around words. She said when Mr. Milford

started to dictate she felt like--a fly caught in a spider's web!

She told me she wished she could find something to do in a place

where they _made_--things. No wonder she knew so much about

potteries. It seems her father is a potter or something like that."

"I always hated stenography, too," declared Letty. "All that stew

and fuss to write a lot of bunk!"

"You wouldn't know anything about it," put in Harold. "You were a

bum stenog."

"That's right. Take it out on me!"

The food, when it finally arrived, also had a veneer, the enameled

sheen of the delicatessen. They served themselves dabs of many

things, one plate to a person, put the plates on paper napkins in

their laps, and ate, mostly in silence till Harold remarked that,

considering the young fortune Letty spent on food, it was remarkable

how rotten this supper could taste.

"Yes," said Letty bitterly, "and you heard what I got, Grace, when I

tried to save some money. And I was bawled out for extravagance all

through a vaudeville show just because I asked him to raise my

clothes allowance!"

Harold gave Letty a look which said, "How dare you bring that girl

into our affairs?" All the same, he could not help defending

himself. "I told you why I couldn't raise your clothes allowance.

I'm taking out more insurance. Letty doesn't understand that that's

more for her benefit than extra clothes."

"I'd rather have the clothes," said Letty. "You're always worrying

about what would become of me if anything happened to you. I never

worry. It's not as if we had a family. I could go back to work."

"Mm. What would you do? You were just saying how you hated

stenography."

Letty tossed her head. "Oh, well, I wouldn't work forever. It

sounds vain--but I know I could always marry somebody or get kept or

something." She shrugged.

Grace began the preliminary motions to her deep snigger.

"I dare say--Paul--would be glad to step into Harold's shoes," she

suggested, emphasizing the joke with a coy lift of her brows.

Harold went over to the phonograph and put on a record, and Letty

behind his back made a warning "oh" of her mouth. She started to

pile the dishes and carry them into the kitchenette, calling to

Harold for assistance, but on her return trip she stopped by Grace

and said something to her and giggled. Grace whispered, "You _did_

see him?" Then she put her hand hastily over her mouth. Harold had

also stepped out of the kitchenette. She didn't believe he had

heard, but the expression of his face was so enraged that she grew

pale for a moment and thought that really Letty tantalized him too

much.

Neither Harold nor Letty spoke for some time. Although Grace

realized that the former was angry and the latter uneasy, it would

not occur to her that she could be involved. After an evening visit

to Letty she nearly always stayed the night, so, with the assurance

of precedent, she got up, said she was sleepy, and went into the

alcove.

Even more than the clandestine use to which she put the apartment,

this habit of hers irritated Harold. He had had many a quarrel with

Letty over the requisitioning of their place Sunday afternoons and

only an idea of the futility of the procedure restrained him from

forbidding it. Letty was quite capable of lending the key anyhow and

Grace of arranging matters so that he need never know. Whenever

Grace made ready to spend the night, the same fear of what Letty

would do, plus a sense of middle-class manners, never let him go

beyond the muttered comment: "Hasn't she got a home?" But to-night

was different. To-night he was incensed beyond fear and beyond

courtesy. Not only could he and Letty never seem to be mentally

alone in their house; but often they couldn't even be physically

alone! He said to Letty, "Go in there and tell her to go home."

"I will not," replied Letty at once.

"If you won't, I will. I expect to have my home to myself once in a

while."

Unconsciously, Letty raised her voice. "As far as I'm concerned, you

can have your old home to yourself--all to yourself--for ever and

ever."

Grace now appeared between the curtains of the alcove. She had put

on Letty's dressing gown and looked from one to the other, pale, with

large, disturbed eyes. She had caught Letty's last words; still she

never thought that the quarrel could include her. Only, she was

sorry for both of them.

"We think you'd better go home to-night," said Harold.

She was so taken aback that her cheeks grew quite white and haggard,

her eyes turned toward him with a dark, welling pathos. Harold moved

his own eyes quickly.

"Don't mind a thing he says," cried Letty. "Don't go home. I want

you to stay."

"No. I'd better go."

She walked, white-faced, into the alcove, followed by Letty. Her

shadow had been pulled up short and she was, for the moment, stunned

by the comprehension of what this might mean to her.

CHAPTER NINE

When Grace had not seen Letty for a fortnight, her mind began to

weave in and about various stratagems. She knew she would make her

way back to their house--she had to--but her life, especially of

late, had been so based on substrata of manipulation that it never

occurred to her to do this directly. At last she hit on a plan which

included Anita Vestry. The latter was not so much associated with

her as to draw Harold's instant suspicion; besides, Letty, in

Harold's hearing, had asked the girl to come and see her.

One noon she made a special trip downtown to have lunch with Anita,

to confide in her and to broach to her the idea of calling up Letty

and inviting her to the theater. Grace would get them free tickets

and would meet them.

"I really want to see her ever so much," Grace pleaded. "Of course,

I call her up, but it's not the same. Harold plays bridge to-morrow

so, if he _knows_ she's going with you, it'll be all right."

Anita couldn't understand. "Why don't you just call her up and meet

her downtown yourself?"

"No," said Grace, "I want her to have a perfect alibi. If you call

up at dinner time Harold will answer the phone and he'll know _you_

are making the arrangements, and he'll be satisfied. They fight so

much about everything, I don't want them to fight over me. Besides,

I'd like to have you along."

This was not an afterthought. There was an uncommon stability, a

fresh sturdiness about Anita, which was new to Grace and which

attracted her. All her other relations--at home, with Blake, at the

office; even, now, with Letty--seemed so precarious that she was

nearly always in a state of inner fear--an apprehensive shivering of

her very soul. She longed for solid, utterly smooth ground, and

Anita gave promise of this.

By some maneuver Grace had managed to get two pairs of seats, so

Letty and Grace sat together, and Anita sat behind them by herself.

She enjoyed it that way. She luxuriated in the vacant seat.

"If I am ever rich," she thought, "I will always buy three seats to

the theater; one for me and a vacant one on either side."

A fig for talk of selfishness when, for the price of selfishness, one

could buy some freedom from too enveloping human contacts! But

probably she would never be rich. The play was poor, even Anita, who

merely liked to watch the lights and the faces, was forced to

recognize. But the featured actress had a voice. What a voice! It

made the cheapest commonplaces sound like mottoes on glorious tombs.

The audience was aquiver with her voice.

During the first intermission Anita remarked on it to Grace.

"Yes," said Grace with a grave note of opinion, "I think so, too. I

think they're--silly not to star her."

"Imagine her as Juliet!" suggested Letty.

"N-no. She's not helpless enough. I don't feel that a Juliet--would

have so much poise. But Candida! Blake and I are mad about Shaw and

we decided that she'd make the perfect Candida. I told Dexter I

wanted to meet her, and if he can arrange it I'd like to tell her

that."

Somehow, Anita had never realized that actresses could be met. The

idea struck her very suddenly and she looked at Grace, in spite of

herself, with wonder that had a tinge of awe in it. Anita would not

quite have dared to cry as Letty did, "Oh, will you take me along,

Grace?"

"If it's--possible," said Grace with dignity.

During the second intermission Grace and Letty held a long, vigorous

consultation on clothes. Anita, listening, could not understand why

they had troubled to trick and to arrange this evening for such talk.

She could not feel the warm alliance between them from which each

drew comfort and composure, no matter what they said. From each

other they got that sense of the burden of troubles, emotions, and

thoughts being eased, shared; of some other helping to live their

lives which men may hope to freely get from women, but which wise

women never even attempt to expect from men. To be sure, men can

have their easy, unexacting, open friendships, and laugh at the

intricate intimacies between women, for it is upon the shoulders of

women that they unload the subtler moods and cares. But this lack in

their lives women must look to other women to fill, unless they can

bear to be, too often, entirely alone.

After the theater the three girls walked up Broadway, past the first

rush and chatter of the crowds, the first battle of lights and

electric signs, past the kitten made of light naïvely chasing a spool

made of light, to a slightly quieter section before another turn of

that twisting, glinting street, opening and shutting accordion-like.

They went into Bouton's and sat down at a blackly shining, glassy

table.

"Three frŏsted chŏcolates," ordered Grace.

"Three frawsted chawc'lets?" inquired the waiter politely.

They began to giggle behind his back.

"It's always that way," said Grace. "I've tried every combination

but I never hit on the right one. If I say 'frawsted chŏcolate,'

the waiter rebukes me with 'frŏsted chawc'let.' And if I reverse

the pronunciation, he reverses it, too, so we never meet."

They were merry, but both Grace and Letty glanced at the clock from

time to time. Letty said in a low aside under cover of the general

hubbub, "Are you going up with me?"

"No, to Brooklyn," murmured Grace. She gave the faintest nod in

Anita's direction. Anita was not meant to catch the nod.

Grace looked up at her swiftly across the table.

"How is your job going now?" asked Anita.

"Oh, so-so. Al has a movie. I've been working all day with a

vaudeville act. Midgets. I had an awfully bright idea--if I say so

myself. Eight of them--piled into a cab and then refused to pay

extra fare, claiming they were so small that eight of them made only

four legal persons. So the driver--haled them to court. He was

marvelous--we had to let him in on it, of course--fell right into the

spirit of the thing and was very--indignant, and postured and

declaimed like anything. I love taxi drivers. They always catch the

spirit of things. But we had to let the judge in, too, so he would

dismiss the case before the afternoon show and that--was difficult.

Harry fixed that up. We've got a tremendous spread in the _Evening

World_ to-night--it's just their meat--and stuff in all the other

papers. Very funny.

"But none of it's--easy," she explained with more emphatic pauses and

doubly serious eyes. "It's not like doing publicity for an

established theatrical firm. They're--entitled to a certain amount

of space in the dramatic columns. They have standing and they

advertise. Harry Strauss places advertising for his clients, too,

but not everywhere and not _enough_ and not--consistently. Besides,

the papers are wary of him into the bargain. So it's a process of

grab as grab can. And he certainly expects you to grab. He wants

all the news space and all the front pages!"

"I have a singer, too," she added with a snigger. "Baritone. I

think I've--acquired him, Letty. Two lunches and one dinner so far,

and he wants to teach me how to speak Italian and eat spaghetti.

Pretty good--what? We're also going to have a show soon--called

_Mamie_--and I think perhaps Mr. Strauss'll let me handle it alone.

If I do well perhaps I'll even get--a raise. Do you know, Annabella

told me she paid Strauss $200 a week, and I don't know what the night

club paid him. It's unbelievable, isn't it? He gets the highest

prices in the business."

"I'll bet Blake minds the baritone," put in Letty.

"Minds? I guess he doesn't," said Grace firmly. She seemed

altogether less flexible than Anita had ever seen her. Her eyes were

merely large eyes, very calm. "I guess--he has no right to mind. I

must find some way to spend my evenings."

There was one thing more that Letty wished to know, and as they were

leaving, single file, she murmured to Grace, "Then when is she coming

back?"

"Not till December," said Grace, low. "She changed her mind and

wanted to come home for Thanksgiving but--she was told to _stay_. If

Ma should call..."

"I know. Don't worry."

Some time later, when Anita was preparing for bed, the two asides,

the conversation she had overheard at the night club, the slight

warning nod began to arrange themselves idly in her mind. And, not

of her volition, but like the final link of a puzzle slipping into

place without effort when all the other parts have been set in order,

there came back to her a remark Grace had made at their one dinner

together. Blake lived in Brooklyn.

With a certain gallantry, she at once shook off this unexpected

meaning, a meaning that seemed too discordant in the atmosphere of

the tragic which she had sensed about Grace; a meaning which left a

wryness in her mouth and opened before her mind a shocking vista of

sad, small, endless, and tasteless adaptations ever at their task of

leveling and making endurable. After all, what did she know of

tragedy? It suddenly struck her that perhaps the very souls in hell

found obscure dingy ways of habituating themselves to hell fire and

thereafter survived in the midst of it with an unseemly equanimity.

CHAPTER TEN

During the last two years of school Grace had taken her classes at

the Washington Square College. Between classes, which came in the

late afternoon and evening, she would cross Washington Square Park

and explore the raggedy-taggedy streets of the Italian and artistic

colonies. Sometimes she went to the tea-room cafés that brought

together art and tourists. When she met Blake Andrews in one of

these (very formally, they were introduced) she met an even-featured

young man with sandy hair, a solid chin, and thin cheeks. He

slouched with determination, did not trouble to be polite, and did

not trouble to be neat. The acidity of failure she mistook and he

mistook for the irony of sophistication. He talked about books,

plays, and the stage. So did she. He was married, which was too

bad, but not definitely against him in our times, and his wife

remained in St. Louis, which was better. He led a curious life.

This life seemed strange even to Blake, though he acted as if he had

been born to it. His people were decent, semi-substantial folks in

St. Louis. He had married, as Grace said, the "little girl next

door," a pretty girl, whose porch and lawn adjoined, who had gone to

the same college, who was gentle and dutiful and knew how to cook.

No one had forced him to marry her. No one had forced him to enter a

relative's bank. There he had done his work equably and capably and

was in line for a vice-presidency, at least. He and Edith, his wife,

had an apartment, not a house like their parents', with all sorts of

novel appliances. They were a modern young couple. When the war

began Blake enlisted at once, and after his discharge he stayed in

New York. He said that he wished to write plays.

Blake came not too unnaturally by an interest in the theater. An

uncle was on the stage--on the road, rather, but with headquarters in

New York; the aunt, too, was of the profession. They lived in a

two-room apartment over a restaurant on West Forty-seventh Street.

There Blake took up his abode. At one end of the street burlesque

chorus girls with fat legs stood about the stage door of the

Columbia; opposite, agents and vaudeville actors greeted each other

warmly around the Palace. In the center of the block Spaniards

leaned against the portals of the Hotel America, contemplating with

dumb, warm eyes and chewing toothpicks. The porter constantly moved

trunks with vivid placards. Actors and fight managers were shaved by

the window of the Hotel Somerset. Highly painted, ardently

respectable women, with wedding rings, divorces, fur coats, and

diamonds of various grades, walked in and out of the delicatessen

shops, lingerie shops, restaurants, lobbies, and the few remaining

brownstone houses. Lap dogs were aired before shabby apartment

hotels and trucks of scenery unloaded before the climbing iron

staircase back of the Palace.

At first Blake hunted for work. As he disliked the only sort of work

he knew and was not familiar with any other, he found no work. He

looked up various people from St. Louis, made acquaintance with

Broadway, and for a time he drifted toward the Village. His

struggles had served no purpose, so he made up his mind with a vigor

none the less effective for being inert, to struggle no more. He

would not go home. He did no work. He even stopped shaving and paid

no further attention to his clothes. His parents sent him a little

money and not too many remonstrances; he was their only child and

they swore by him--perhaps they remembered his firm chin and

unwavering gait. His wife stayed with her people and wrote him

bewildered, pleading letters. His uncle provided food and shelter.

Blake went about, unshaven, thin-cheeked, morose, not confiding in

anyone.

He was, as one Village girl defined it, in the "sitting business."

Whenever she entered a Village café and saw him there, sitting sourly

in a corner, she called, "Ah, there! Still in the sitting business,

what?" Blake was outsitting his parents, his job, his duty, his

class, and St. Louis, Missouri. He even had a faint hope that he

might outsit his wife, a faint hope since Blake came of a social

stratum in which it is one of the virtues of wives to stick like a

wet hair to the hand. To prove, however, that he had at least outsat

this virtue in himself, he made some careless love to girls who

painted or wrote and thereby, necessarily to Blake, flaunted their

lack of cohesion. For several months he and Grace met thus, very

casually, enjoying the novelty of each other's "lines."

One day they were walking up Sixth Avenue when a shabby man

approached Blake and asked him for money to buy a meal. Blake had a

quarter in his pocket. The sight of pain, trouble of any sort, was

hateful to him, for, affected by it though he was, he found himself

averse with every fiber of his lethargic, self-contained nature to

any effort at alleviation. He thought he had decided that such

effort was futile. He could not help other people's troubles;

therefore he wished to be unconscious of them. They made him feel

too powerless. He put his hand into his pocket, because of Grace,

and at once thought better of it. He didn't mean to be confused by

gallantry. The man added, "I been in vaudeville for years, mister,

and now I can't get work." Blake walked by with an awkward laugh.

"Oh, in vaudeville?" he said. "Then you're not worth even a quarter.

Apply to the N.V.A." He flushed, as he said this, at his own

brutality.

Grace hurried past him, caught up with the man, and searched for some

change. She was white-lipped and had difficulty to keep back the

tears. She did not think she could even bear Blake by her side.

Blake had a stroke of luck that year. He wrote a playlet with

another man who knew an agent who sold it as a vaudeville act.

Toward the end of the year Edith managed to get the money to come to

New York, their furniture was brought from St. Louis, and Blake found

himself in the midst of his lares and penates in Brooklyn, with a

vague income, a tender if puzzled wife, and a love affair accelerated

by its own speed, going now of its own volition.

At last neither Grace nor Blake could make any further attempts to

fly before the fire with which they had been playing. They merely

sought, with a muddled stubbornness on Blake's part, to keep the

flames away from that parched island where Edith dwelt, bewildered,

but not even imagining, utterly unknowing. Their hope, at least

Blake's hope, was that some day the island would grow too parched for

human endurance and Edith would cease to forgive and to submit and by

herself, of her own free will, try to escape. To cast her out from

even this poor refuge to which she clung so intently seemed

impossible to Blake. He could not be so cruel to her. And Grace,

resenting this division between his love and his kindness, this

division which was so nicely defined for her, which Blake could not,

would not, realize, saw no way but to yield. She wished for both the

love and the kindness; she would not rest and could not feel serene

till she had both. But for the present, for the sake of peace, she

had made her choice. There was a rough justice in it, a painful

justice. She would have the love and Edith might, undisturbed for

the present, have the kindness.

Blake, walking up Broadway on a January afternoon, was full of a new,

a dreaded necessity for kindness which he had had to swallow and

which now Grace would have to swallow or reject. He had a reason

which caused his memory to stumble back through the passage of the

months, past various milestones which he had never considered before

but which he found he recollected surprisingly well. He had a good

memory which he kept to himself. The urging and the pleading were

blurred because they had been so distasteful, but it was not so with

a certain promise that he had made to Grace, all the circumstances of

which appeared to him with a double distinctness. He understood why

he had made the promise and why the promise had been called for. He

understood also why he had broken the promise. And how was he to

explain it? He could shift the blame and he could not shift the

blame at all honorably. He had a defense and yet, before accusing

eyes, it crumbled into no defense at all. He could not help

remembering the dark glare of those eyes, whose suction was, more

often than he cared to admit, a source of wonder to him, focused on

him as Grace said, in all tense seriousness, "If that ever happened,

I--I would kill you. I would."

And yet, what had he to blame himself for? Who had made the choice

if not Grace, while he kept himself consciously aloof, while,

unconsciously, how could he help that he had willed to aid the

choice? He could not bear to see the tangle, wished with all his

heart to turn his head and avoid it, as one avoids the ugly sight of

some mangled animal by the wayside, but he found it, with loathing,

with embarrassment and dismay, impossible, for he was within the

snarl, he was part of the mangled animal.

Even when he did not wish to see Grace, when what he had to say would

be much better said by letter, by written word, not face to face,

those eyes were steadily drawing him through the traffic, up

Broadway, around that special corner, and nearer, ever nearer, to

her. He had never before quite guessed how many arid spaces there

were in his life and how, from Grace's eyes, like deep, pliant pools,

he drew their constant and necessary refreshment.

He found her already sitting at their table. She wore an almost

springlike hat of pale silk, for it was one of those winter days

which give promises of spring that cannot possibly be kept. This day

had succeeded only in losing all its red corpuscles and was wan,

languid, dampish.

The hat shaded her eyes. To gain time he commented on it.

"Have you got your raise, then?" he asked, and Grace seemed

surprised. It was usually she who made the first allusions to her

work. Seeing him so concerned, however, she described a hopeful

interview with Harry Strauss and told him news of Mamie.

"Only, I thought he'd let me handle it myself, and now Al is in on

it, too, which makes things--very annoying. I feel as if I have to

be on my guard," she said disconsolately.

"Mm. He would cut throats all right."

"I don't understand that--sort of throat cutting," said Grace. "If I

were in his way--but I'm not at all. I have a feeling he thinks

Harry Strauss is grooming me, sort of, to take his place, at less

money. But that's silly, if Al really has an interest in the

business, as he says."

Blake thought, but had no advice to offer. The subject tired him on

the whole. He did not see why Grace could not do her work on the

surface, day by day, without peering and boring into underground

channels, like a woman. Besides, he was too unhappy and could not

bear his unhappiness alone and did not see how he could find the way

to make her share it. Why didn't she see, of herself?

Grace watched him under her new hat with dark, unlighted eyes.

Something was wrong between them to-day, and to-day she felt too

weary herself to make the effort to set it right. She ventured one

usual question, but without verve or hope.

"Everything--as usual?"

Now was the way opened. He glanced up with a sense of relief and saw

by Grace's posture, her eyes drooping over the table, the answer she

wished to-day. He nodded quickly. So that subject was closed.

Their tea dragged on.

Then, putting on her gloves, Grace said, "I have to dash to the

photographer's before he closes. Will I see you to-morrow?"

He nodded again, resigning himself with resentment to another day's

sole confusion and apprehensive thought, and walked on to pay the

check.

Grace could not, however, leave him yet. She stood by the door. "I

thought you might--walk up with me," she said, and glued her eyes to

him to see whether this was a mistake. He did not take her arm but

they walked on together.

Suddenly he had such a longing to rid himself of his burden of

suspense, even of anguish, that he wanted to halt in the middle of

the street and cry, "Look here, don't walk with me. I--my wife and

I--we're going to have a child," and have done with it and breathe

while he waited to see what would follow. His feet even paused for a

second, then he clutched her arm and pulled her on. Grace turned to

him her questioning eyes, just beginning to fear, saying nothing.

"Do you remember what you said--that you'd kill me--if----?" he said

swiftly. The memory rose at once to the surface of Grace's eyes.

"Well, you can do it now," he said, with a sneer at his pain and her

pain, and turned his face away.

She understood, but the understanding would not rise and surge within

her as easily as the memory had. She nodded her head several times

slowly, to make sure she knew, taking some slow breaths, making the

first minor inward adjustments quickly, quickly, holding back terror,

hugging hope fiercely, as people do who see the overwhelming flood on

the horizon. When she spoke her voice was calm though strained, as

if she called for news across a slight distance. She asked him how

it had happened. This he told her shortly, for this at least he owed

her. And when the baby was coming. This he hadn't asked and did not

care to know himself. It was a long way off.

They went on.

"It'll be sort of hard on you--I mean financially," she remarked. He

hardly dared to listen.

They went on.

"Babies are very expensive," she said in the same level voice.

After a while, something less than a sound, the feeling behind a

sound, moved him to look at her again. They walked on a street of

endless garages. Between the brim of the new hat and the collar of

her coat she was weeping openly, without noise. When she noticed his

eyes on her she bent her head completely away, almost back, and

fumbled from far off in her purse for a handkerchief.

"Oh, I forgot," she said with bitterness. "I mustn't cry. You don't

like that." This bitterness, this first and only bitterness, she

would permit herself.

Without thinking how or why any longer, they stopped in the middle of

the street and Blake found and clung to her hand. He looked so

white, so thin-faced, so stern. He hated to use the words of

tenderness and gazed at the pavement, clinging to her hand.

"When you don't cry any more, Grace, I'll know that you don't care

any more."

Their fingers clutched at each other's, intertwined tightly. He,

hugging his misery, could not think of her own. She, comforting him,

let it go till she should be alone. It would keep, never fear, it

would keep.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The photographer said that she would have to wait for the pictures.

He said, "Make yourself comfortable."

She heard him finally and sat down.

It was not the child itself that mattered--that there would be a

child. It was not the betrayal that mattered, the infidelity with

the other woman, the wife, the very woman against whom she had

particularly to be on guard, the very woman against whom he had

promised himself to be on guard. No. That was an entirely physical

betrayal, the circumstances of which he had explained, and which, no

matter how she might revolt against them, she could not help but

understand. But such waves of outrage, of hatred, of envy, of

misery, of she knew not what, stormed through her that she was bent

double with them in her chair. She bit her lips tightly to contain

them and buried her face in her coat collar. No part of it was

visible but a white speck of cheek and huge, dark eyes.

Back of her mind there had been a vague feeling, a vague wish,

scarcely credible and certainly not possible, for a child, one

particular child, Blake's child. Why? She had no interest in and no

sentiment about children, "the little brats!" And now through a

trick (pleading, crying that he no longer loved her; being above all,

so near, so close, so there), through a trap, planned and intended,

no matter how desperately planned and how pitifully intended, the

other woman would have the child.

With what passionate vanity Nature works first in some women in the

matter of having a child! Many a woman's first thought is to bear a

child by a man she loves not because, as the saying goes, she wants

his child, not because she wants any child, but because ecstasy is so

unimaginable when in the course of time it has fled; because it is so

impossible to articulate, translate into words as a keepsake, that

she wants the child as a not-to-be-belied, an actual, factual

reminder. A "pledge of love"--no, not that--but a child is a pledge

to remember, so that passion can never wholly be buried under mounds

of time and two look at each other and wonder with their brains,

their senses having entirely lost the responses, and try to recollect

and not really believe. When the memory wavers and the body is quite

oblivious, the child remains to certify the old emotion to the

groping mind.

Thus her agony surged through Grace and her jealousy clamored within

her. If she quarreled with Blake to-morrow and went years without

seeing him, soon, in a short time, their love would be lost from

their minds; they could meet and talk and wonder and try to recall

and it would be like trying to remember yesterday's sunsets or dawns

seen long ago. But Edith, she, this other woman and this unloved

woman, she would have the child, the living proof, something which

she and Blake could grasp through the miasmas of long afterward--the

common memory, through whose body, formed by their bodies, they could

reach back and forever after not wholly deny.

She had a long time to wait for the pictures. A twilight, faintly

violet, just stroked the windows, like a gentle hand. Behind a

screen the photographer and his assistants were busy, doing

something, drying the prints, and they talked and joked. Now and

then one of the men would come out and use the telephone. One boy

called the same number twice. The last time he said softly, quickly,

"I'm tied up here, baby. Be up soon." He was tall and had a smug,

wooden face. Grace looked him over with cold eyes and decided that

he was a dull young man. A very dull young man. She disliked him at

sight, nay, she hated him and all these satisfied, foolish dolts of

photographers. She was shivering in her chair, her hands shook so

that she clasped them, her very teeth chattered.

The photographer came over and said with concern, "Are you cold?" and

poured her a drink of Scotch. It was powerful, vivid stuff and now

made her shiver with its heat instead of with her cold. What was it

someone had said about telephones--was it Blake? Oh, yes. Something

about its being love that kept the wires busy and the company

prosperous, something about the long lines of booths in the late

afternoons being forever filled with men calling their wives and

lovers calling their sweethearts. Something about a soulless

corporation hiring hordes of operators and engineers and line-men,

keeping great experimental stations for the purpose of expediting the

course of love over the wires, paying fat dividends because Tom and

Mary were enabled to hear each other's voices and smile and quarrel

within a few seconds. Funny idea.

If those pictures weren't ready soon she wouldn't be able to stand

it; she would have to get out, do something, do anything. That last

thought made a sort of shriek in her. She rose from her chair. If

she could walk, now, up and down; but that was not possible here.

She sat down again, stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth and bit

it. She would like to tear it, to tear something! Limb from limb.

Yes, that was a very satisfactory description of a rending. To tear

limb from limb.

"Here you are," said the photographer. "Sorry to keep you waiting."

She took the folder. She almost wished to make a bow to him. She

inclined her head, anyhow, and said sweetly out of her white face,

"Thank you so much."

What had Harold once remarked in an unguarded moment of sympathy with

her? "Go out and walk. That helps." Walk. This miserable sky on

this miserable day would not even darken but grew weirdly lighter,

faded against the upspringing lights, grew yearning, grew wan. As

she walked, she shuddered horribly with cold and felt herself

flushing, red-hot, with the liquor. When she put a hand to her face

the heat of her cheek amazed her and the cold of her hand was deathly.

At that special point in her misery a bus appeared and made her look

about. She was on Fifth Avenue. The bus passed and stopped and took

its place in her sorrow, like a hearse. Always thereafter it kept

its place there, like a hearse. Whenever she remembered, she looked

about and found herself all at once on Fifth Avenue, she watched the

bus pass, black with people, and halt.

She saw in a moment of saving reality that she was near the street

where Anita Vestry lived. When the moment fled it merely left her

wondering when she had seen Anita last. She couldn't think. Not at

the opening of _Mamie_. No. Even Letty had not come to the opening.

And then she had a flash of acute brilliance, like a stroke of

lightning. The whole world grew electrically light with it. Why,

she could run to see Letty! No. Harold would be there. Harold

would learn, but to-night she really could not have him know,

to-night she could not have him see her white and trembling. He

would think--she would see it in his face--that it was too bad but

what did Grace expect? She had only reached what her road would lead

her to. She paused before a shop window, pinning her eyes to coats

and hats, trying to pin her mind to some object with the same

intentness. Then, as fast as she could, almost running, running away

from the solitary prison of misery, battling to escape it, she sped

in the direction of Anita's room.

Fortunately, Anita had not yet gone to dinner. She was lying on the

bed in a tiny room which held, besides, a small dressing table, an

old rocker, and a bit of matting. She was resting, feeling bored,

and she greeted Grace with pleasure. Since the opening of _Mamie_

she and Grace had met just once at the office. Anita noticed that

Grace hugged her coat about her and looked very white, that Grace

clasped her hands tightly, and she asked in surprise, "Is it very

cold out, now?"

Grace made no reply. In fact, now that she was here, she didn't know

what she wanted to do or what to say, yet she did not want to go away

either. She glanced around the room. She had seen it once before;

it told her the same story. It was very bare. At last she roused

herself and remembered a dim duty.

"Will you do something for me?" she said to Anita hurriedly. "Will

you call up my mother and tell her I won't be home for dinner? I

have to look in on _Mamie_."

After a few moments Anita replied in some astonishment that she

would. She saw now that Grace was in trouble, what or how she could

not imagine, and remained silent. Grace went over to the dressing

table and took off her hat. But she did nothing, merely looked at

herself in the mirror with vague eyes and turned away. She

rearranged her hat.

"Have you had your dinner?" said Anita gently.

Grace made a gesture of distaste. "I'm not hungry." Then she seemed

to try with determination for composure and added, "I'll go with you

if you like."

"There's a tea room downstairs," said Anita. She felt that Grace

would not, could not, walk outside.

Grace ordered coffee and sat, turned a little sideways from Anita,

pulling her coat collar up about her face. The sight of Anita eating

made her almost sick. Once Anita asked, because it seemed that she

should, "Aren't you feeling well?" Grace shook her head.

Then Anita decided that she had better not notice. They were alone

in the tea room, but the service was slow and they sat there a long

time, a painful time. Anita sighed with relief when it was over,

thinking that now she would be allowed to go back to the room which

had seemed too empty before, which seemed overwhelmingly serene now.

But Grace took her arm as they went out and begged, "Will you walk

over to _Mamie_ with me? You may have to stand, they're selling out,

but you won't mind, will you? Really, it's an awfully good show."

In Grace's apparent state it would have been brutal to refuse. They

walked across town to _Mamie_. Here Grace began to regain her poise.

Though still white, she was businesslike, and Anita admired the calm,

pleasant way in which she talked to the house manager, exchanged a

few words with the box-office man, nodded to the ticket taker, and

arranged for Anita to have one vacant seat in the back row. Grace

stood behind her and viewed the theater with the professional

interest of an habitué. She remarked to Anita that she was learning

to "count up" the house. Throughout the first act Grace remained in

the rear, and whenever Anita glanced around she was quiet and cool,

with her eyes on the stage.

The show was pretty, the dancing good, the music gay and sweet, and

Anita felt how comfortable it was to sit at ease and watch the

enactment of passions lightly, certain of happy fulfillment, on a

stage. She thought musical comedies very jolly and liked the lack of

strain with which they translated easy emotions to the audience, easy

sentiment--too sentimental because it was so easy. But what a lot of

trouble that saved the audience! All it had to do was to watch the

dancers and be gay; to hum one of the popular love songs and to be in

love.

During the intermission Grace asked her whether she wanted to go back

stage. "I must have a few words with the handsome hero, and see if I

can get a Sunday story out of him," she said, haggard under the

yellow lights, but quite self-possessed. Anita, however, felt too

awkward to meet a hero as handsome as this one. She refused.

The house grew dark again. Some players appeared and pulled together

strands of a cloying plot. When they danced they were graceful, when

they sang they were soothing, but as soon as they opened their mouths

in the spoken word they became vulgar. And what spoken words they

uttered! Anita could not help writhing. She watched the people

around her with wonder that they should remain unaffected.

Then a man half-sang, half-declaimed a mammy song. He bent over the

footlights, he stretched out his arms, he made acrobatic sallies

almost into the audience, all with a hideous vigor and a violent, an

infuriatingly forceful, banality. Anita felt that she could not bear

it any longer. It did not relieve her to grit her teeth, to grimace,

or to glare at the concentrated faces about her. The whole theater

stank for her with this cheap sentiment, like cheap perfume. She got

up and disturbed half a row, stumbling over legs, braving angry looks

and impatient mumbles, beating her way out. Grace now stood by one

of the exits, in shadow.

Anita said, "Whew! I'm sorry, but I must get out, I can't stand

this."

With unexpected sympathy, Grace whispered, "Yes, it is pretty awful.

Yes, let's go."

The outside air was damp and heavy but at least odorless. They

wavered on a street corner. Then Anita saw that Grace was

shuddering, that she was no longer cool, that the skin under her eyes

and on her cheeks was drawn and yellow, and she asked again, "Are you

sick?"

"I don't feel well at all," said Grace with difficulty. "Will you

ride home with me--please do. I'll take a taxi."

Grace huddled into one corner and Anita sat in the other. A black

length of seat separated them. From time to time a light shone full

on Grace and Anita saw her clasping her hands with a handkerchief

between, her eyes huge and fixed on nothing. Anita held the silence.

Soon Grace rapped on the window and told the driver to take them

through the park. Anita did not know enough about New York to

understand that Grace was postponing her arrival home as long as

possible.

Sadly the park wove and unwove before them; the poor bare trees in

the wistful air, the bulky clouds overhead, the big mists of houses

around the farthest edges, the cheer of the electric baubles of

lights subdued. In the midst of it, Anita, sighing, glanced at Grace

again and saw a tear rolling evenly down one long cheek. She was

frightened and lowered her eyes quickly so that she would not see,

but she could not help murmuring, making one last attempt, "Can I do

anything for you?"

Grace was so long with her answer that Anita decided she would not

reply and settled back into the silence. She breathed heavily rather

than sighed, and suddenly Grace replied in a cool voice that did not

match the tear, "No. Blake's wife is having a baby. She thought--it

would bring them together."

So that was it. But Anita was far from full realization. She was

merely bewildered--and embarrassed. She moved closer to her side of

the taxi and frowned, careful to stare out of the window.

In a very small voice, she said at last, "Oh."

Now they were reaching the end of the park. The lights already

anticipated the beginning of great apartment houses and curtained,

glowing windows. And, as if she were taking advantage of the last

moment of confidential sadness and darkness, Grace turned to Anita,

raised her head as if in challenge, and said, "I'm living with him.

I suppose you know." Her lips curled in a sneer, a hard, grim sneer

like a blow, as she peered into Anita's face.

But in Anita's face she saw neither sympathy nor comprehension nor

blame, only the stupid, startled expression of a person stepping off

into water almost beyond one's depth. Anita's mouth was actually

open a little way. So she had guessed correctly that night! But she

did not want to know; she would not know; she was frantic with an

awed embarrassment. After a time she said again, in a very scared

voice, "Oh."

This seemed so inane even to her that she hunted about wretchedly for

some more suitable comment. Finally she breathed, "I'm sorry,"

without looking at Grace, and felt more scared than ever. She wasn't

sorry, not at the moment; she wasn't not sorry. She wasn't anything.

She wanted to open the taxi door and fly. Grace said nothing further.

Once in a while Anita stole a glance at her and saw her sitting

there, huddled, with big eyes in a thin face, twisting her

handkerchief tight enough to tear it, twisting and tearing with

fingers like teeth. She herself kept very quiet, hardly taking

breath so as not to disturb the dim compassion that rose like a mist

between them and embraced them and held them both, wordless, in her

shadowy arms.

_Book II_

THE BALANCE OF POWER

CHAPTER ONE

Anita used to have an instinct to make herself very small and very

blank when she first visited Grace's house. She was such a weird

phenomenon to Mrs. Kline. Rack her mind as Mrs. Kline would, and she

often would, staring at Anita out of her round blue eyes, a little

bloodshot, shaking her head almost imperceptibly from time to time,

she could not remember anyone in her experience who had not come to

New York to, at least at first, stay with relatives. This younger

generation that one read about in the papers! But even Mrs. Kline,

whose imagination on some points was lascivious enough to bring the

blush to Grace's cheek, offered no hints about Anita.

"You're plain-spoken, Anita," Mrs. Kline would say to her after she

had decided to approve of her and to permit her to cultivate a

friendship with Grace which was already thriving. "Just like me.

That's what I like in a person. You wouldn't hide anything, least of

all from your mother, would you?"

Grace would retaliate to Anita with some remark meant for her mother.

And thus Anita would sit at table, feeling like a ghost, while both

spoke through her person, that obviously was only a little less

intangible to Grace than to Mrs. Kline. And yet Anita came to the

house more and more often, partly because of her own isolation,

partly because of Grace's soft reaching toward her. All these months

Grace had been to her simple, sad, clinging, and obliging. When,

through some mood of her own, Anita sent an occasional rebuff, Grace

accepted in silence, seemed to understand, forgot it. Each

discovered certain ideas in the other that no longer needed to be

solitary. When Anita wished to dislike Mr. Milford articulately,

Grace listened; with her Grace mulled over ways out. Grace offered

suggestions for a mitigation of loneliness which made Anita grateful

though they were suggestions which would suit Grace's temperament and

which were highly inapplicable for Anita. In turn, Anita, modest

though she was and not altogether naïve, considered that the reason

for Grace's friendliness could only be that Grace liked her. She was

not of the least importance, she thought, and there was nothing of

the least importance she had to offer anyone. And though, when Mrs.

Kline, who was not subtle, showed a patronizing concurrence in this

opinion, Anita might feel humiliated, she was not exactly hurt. She

liked to watch Mrs. Kline and she liked to watch Grace. Long ago she

had formed the habit of focusing her observations and her interest

outside of herself on things which she humbly granted were more

exciting.

Even when in a burst of final, desperate irritation she threw up her

job with the _Dress Daily_, she did not deceive herself that the

event, disastrous enough in her life, would cause much of a ripple

when narrated in the Kline household. Blake's baby had been born and

nothing could vie with that in Grace's mind. Anita would not bother

to inform her. She lay about her room for a few days moping,

thinking, till Grace sent a wire after her. Grace had a cold. Would

Anita come up to see her and explain what had happened?

Mrs. Kline opened the door for her and at once began in her jarring

voice a discourse on a dress that Anita had spoken of ordering.

"I'm not busy now, Anita; I could even buy the goods for you at a

discount, and I'd make it up for you very cheap. Don't be afraid,

I'd keep everything down for you like for my own child. You better

speak up if you want it because soon I won't have the time."

Anita said shortly that it was out of the question as she had lost

her job. She did not expect Mrs. Kline to be affected. But Mrs.

Kline was--in a different sense.

"Grace never told me a word," she cried in consternation. "She never

tells me a word." She tramped along with Anita up the hall to the

small sewing room where Grace lay on a couch. "You never told me

that Anita here lost her job," she shouted accusingly.

Grace looked out of wide, patient eyes and did not answer. The

telephone, which the Klines kept in the sewing room, had been moved

to the floor within reach of her hand.

"Don't you worry, Anita," cried Mrs. Kline, putting an arm about her.

"There's plenty jobs around. If you want me to make that dress you

know I could make it up for you and you don't have to pay me right

away, you don't have to pay me till you like. And if God forbid

anything should happen, you know you can always come up here with

Grace and me." She patted Anita's shoulder, regarding Grace with an

air of challenge. Then, with an effort, she added, "Now I guess you

girls want to be left to yourself. I guess you have things to talk

about," she said heavily, "you don't think I'm smart enough to hear.

In my day, girls weren't too smart for their mothers, but nowadays

they are and we mothers got to make the best of it." She lingered.

Both girls kept still.

After she had straightened whatever in the room could be straightened

and otherwise delayed her departure, Mrs. Kline had at last no choice

but to keep her promise. She banged the door to, anyhow, as a slight

expression of her feelings. A shudder passed through Grace; she

placed a quick finger on her lip, signing silence to Anita. And, to

be sure, there was a certain interval of time between the closing of

the door and the retreating clamp clash of Mrs. Kline's feet.

"Anyhow, it's kind of her," murmured Anita.

"Yes," said Grace. "She means it, too, and she'd remember any

kindness she did you to the bitter end."

As she lay staring at the ceiling, the telephone rang. She answered

it in a low, cautious voice. She named no names, every word was

noncommittal, a series of "ohs," one "better," some "yeses" and at

length a phrase which Anita had heard from Grace before and which

always made her smile with its unjustified consequence: "Well--what

are--your plans?" Anita reflected that, while highly diplomatic,

while perhaps necessary for secrecy, such conversations must provide

a further diet of exasperation for Mrs. Kline.

She could not help noticing, too, how Grace had marshaled her

illness, as it were; had arranged it, dramatized it. When Anita was

sick she did not think how she looked or what were the conditions of

comfort or discomfort about her, and as for how the outside world

might be affected, that naturally never entered her mind. She was

ill and paid as little heed to her illness as possible and wished to

hide and get it over with. But Grace had dressed her hair as best

became a sick person, very simply, brushed back from her nicely

balanced smooth forehead and clasped with a barrette. Her

dressing-gown had that fine symmetry, settled about her as evenly, as

gracefully, as her clothes always did. There was a small atomizer on

the table and a new book. The telephone rang. Grace's friends had

apparently been informed or took the trouble to inform themselves.

There was even a vase of red roses. Grace saw her looking at them.

"My baritone sent them," Grace said with her deep snigger. "It seems

his heart is like a red, red rose. But tell me what happened."

When Anita began her story under Grace's attentive eyes she found

that even less had happened than she supposed. She was so annoyed by

Mr. Milford; she had fallen into the habit of revising his silly

stories into some sort of sense, had been taxed with it, had

foolishly argued--as if it mattered a whit to her--and before she

knew it, she had heard herself saying, "I think I'd better leave."

Grace made only one comment. "If you had to leave, why didn't you

get yourself fired and leave with two weeks' salary?"

Anita had never thought of this.

"You're not very good at business, are you?" said Grace, sighing.

She considered. "Have you any money?"

Anita laughed.

"Then what will you do?"

Anita shrugged.

"But what will you do?" insisted Grace. "You must do something. Do

you know anyone who might help you? Didn't you meet lots of people

at the _Dress Daily_?"

"No one I'd ask for favors," said Anita stiffly.

Grace sighed again. "You're so proud. Pride's all right if you can

afford it. But it's a question of choice. Wouldn't you rather give

up a little pride--and get a job? What can you do otherwise?"

"I can go home," said Anita. "I can rest and think it over."

Grace opened her eyes. "To Trenton? Aren't you afraid?"

They understood each other, but Anita replied with a frown, "Why? My

home isn't a prison."

"Well, mine is," said Grace. And suddenly she added, "Anita, I wish

you wouldn't go. I'll miss you, truly I will."

She continued softly, with many pauses, as if she were feeling her

way, testing with care for a response. "You know--I thought if I

could ever really leave Ma--I could if I only made a little more

money--we could--take a place together--maybe."

Anita did not quite know. Anyhow, it did not bear thinking of at

present. She said in haste, "Well, that's a long way off. I haven't

any money, you know, and I'm not likely to have."

But she appeared to satisfy Grace, who put an arm under her head and

said with assurance, "We could manage that."

"Something's up in my own job," Grace added, moving and sighing on

her couch. "I don't know just what, but I can feel something. To

tell the truth, I haven't been paying much attention to it lately. I

guess they see it--but--I can't help it. I--there've been other

things." She fell silent.

Suddenly she began the motions of her laugh and searched Anita's

face. "Do you know how I got this cold?" she said. She concluded,

"Looking for rooms with Blake--for his wife."

She attempted to justify herself to the expression of withdrawal on

Anita's face. "I suppose that--shocks you. But it was very natural.

Their place isn't big enough with the baby and she can't go house

hunting. Blake had to--so--I took the afternoon off and accompanied

him, in the rain and all."

There was a pause. She added with a curved, one-sided smile, "I hope

she's grateful."

The telephone rang again and Grace was upon it almost before the

ring. She used the same formula, a little lower perhaps. "Oh....

Oh." A deep, "_That's_ good!" Then, "What are--your plans for

to-morrow?"

Grace hung up. She smiled a firm, a victorious smile, pressing her

lips together.

"They've named the baby James," she announced to the ceiling, smiling

up at it. "After her father."

She turned upon Anita a face bereft of the smile and said grimly

through her set teeth, "He isn't a junior anyway. That's my little

victory." Her cheeks had grown haggard and after a while she felt

for a handkerchief under the pillow and dabbed at her eyes.

CHAPTER TWO

Every day young people came to Harry Strauss's office, armed with

letters, fortified with introductions, to ask for work. Grace saw

them all without appearing to see; nor had it escaped her that there

seemed to be more of them, that they entered more expectantly and

departed more hopefully. One would have thought that she had nothing

to fear. She had got her raise, she had hinted for another. But she

was well aware of and knew that Harry Strauss and Al were aware of a

relaxation of the tight net of effort that she had at first spread

over her job. She argued with herself that this was but natural; not

even race horses were expected to keep up the pace with which they

started. In any case she could not help herself. All she seemed to

want now was to sweep away her work somehow so as to be free to meet

Blake in the afternoons.

Something was in the air, something which had spread abroad and

attracted these increasing numbers of job hunters, like the

mysterious word that goes forth to crows or jackals that there is a

carcass for the picking. One morning Grace saw Miss MacAlister with

this obscure word in her eyes, watching her. Al was very quiet this

morning. He sat at their table in the outer office and mulled over

photographs, destined for the women's pages, of an opera singer who

had been using some reduction method. This was strange. The opera

singer belonged to Grace.

As she too bent over the table, Al said to her very low, "Did you

have any words with Harry?"

"No. Why?"

Al murmured, "When I call you from Harry's office, come in and

_don't_ shut the door. Look out, she tells him everything."

They made perfunctory motions of work. Finally Al bustled into Mr.

Strauss's empty office, and as he had planned, when he called her,

Grace followed as casually as possible. They stood by the window,

pretending to look out of it, while Al kept an eye on Miss MacAlister

and on the door.

"You know I'm your friend here," began Al with emphasis. Grace said

nothing. He hurried on. "Harry was asking for you yesterday

afternoon. Where were you?"

"I can't do my work and be here every minute," said Grace sharply.

"I know that. I told him so. But Harry's a funny guy. He got mad

and he said, 'That girl never shows up in the afternoon, she's never

around when I want her.' I guess he was playing bridge the night

before and lost a couple of dollars, so--Then he started talking

about how he'd let you handle Madame Tallifer all by yourself to show

what you could do--and you hadn't done so well with her, she's

putting up a holler."

It was true. Grace hadn't done so well with the opera singer, Madame

Tallifer. There were a thousand good reasons. There was little

interest and no novelty to Madame Tallifer. She would complain in

any event. But then, neither Grace nor anyone else was expected to

heed reason in this business, this "racket," as Al called it. She

was silent.

"So then he asked me what I thought," went on Al, "and I told him, I

said, 'You know how it is, Harry. Grace hasn't got the experience

you and me have. She's still learning. You got to go a little easy

with her.'"

"You told him that!" exclaimed Grace. "You know very well and _he_

knows too that I've done a lot better for the money he pays me----"

"I know all that, I know all that," said Al. "Sh! Listen, I had to

tell him that, give him his way, you know, smooth things over. I'm

your friend, see?"

Grace gave him an acute look and turned slightly away.

"Listen, think I want you to go? Wha'd'y'think I got to gain by it?

It's no fun for me to break in a new girl," cried Al. "Listen, if

you think I ever did or said anything against you, just ask Harry,

that's all I want. Just ask him."

"Oh, let's drop it. Is that all you have to tell me?"

"Well, I was just going to finish. Just give me a chance. So a

while after that Harry calls me in again and he's got a girl there.

I didn't even catch her name, never heard of her, don't know her," he

declared hastily, seeing Grace's eyes. "And he said to her, 'Would

you work for thirty-five dollars a week?' And she said, 'Yes!' So

then he said, 'Al, Miss--Whatshername--'ll be working with you next

week.'"

Grace stared out of the window. After glancing at her once or twice

Al began to fumble with papers on Mr. Strauss's desk. "Why don't you

speak to Harry?" he suggested nervously. "Maybe you can fix things

up."

But Grace shook her head and said, "No. I have to see Tallifer this

morning." She picked up her coat, in passing, and went out.

Instinctively, she would not take impetuous steps across a bridge

until she came to it. And she had to get out to think. This time

she did not look at streets or shop windows or at the bright sky

where even the clouds were a glittering, not a fluffy, white. The

situation arranged itself like a chess game in her mind. Al wished

to get rid of her. This girl was a friend perhaps. Or Al was afraid

that she, Grace, might rise to some importance in the office. Well,

she had never trusted Al. Just the same, he was sorry for her, too,

sorry that it had seemed necessary for her throat to be cut. He had

for her the futile, patronizing pity of sentimental people. She need

not make an enemy of him. And Mr. Strauss--he would save fifteen

dollars a week. It had been a mistake to suggest another raise--no

chance there at all. But, if she knew Harry Strauss, he would not

fire her (unless she begged for it) till Saturday, so that he might

get the last ounce of blissfully ignorant effort out of her. Nice of

Al to tell her--a small sop to his conscience perhaps--though perhaps

he had planned that she would be disgusted enough and proud enough to

leave pronto, of her own will, and save them the annoyance of a

dismissal.

Anyhow, she had three days till Saturday. Of these she would make

doubly sure by keeping out of Mr. Strauss's way. She had also an

idea that she could manage to get a week's extra salary out of him by

appealing to his particular vanity, which she had noted: his wistful

desire of the born liar to be considered fair, square, to be

believed. So she had nine working days of grace. She might not even

have to tell Ma, if she began to angle at once.

She considered her problem skillfully, conscientiously, from every

side, as a scientist might probe a new disease. She planned her

procedure in her mind with swift instinct, a bold, logical poise, as

a great general might plan a campaign. All other thoughts were

excluded; ironic comparisons, the weakening, defeating insinuations

of humor could not find a loophole. This was her trouble, her

problem. For the time it encompassed her like the entire universe;

for the time it was alone, itself, her universe; but it was a

universe from which she did not shut everyone else out. No--it was

rather a universe which it did not occur to her everyone else would

not be pleased to share.

She had no intention of seeing Madame Tallifer. She went into a

telephone booth.

Like any good general, Grace had never lost sight of her reserves.

No matter how such she might be of the present, this did not prevent

her from keeping herself alert for new opportunities, for

ascertaining where, in an emergency, these might be more plentiful,

for acquainting herself as much as possible with the people who had

them to bestow. There were certain persons, too, as she

realized--not perhaps entirely consciously--who, though not important

themselves, might be used as keys to unlock the sources of

opportunities beyond them. Mr. Milford was such a person. He could

do nothing for her himself but he knew many people whose attention he

could focus by means of a letter or a request. Grace was too shrewd

to apply to Mr. Milford again; there were others, however, whom she

had marked. Some might clamber up the rocky, direct road to strange

offices and appear, scared and out of breath, to ask for work. Grace

preferred the less simple, the roundabout, the easier way. She

wanted a path prepared ahead of her, an entrance staged; a few

laudatory wreaths strewn before, provided one's person seemed to

become them, as hers did, always helped.

There was Tommy Manship, the assistant dramatic editor, who admired

her, who had a job that forced press agents to pay court to him, and

who could give her letters and suggestions. She arranged to see him

first. Then there was her old boss, McTavish, at the Brooklyn

_Press_. These were people with whom she could be frank. There were

some women, too, women with money, women with valuable "contacts," of

whom she had made friends from time to time. She had not been

pleasant to them definitely because of their uses. At this time she

was in general pleasant and, when necessary, obliging, partly because

she liked to be so. She had never needed to shrink from people.

From childhood she had been accustomed to the power of soothing and

softening which her looks alone had, her great eyes, the glowing

clarity of her skin. She enjoyed seeing the initial receptive

expression on the faces of strangers; she preferred them to retain

their admiration if possible. Besides, she understood without ever

being told, without ever even thinking about it, how much of comfort

and success, so desired by her, rested in the hands of other people.

When she left the telephone booth her routine for that day lay

clearly ahead of her.

The next morning Grace came to the office early so as to avoid both

Al and Mr. Strauss. She sorted a folder of Madame Tallifer's

pictures in front of the stenographer and departed with it, remarking

cheerfully that she had "planted" some woman's page features. Thus

she hoped to record with Miss MacAlister her happy ignorance and her

absorption in Mr. Strauss's affairs. She then walked over to the

studio of a writing friend of hers, made herself at home, and

carefully examined her toilette. She had an appointment with a Mr.

Williams at the M.A.N. Film Company.

"Drop in to tea this afternoon," said her writing friend, Diana

Porter Reece. "The man who runs the Enterprise Feature Syndicate is

coming. He might help you."

Diana Reece was supported chiefly by a husband but did not let this

interfere with her career. She did not care whether the men in her

train were useful or futile, but inevitably, among the dregs, some

would emerge who were worth knowing. Grace promised to come, though

she had to see Blake at tea time too. She meant to overlook neither.

The way to Mr. Williams brought memories of her first day of job

hunting--how she had worried over the sealskin coat, worn too early

in the season, how her mind had been in conflict between Blake and

work. This last year, in which she had fought no longer, in which

she had succumbed to his invasion of her mind, seemed to have had an

exactly opposite effect from what she might have supposed. Her mind

was like a surrendered city which the conquerors believe they have at

the moment of its defeat, only, upon settlement, to find themselves

absorbed by an alien, negative host. The single thought of Blake was

no longer in her mind, intruding on it, harassing her to eject it.

It had become part of every thought there, and so it was no longer

bitterly, distinctly there, apparent at all. She could not be

distracted by the idea of Blake any more than she could be distracted

by the idea of herself.

She looked very well; she owned a fall coat now. She was all in

brown, a clear, pale brown of hat, dress, and chiffon stockings, a

velvety brown of coat and shoes. And so with the feeling of light,

easy, bounding power that seems to bring success in its wake, as its

due, she went in to see Mr. Williams.

When she walked out she had her job. So simply! She almost wished

to snap her fingers and walked along aimlessly, smiling, letting the

light blue air of Indian summer, hazy as spring but without the

springlike quiver, with a faint death-weariness in it, caress her

face. Mr. Williams was not like Harry Strauss. He was a tall young

man with a browned face and eyes as soft as Grace's own. He was

susceptible and did not attempt to hide it. "Must have been a

newspaperman," thought Grace. And so easy! He had merely told her

what she would do and what he could pay, and that was sixty-five

dollars a week. If Harry Strauss only knew! Really she had to gloat

and declare holiday.

As she had expected, at the moment of handing her her check Saturday

Mr. Strauss said: "Sit down a moment, Grace. I have sad news for

you." That was one point in Harry Strauss's favor, Grace thought.

Whatever he might do underneath, on the surface he wasted no oily

sentiment, no hypocritical blather.

He now continued: "I suppose you see things are dull now. We've got

to cut down. I asked Al about you and he said the work you were

doing could be done just as well by an inexperienced girl----"

"Did Al say that?" cried Grace in spite of herself. "It's very

unfair of him!"

Mr. Strauss sent her a keen, comprehending look.

"Well, I asked him and that's what he said. I can't keep track of

you, you know."

"It was very unfair of him," repeated Grace, flushing. "In spite of

the way you divided the papers, we've worked together on everything,

as Al seemed to prefer. He can't claim any more credit for what

we've done than I can."

Mr. Strauss nodded a number of times. "I know, I know all that. But

that's what Al told me. If you don't agree, don't go out till Al

comes and we'll have it out. Al is inclined to misrepresent things."

He waited.

But a sudden idea shot through Grace's mind. Could they be working

in unison? Was it a plan to get her to cut her own salary perhaps?

Would people plot and counterplot with such narrow, shrewd subtlety

for a few dollars? She felt highly superior to Harry Strauss and to

Al. She brushed the matter aside with a curl of her lip.

"N-no," she said remotely. "I never could argue. If Al thinks that

and you believe him----"

"I didn't say that, my dear," put in Harry Strauss. "I know nothing

about your work. I have to ask Al and that is what he told me."

"Well, if Al feels that way about me----" She turned her eyes to the

window.

"Well, what do you want to do?" said Mr. Strauss after a silence.

"Do you want to leave?"

Grace lowered her eyes and took a deep breath. "Is that--the sad

news you have for me?" she said in a very small voice.

"From what Al told me, I thought that would be best."

"If you're firing me," began Grace, "I have to go, of course." She

spoke with dignity, but low, bowing to the greater force. She raised

her eyes frankly to Mr. Strauss's face. "I can't afford to leave,"

she said. "As you know, it's not so easy--to get a job. And--I have

my mother to support. It's very hard on me--without any notice."

Her eyes, without a hint of a tear in them, took on the deeper pathos

of tears just behind.

Mr. Strauss fussed with his papers. "Well, I'll tell you," he said

at length. "I want to be fair to you. I'll give you a week to look

around--and keep on with your work here. At the end of the week you

come in and collect your pay as usual, but that doesn't mean you're

to neglect your work here, you understand. Is that fair?"

So she had won. She had what amounted to a week's much-needed

vacation with pay. It would be all right with Mr. Williams since she

had thoughtfully arranged with him for this interval. It was hard to

hide her elation. She got up and paused by the desk.

"I hope we--part good friends," she murmured with that curious

advance of her eyes and retreat of the rest of her face. "I've

liked--working here, and I'm sorry that you haven't found my

work--entirely--satisfactory."

"That's all right, my dear," said Mr. Strauss. "You may have been

lying down on the job here of late--I only know what Al tells me--but

all the same I think you're a bright girl. After you're through

here, drop in now and then. I might hear of something."

She thanked him. In the corridor, she met Al on his way back to the

office.

"Well?" he inquired.

"Well?" she said haughtily.

"What happened? How'd you get along with Harry?"

Grace looked him over from top to toe before she replied. "He gave

me a week in which to look around."

"I'm glad he did that anyhow," cried Al. "I'll see you around here

then, but I want to wish you good luck right now, Grace." He put out

his hand. "If I hear of anything--you know, I'm your friend."

Grace had a sudden moment of unguarded rage. She could and would

permit herself to ignore the hand. She sneered. "Yes. I know what

a friend you are to me."

"Jesus Christ! What's the big idea?" cried Al. Grace went on.

"Women--! Women--!" called Al to Heaven, clutching his head and

shaking it from side to side. He retreated into the office.

Still, some days later, Grace heard that Al was speaking of her as a

"sweet girl," and when they next met they greeted each other as if

nothing had happened. Neither cared or dared to make an open enemy

of the other. Each had learned the Christian lesson of forgiving and

forgetting, though not from motives of high magnanimity. To fight

those who harm one and cherish those who aid one, to be proud, to be

dangerous, and to be loyal is too primitive and difficult a process

for this civilized world. It taxes the mind and emotions far less

and is altogether better business to forgive and forget.

CHAPTER THREE

When Anita returned to New York winter was in full possession--a wet

winter, a sickly winter, chilling the blood into sluggish mounds,

turning a gray snow into slush and mud among the morass of

cobblestones by the station. She had come to New York an energetic

novice, had left it as a cool, experienced resident. She returned a

stranger. New York did not recognize her, and in the midst of its

docks and cobblestones, its trucks and wagons splashing mud to either

side, foggy, gray with the drizzle, on the way to its markets, she

was lost, very small, uncertain. A porter, noticing her in her brown

coat by the cheap valise, indicated the Travelers' Aid Society. This

made her laugh, though it hurt too. She felt like a person who had

been cut dead by an old friend. And though she had resolved not to

trouble Grace till she was settled, she went eagerly to a telephone

booth and asked to see her at once.

On the way to the M.A.N. office she stopped by her old rooming house.

A sign announced its sale; the wreckers had set their seals on its

door and walls. With small-town faith, Anita had counted on this

dreary house, the greetings of her landlady, on her old room or one

just like it. Now there remained between her and complete

disassociation only Grace.

She had to wait for Grace amid the heavy consequence of carpets,

plush and oak. She was announced and ushered into the presence by a

devious way through a great main office and short passages that made

no attempt to keep the elegant promise of the reception room.

Grace's desk in the Publicity Department was one of a number lost

under pictures, papers, and telephones. Grace was typing and waved

her hand. "Sit down a minute, Anita. I have to finish this."

She seemed to have taken on an impressive amount of assurance and a

soft sheen, partly of grooming, partly of well-being, by which Anita,

as she watched her, was more and more abashed. Her own shoes were

sensible in rubbers, her gloves were not too fresh, and her hat bore

traces of the drizzle. Grace, in a dark blue suit perfectly attuned

to her like all her clothes, with the pale light of amber beads

falling over the delicacy of her blouse, with her skin that appeared

to have a richer glow over cheeks that had lost their hollows--this

Grace was so aloof from her that no words and no attempted kindness

could possibly reach across the space between them. Of course, Grace

had to be polite for the sake of old times, old confidences--how old

those times seemed suddenly!--but how could she have expected

concern, the warmth of intimacy? She had better go, she thought.

She was on the point of rising and going forthwith when Grace at last

turned to her.

"Do you know what I'm doing?" she said. "I'm justifying my college

education. I figured out a way to connect George Bernard Shaw's

Superman with Babe Jean, the baseball player, who's under contract to

us for one picture. They call him the Sultan of Swat. So I

suggested--why not cable G.B.S. and ask if we might not advertise

Babe Jean as the--Superman of Swat. Shaw is always good for loads of

newspaper space. And luck was with us! To-day we got a cable from

Shaw: 'Never heard of her. Whose Baby is Jean?' And Mr. Williams

thinks we'll make every front page in the country."

At this moment Mr. Williams hurried out of the inner office and

leaned over Grace with a marked gallantry. "Are you through, Grace?

Would you let me have the stuff, then? I want to hold it over for

the morning papers. I'll plant it myself. That was certainly one

swell hunch of yours!"

He ran his eyes swiftly over the page and a half, came to a point

that pleased him and nodded vigorously. "Yop. You made your sale

fine!"

"I'll see that you get full credit for it," he assured her, and

hastened away.

When the door of his private office had shut Grace said to Anita with

a small, sly smile, "He likes me." She stretched in her chair, a

gesture of voluptuous weariness after enjoyed and appreciated effort.

"I'm having a grand time," she confided. "I've even

stopped--worrying so much. Roy Williams is awfully nice to me. I'm

supposed to do mostly woman's-page stuff for the press books,

fashions, and feature stories, but he lets me try my hand at anything

that comes up. It's lots of fun and so much easier than the Strauss

job."

She had not yet asked about Anita. Now she looked her over, seeming

abstracted, and remarked, "You look well. Have you decided what

you'll do?" She rose as she said this, took her coat from the back

of a chair, picked up a pale amber-colored hat and various

possessions from the desk. "Come out with me. We can talk better

outside." Anita followed unwillingly.

She went with Grace to buy a pair of stockings. On the way she was

regaled with such bits of gossip as Grace felt she would surely wish

to know. Letty was engrossed with Paul. Harold had gone into the

lace business with a friend. He was also growing more docile.

"He's even got to the point where he'll make lunch dates with girls,"

announced Grace triumphantly. "And he no longer turns up his nose at

me--so much."

"How's Blake?"

"Very well," said Grace in a cool voice. "You know, it's

interesting," she added reflectively, as if repeating an explanation

that had often been in her mind, "to watch the--er--balance--waver

between us. At first--Blake was the chief person and I was a nobody.

I cared for him more than he cared for me. But gradually I've been

watching the balance sort of--even up. And now on this job I've been

doing so well and making so many new friends, I can see--the balance

swing slowly over to my side."

Anita listened without much interest and wondered how she could

leave, and where to go when she left. They turned a corner.

Grace urged her: "Come up to Diana Reece's place. It's right here.

She's away but she gave me the key. I want to see what you think of

it. You know--I was thinking--Dee's place is only thirty-five a

month. I'm starting a feature for the Enterprise Syndicate on Wives

of Famous Men, and if I could only make enough out of it to pay the

rent--I'd be ready to leave Ma. Dee's awfully sweet to me; she said

if I took over the place she'd let me have her furniture. So you

see--I'm almost set."

Yes, Anita saw, and the contrast between their conditions depressed

her more than ever. Not for the first time, this talent of Grace's

for ranging and consolidating trifles to form a stable background, a

stable shelter, a stable footing seemed to her enviable. With Grace,

one thing always led to another and more profitable thing.

Diana Reece's studio was a tiny front room in an old house off Fifth

Avenue. This house, soon to suffer the fate of all old houses, stood

far back from the street in a courtyard decorated with plaster

statues that belonged to the shop next door. The statues of lions

and angels were ghostlike in the gray mist; the house, black stairs

after black stairs of which they climbed, smelled of mold and ancient

woodwork, and Diana Reece's room was icy.

Grace turned on an electric heater and sat by it, drawing fresh,

sheer stockings over her white feet. The room took on an air of

graciousness from her movements, of comfort, of animation. The

stockings, with their fragile smoothness of new silk, just reward for

Grace's labors, struck Anita with the full force of her own idleness.

She felt the darns on her own heels and toes. And she was even a

little older than Grace. And here she sat, idle, with a cheap valise

checked at a station, little money, and no home. She got up.

"I really have to go now. I ought to find a room to-day anyhow."

Grace contemplated her out of startled eyes that grew deeper, larger,

softer. "Haven't you a room?" she exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell

me? Do you mean to hunt for a room in this weather?"

"Well, I have to," said Anita miserably. "Unless I want to go to the

Y.W. And I don't care for that."

After a long pause Grace started to plan in her deliberate accents.

"You're so funny, Anita. I suppose you'll turn on me for suggesting

this, but--you know you could stay here for a while. I wanted to

tell you, but I thought... Anyhow, Dee never uses the place except

to work. If you got out before ten and came back around five, I know

she wouldn't mind your staying here. I sleep here myself now and

then. It's--convenient. All I have to do is walk down Fifth Avenue

to the office. This couch is very comfortable, and see, you have a

heater, and it wouldn't cost you a cent."

"It's awfully decent of you," murmured Anita. "I don't know..."

"Oh, don't be proud! Just this once, don't be proud--please. It

doesn't mean a thing to Dee. Keep your suitcase under the couch, and

she won't even know you've been here!"

With relief, Anita yielded.

"Er--I saw Mr. Milford the other day," added Grace carefully. "He

asked about you. You wouldn't want your old job back, would you?"

"No!"

"Well. I only asked. And you know--I'll look around for you, if you

like."

"Not if it's a bother to you," said Anita. "It's ever so kind of

you. I thank you and all that."

She was grateful, some of the burden slipped from her mind, and as a

small, immediate token of gratitude, she now gave deep attention to

Grace's talk.

"I have a lunch date with Tommy Manship," Grace was saying. "Did I

tell you about him? He's on the dramatic staff of the _Times_. He's

a cute lad and we are progressing by leaps and bounds, you might say."

"How's your baritone?"

"Oh! My baritone! I can't get rid of him. The latest development

is--that he wants to marry me. I almost think I would, too, if he

weren't so--Italian and so jealous. That's not so good. But I'd

like to marry someone, then get divorced right away. Blake, as you

can imagine, doesn't think much of the idea. But really, if you've

once been married it's such--an advantage. An old wedding ring is a

sort of--ad that you're no longer a virgin, and no one cares to check

up on you further. If I had my life to live over again, as the

saying goes, I'd marry at the earliest possible moment, at sixteen,

when it's easy because you can fall for practically anybody, and be

divorced, naturally, pretty soon, and then I'd have that behind me.

I could always say I'd been married and I could do just as I pleased.

That's the advice I'm going to hand on to my daughter, if I ever have

one, which seems--unlikely."

Anita smiled. "What's the matter with this Tommy Manship person?"

"Oh. He's too smart. He guesses about Blake, I think. Not that I

take any great pains to hide the fact. By the way, I have another

man--too. He sells plate glass and reads poetry. Honest. I like

him. But--he's married, separated from his wife. They're all

married and separated," said Grace with a sigh. "The older you get,

the more married and separated they are."

Anita began to laugh.

"Wait," said Grace darkly. "You'll see. Unless you can get

interested in _children_. I can't. Walk over to the Algonquin with

me."

In the lobby of the Algonquin, with its air of hush and velvet

duskiness, the pale lights being lost among the somber shadows of

deep armchairs, like candlelights in a cathedral, Grace resumed her

former preoccupation. Drawing herself up in her sealskin coat that

shone in the dimness, she seemed to set herself apart within an

intangible circle of cool importance as she nodded here and there

from a height and called remote hellos to girls whose coats likewise

shone, to men who walked briskly here and there, nowhere, deigning to

greet others of their kind. As her luncheon partner rose she turned

to Anita in an attitude of dismissal.

"I'll think about a job for you. I'll let you--know," she said, her

eyes fixed elsewhere.

And these words, trite and chilly congé to the job hunter, spattered

from Grace's lips like so many hard, cold drops of rain, one by one,

on Anita's new mood of hope, made her shrink and huddle into herself

as she walked back along the foggy streets to her room.

CHAPTER FOUR

Thus began some weeks of existence, almost without substance or

foundation, like the existence of a haunting wraith. In the morning

it was necessary to leave the studio bearing no traces of her

presence. It was not safe to return before evening. Then Anita,

like a ghost, would look wistfully at the marks impressed on it by

less immaterial lives, teacups on the desk, the curtains drawn, the

wicker chairs grouped cosily about the heater, a box of candy, a few

flowers. She felt that she had sunk far beyond the reach of this

other region, where people bought flowers and chatted over teacups,

and when, now and then, a ray of kindliness struck from this world

into her nether sphere, she was disproportionately touched.

Sometimes Grace left word for her to see such and such a person who

might "know of something." Once she found a note from Diana Reece

urging her to eat breakfast at the Reece table as often as she cared.

It was generous of Diana Reece, but it never could have occurred to

Anita to accept. She had discovered a cafeteria where, for exactly

twenty-two cents, she ate baked beans, cornbread, and coffee every

day at eleven o'clock. This served both as breakfast and lunch.

Dinner at the same cafeteria cost no more than fifty cents if she

chose sparingly. She got to know very well the park, the museums,

the reading rooms and stone benches of the Public Library, and all

the streets within walking distance.

Although she followed Grace's suggestions, nothing ever came of them

and Anita, in spite of her predicament, was secretly glad. Grace

counseled her to do as she, Grace, would have done--to take, if one

had to, any job, no matter how unsatisfactory temperamentally, and

unflinchingly mold either herself or the job into some sort of

suitability, meanwhile keeping an eye on other mouseholes, or, as

Grace put it, "waiting for something--to turn up." To Grace everyone

was playing cat; you had to in order to get along and of course one

wished to get along. There was no choice. Anita, however, knew that

for her there were distinct limits to the amount of endurance she

would invest in any undertaking; inevitably there would confront her

the question as to whether the undertaking was worth so much

irritation and so much effort to her; if the answer were negative,

off she would go, not even stopping to choose a sensible exit.

In the end, Grace did not succeed in understanding; she succeeded

only in being patient with what she considered a stubborn whim.

Anita sometimes wished that she had not accepted Grace's aid in the

first place, and often she wished with all her heart that Grace had

not permitted her a glimpse of Grace's world. In spite of her

suspicions, it seemed to be the only world in which she could and

should strive for a foothold, a successful world. Moreover, it was

enticingly open to her; it was Grace's helpful determination to keep

it open for her, not to permit Anita to sink into the obscurity of,

say, a factory hand or a waitress, as Anita might otherwise have

chosen to do. Anita felt grateful; she felt the conscientious

person's obligation to do her best to live up to what was expected of

her, and yet somehow she was not so grateful after all. Emulation of

Grace, a sort of competitiveness, the restlessness with which her

first meeting with Grace had left her, the feeling which she had had

in Diana Reece's studio when she thought that here she was even a

little older than Grace and yet in so much more uncertain a

position--such comparisons made a rope about her neck, strangling her

initiative.

It was Grace who finally remembered that Harold Moses had once

sympathized with Anita's interest in factories.

"He might know of a job you'd like," she said. "He used to do all

the hiring for his firm. He knows a lot of employment people. And

he's a cousin of Ella Alvyn, the one who's so mixed up in charities

and child labor and that sort of thing. Be sure and get a letter to

her."

So Anita went to see him. She found that, as Grace had indicated,

his training as a husband had awakened Harold to his first close

observation of women as people. A year ago he had thought her a

little peculiar. Now, though he knew too much about factories not to

laugh at her tentative remark that she would like to work in one, yet

there was sympathy in his laughter for, underneath the suggestion,

impossible enough as he saw it, there lay a feeling which they had in

common, a feeling indefinable to him which had often come to him

unreasonably in the midst of swarming, clacking, zooming power

machines, the whirling black belts overhead, the Italian and Jewish

operators singing--wailing rather--long and monotonous chants as the

soft lengths of silk grazed their fingers. A feeling which he only

realized through its resultant satisfaction. A sense perhaps of

brushing through layers of cobwebs that clung to eyes, ears, and mind

and at last seeing under his feet the worn yet still unwearied earth

of toil--the least common denominator of toil--and he himself in it,

sunk in that earth and drawing power from it, like everyone else.

Ugly it was and smelly in a workroom, yet, as often happens with real

ugliness, there was a weird harmony in its distortion--the features

of beauty, placed, as it were, upside down--which equaled the charm

of beauty for the fascinated and reconstructing imagination.

Now, one day in the week, he would borrow his partner's car and drive

out to the cottages of the lace makers in New Jersey, ostensibly to

collect their product but really to rid himself of the boredom of

that work which, difficult though it was, yet seemed

unreal--approaching buyers, showing samples, taking orders,

outwitting competitors--and to stand again in the midst of a toil

felt, smelt, heard and seen. Anita could understand this.

Half-amused, he asked her if she would like to ride out with him that

day.

It was the first afternoon since her return to New York on which she

had felt alive. With work, the common, veritable substance of it all

around her, she forgot that she was hunting for work herself. She

forgot that she existed only by sufferance and through other people's

occasional benevolence.

In New York the snow had melted into sodden remnants and was being

shoveled away. Here, on the Jersey side, it covered gray streets

with a robust splendor, reflecting the ice-blue sky; safe even in the

sunlight which was accompanied by a beating wind. Anita waited in

the car during the first calls, outside of low, long outbuildings

like garages, that vibrated with the hum of the Schiffli machines.

As they rode farther into town Harold pointed out cottage after

cottage with its wooden structure beside it, sealed tightly without,

warm and active within.

She was permitted to enter one at last and met the lace maker, a

stooped German, all one color like the warped walls of his shed.

With a sort of tender pride he exhibited the sweep of his Schiffli,

he showed her the pattern, like a scroll of dots and dashes for a

player piano, attached to a part of the machine, which thereafter

repeated it time after time, mingled it in magical fashion with the

threads of the net base. She did not care to ask many questions,

just to see the wheels go round, the fine threads stretched on the

framework of the machine that went the length of the building, the

threads being picked up with a precise, an unceasing subtlety, and

intertwined. The lace maker's young son walked back and forth on the

ledge, watching the web. At a table in a corner his daughter

threaded bobbins, while his wife sat in the sunshine under a closed

window, skillfully patching places where the machine had not

functioned. They all worked quietly, evenly, while the Schiffli

droned in the background seeming to weld them also together. Each

time the wife caught Anita's eye she smiled and Anita smiled; step by

step the lace maker explained the processes of his machine, how it

did not really make lace at all but embroidery on a net base, which

base was later removed by a chemical bath. As they reached the end

his boy looked up with a bashful grin.

Harold had his last order wrapped up in heavy brown paper and gave

them a fresh design and a new order. When they got outside Anita

asked what a family like that could earn.

"After they pay for the thread and the instalment on the machine they

do well to clear say fifty or sixty a week in good times," said

Harold.

He started his car. The little cottage, disappearing down the length

of the street, looked tiny between two banks of snow. Against the

brilliance of the snow its lines were etched clearly, if lightly, and

its sides were smoothed with a patina of its own, all of one color,

like the lace maker's face, the humble color of use.

They hardly spoke on the way home. Anita was immersed in re-tasting

the afternoon, bit by bit, and wished to be left alone. She set out

to walk from Harold's office under the now dark sky, through the

peopled streets with their round lamps that gleamed at intervals, and

reached the studio ruddy, bounding with cheer and vigor. She found

Grace and Blake there. "Hello," said Grace. "Look," she said,

rising and slowly revolving. "How do you like my new outfit? Letty

and I changed clothes for to-night."

Against a rough tweed suit of the blue that madonnas wear in ancient

paintings, her skin shone warmly, and the same lucid blue glowed in

beads about her throat. Excitement had tinged her cheeks the

faintest, pearliest pink and the pupils of her eyes hid like great,

dusky shadows beneath a thin glaze of brilliance. Never, Anita

thought, had she seen her so lovely.

"Hul-lo," she said wonderingly.

Blake, sitting over the heater, pale, with a wry twist to his lips,

remarked, "I have had the merits of that shade of blue analyzed for

me in detail within the past half hour. We have considered the

question from every angle, together with sidelights upon the virtues

of black, brown, orange, amber----"

Grace began her special laugh.

"As a matter of fact, we've been talking mostly about Blake's play.

Do you know Blake has met a man who writes music--and they're all set

to do a musical comedy together? Blake is going to do the book and

lyrics. Really it sounds awfully good."

He would not be diverted. "----and the detestable properties of

cerise," he continued. "Cerise is a loathsome color. It is a vulgar

color. It is a color that fat women choose by instinct. Tell us

exactly what should be done with cerise, Grace."

Grace paid him a due tribute of amusement before she turned to Anita.

"Well," she said, "did you get that letter?"

"What letter?"

"To Ella Alvyn. Or did he call her up for you? What did you do this

afternoon?"

With a sinking heart, Anita stood looking down at the futile débris

of her afternoon, feeling helpless. What had she done? She had not

advanced her purpose; one thing had not led to something better. She

had seen a machine and defined the color of a cottage.

"I--there wasn't a chance to ask him," she said slowly. "He never

mentioned her so----"

"For goodness' sake!" exclaimed Grace. She shook her head and

sighed. "Why would he mention her, unless you asked? Then--then

nothing happened?" Seeing Anita's face, she went over and took her

arm. "Never mind," she said, "I'll call him first thing in the

morning. I could speak to Ella Alvyn myself, even. She's the

president of our alumni association and she knows me. But Harold

would be better. He's a first cousin, you know.... I'll--I'll speak

to him. Let's have dinner together, shall we? There's a nice place

across the street--not expensive," she added to Anita's frown.

Blake put in suddenly, "I'll go with you."

"Aren't you due home?"

He did not answer.

"I don't want to--interfere--with your arrangements," said Grace with

a dignity more measured than usual. "Besides--I have an engagement

after dinner, you know."

In silence they walked across the street. Blake went to a wall

telephone. He spoke too low for their ears, but when he returned his

pale face had grown more pallid, his lips were dry and tight. He

took up the menu as a shield, swallowing behind it, so that the eyes

of the two girls should not pick him out, should not strip him more

raw than he already felt.

"I suppose she was very much upset," remarked Grace. She spoke to

Anita. "I don't blame her," she said with feeling. "I can imagine

how--it must be--to wait for someone with dinner on the table, and

all at once--to have him call up and announce--he won't be home."

She chatted on, seeming ever lovelier, gayer, less concerned,

subordinating them, rising far above them on the wings of her beauty

and serenity. When it came time to pay the check Grace

ostentatiously placed a dollar on the table; Anita did the same. It

was understood that Blake never had any money. He flushed, drew out

his dollar, and, without looking, thrust the bills at the waitress.

Grace glanced toward him expectantly, repeating that she had a date.

He rose and left them.

Anita had to accompany Grace to Grand Central to meet, as Grace

confided with a complacent smile, the plate-glass salesman who read

poetry. People turned to survey Grace, poised by the train gate,

drawn by the power of her glowing face, of her dominant mood, of her

feet moving so buoyantly that they seemed fluent over the stone, and

Anita watched her, feeling heavy by her side, very poor, very dull.

When the train arrived she said a hasty good-bye. This time she

would not wait for dismissal.

CHAPTER FIVE

Row after row of sedate brownstone houses met Blake in his part of

Brooklyn and stolidly followed his homecoming. There was no shaking

them off. When he left one behind, a similar house rose beside it.

In summer a few hotels before whose doors lines of taxis churned,

along whose tops roof gardens sparkled in the sky, sent a thin trill

of vivacity through the surrounding section; in winter even the

hotels were quiet. He chose his own home by number instead of by

recognition and, noting his baby carriage behind the stairs, he knew

that he had made no mistake. All the circumstances of his daily

return: the evidence of the child; the bell ticking eagerly to his

ring; the door opening to his footsteps; the shaft of light in its

angle, ready to embrace--all these details, a source of cheer and

comfort perhaps to his neighbor returning like himself, he never

failed to find oppressive. He just brushed his wife's cheek, so

softly extended, and went by.

Edith spoke of the weather, carefully circling his defection from

dinner. They never quarreled. She was determined that he should

have no fault to find with her, not realizing that, with a person one

should love and doesn't, the very lack of faults is in itself the

most alienating fault.

She hung up the coat he had thrown over a chair. There was nothing

more to do in the kitchen so she sat down near him. She was tall,

graceful, had always carried herself with dignity, and a strain, a

weariness about her, the first hint of the erosion of her daily life,

could not destroy the perfect balance of her features, the peculiar

charming shade of her red hair, firmly coiled. All her gestures

remained calm. When she wheeled the baby carriage,

thinking--thinking of Blake and of their child and of herself--people

would take her for a nice-looking young matron, a little pale

perhaps, a little tired from household duties.

"I guess I'll lie down," said Blake. "Will you leave some coffee for

me?"

He preferred to work from midnight to dawn, then to sleep till

afternoon, a schedule to which his wife had adapted herself with

distinct doubts of its irregularity. Especially now, since the birth

of the baby, she found the custom trying. But she would not say

much. Only...

"Is Jerry coming again?"

"No. He can't work without a piano."

She looked relieved. Jerry was to write the music for the play, and

when he and Blake collaborated, clicking a typewriter and humming

portions of songs, the baby stirred, Edith was afraid the neighbors

might complain. Someone had already spoken to the janitor about the

noise of the typewriter in the small hours. She mentioned this to

Blake without comment.

He glanced up quickly. "I could work in Jerry's room," he said,

"I'll have to anyhow, once in a while. He can't do much here because

there is no piano."

"Where would Jerry sleep then?"

"Oh, well..." He did not feel that he cared to explain the various

ways in which Jerry whiled away his nights.

"It won't be very pleasant for me, to be alone," said Edith softly.

"Well, we don't have to work together yet. I thought, if you had

rather..."

"No. Only--the baby--but I think he's grown used to it."

Blake said no more.

It was this indifference, an impenetrable neutrality of action, word,

expression, that defeated her time after tune as the smooth back of a

duck defeats drops of water. With a man who ignored the past and

would not glance at the future, she found fewer and fewer loopholes

to evoke past tendernesses, to envisage future plans. She watched

him from under her lids. He sat on the couch, turning the sheets of

a newspaper and, though he uttered no word, it was apparent that he

waited for her to relinquish him so that he could go to sleep. He

sat there, sober, thin-faced, with his mouth in a tight line. Of

late he held his mouth in a glummer, closer line than ever and spoke

as if it were a trouble to open it.

She observed--but it was so impossible to feel, to know what he

thought. The effort to concentrate and seize his mind behind the

pale, high temples only drained her own mind of every idea, of every

hope, and left her dry, her body taut, and within her, her nerves,

the muscles of her heart fluttering in a disordered measure,

frightening, unrestrainable. She made a grimace, attempting to

control them, concluding, as she always did, that she had been

weakened by the birth of the child. She was not able to rise just

yet.

To justify her presence she asked with a certain timidity, though it

was such a natural question from a wife to a husband, "Are you

worried over anything?"

A fresh line cut itself between his brows. He shook his head.

But this gesture was not colorless as usual; there was a distinctness

to it, a harshness, that seemed to her to offer a clue. "Would it be

about money?"

"Do you need any money?" he said briefly.

"I shall soon."

Now he pondered above the paper, studying the wall and keeping very

quiet. This silence cut her to the heart. In the past she had

perhaps laid too much emphasis on his pursuit of an alien

will-o'-the-wisp, on the snapping of those moorings which she could

see no sensible reason to loosen. She was sorry for that, even if

she still saw no reason and still longed for the moorings. In spite

of herself, she often tried to impress upon him subtly the harassment

of their present life in contrast to their old life, hoping the

difference would become as clear to him as it was to her, certain

that once it was clear it would also be abhorrent. At the same time

she could not bear to see him thus struggling with his eyes on the

opposite wall. And at the same time it was true that she would soon

need money, and it was Blake she had to look to for its provision.

"I'll have to ask Fred," he muttered, more to himself than to her.

"He ought to have some ready for me now."