"Well!" said Diana Reece with a sigh of mock relief when Grace

reëntered. "I didn't really mean to annoy him. But I should say,

Grace, that you have him badly trained."

"Yes, she has," agreed Letty from the bridge table. "I'm devoted to

Blake. But you should have heard the things he said about our

playing bridge. The next thing, he said, would be for us to get a

radio and move to the suburbs and become the perfect Babbitts. But

it's all right for Blake to go down South and play golf! People who

play golf aren't Babbitts, oh, no! That goes for you, too, Grace.

You're always making fun of people who are interested in games. Why

don't you laugh at Blake's golf?"

"I do, dearie, I do," said Grace decidedly. "It's not I who play

golf, or bridge either. When you see me fighting over cards as you

and Paul were fighting a minute ago, then you can crow."

Her eyes and her low, tenacious voice unconsciously concerned

themselves with sucking the attention of the others toward herself.

She said pensively and gazed about the circle: "It's funny about

Blake, isn't it? He used to--sneer at people who--played golf and

fussed with cars. He--wanted to be free of all that--and now,

he--rushes away to play golf and even thinks--of buying a car."

And each word sank into the minds of her listeners, impregnating

them, despite themselves, even against their wills, irresistibly with

her concerns. Their thoughts began to revolve about her chief

interest, that now became their chief interest.

"It's because he has money," declared Diana Reece. Almost, her wide,

red mouth smacked over the words, especially over the last that so

admirably suited her taste.

Grace's shoulders began to curve, her chin to dig into the nook thus

made, and her mouth to curl with her particular amusement. "So Anita

says. She says that--so long as he hasn't bought a cane, however,

there are still--hopes."

"I don't see what's wrong with a cane," muttered Paul, who always

carried one.

"No! You wouldn't!" said Letty, briskly scornful.

Paul remained subdued, in silence. But Harold, studying his cards,

mildly attempted to change the subject.

It was at Harold's invitation that Paul had come to play bridge. The

clandestine meetings which had given Letty so much pleasure in the

past had dwindled to this, that Letty now called him "poor Paul," and

it was Harold who felt sorry for him. Seeing Paul look at Letty

during the evening, Harold felt as if he were watching some lost but

still-remembered part of himself, following vicariously the course of

a personal experience, as one may perhaps do in a book, with a vivid

recognition of each symptom but no pain. He could only show his

sympathy by kindnesses that he hoped would go unnoticed--they did

not; there was banter in the crowd about "what good friends Paul and

Harold are getting to be"--such as asking for Paul's presence at the

bridge table, because Paul was, fortunately, a very good player, and

now and then turning aside the shaft of one of Letty's observations.

Formerly, Harold had gone out to play bridge. Letty had jeered at

the game. Since the birth of the baby, however, bridge night once a

week on the maid's evening out had become an institution. Letty said

she was tired of spending the evening alone with Harold and if they

had people in there was nothing else to do. Only it was difficult to

find partners among their close friends. The Lindens played, but

they lived in the suburbs. Grace and Blake contented themselves with

sitting on the couch and mocking.

To-night Paul had, at Letty's behest, spent an hour telephoning to

his club and among his acquaintances to find a fourth. And they had

finally been obliged to commandeer a new admirer of Letty's. By

profession he was a teacher of shorthand in a high school, but a

youthful tramp journey to Africa had seemed to give him a lien on the

words "romance" and "adventure," which he used incessantly. He also

wrote sonnets. His given name was Leroy and, being fully sensible of

his outward characteristics, the girls called him "li'l Leroy." It

was perfect. It satisfied even Grace's keen quality of derisive

description. She got any amount of amusement from the phrases he

used--"I love to roam; I love to wander"--with a dreamy swaying of

the head and swooning of the eyes--and from his habit of using the

word "child" when he addressed women, delicately, tenderly, dropping

it like a crystal from the heights of Olympus to a well-loved mortal.

At the same time she took him quite seriously as an admirer of

Letty's and a man with a literary background who wrote sonnets.

It was to li'l Leroy, since the others knew it anyway, that Grace

announced she had begun a novel.

She caused the bridge game much strangled irritation by distracting

his attention to discuss some incidents of the plot. Harold rose

finally, crying that the game might as well be broken up.

"So it might," she agreed with a snigger.

And she and li'l Leroy turned their backs on a wrangle over eighteen

cents, which Paul and Letty claimed to have won, to engage in an

analysis of the story. It had been begun on the advice of Grace's

literary agent, who always instructed tyros to write novels first and

short stories afterward, as the latter were then apt to sell for

bigger and better prices.

"It's a novel about a girl who--wants to--belong to herself--to be

free," Grace informed li'l Leroy.

"_Not_ autobiographical!" she emphasized, raising her voice and

turning her eyes upon the card table. "The girl is to come from a

small town. And she's _not_--to write. I think I'll make her an

illustrator."

She paused. Her eyes wandered from face to face, insistent on

comment.

Diana, as a professional, felt called upon to ask in a richly

derogatory voice, "How would you get the small-town stuff? You never

lived in a small town."

"Oh--that will be just--for the opening chapters. Anita is giving me

some stuff--and Blake, too. He was brought up in a small town, you

know."

"Are you putting Blake in?"

"No, indeed!" said Grace vigorously. She proclaimed: "Blake is

_not_--to have--any place at all in this book. I'm making the man--a

publicity agent for a movie company. He's to be dark--and to wear

glasses. I know everyone'll look for a resemblance--but I defy

anyone to find it."

Dee, who was not much in Grace's confidence, having considered her in

the past a fool to "waste her time on a married man," now lowered her

voice in the expression of a new alliance. She was learning for

herself. "How's the status quo?" she asked, with warm sympathy.

"Oh." Grace drew away and shrugged. "As usual." But she could not

resist the lure of Dee's attention and explained, after a pause, "She

has heart disease."

Dee rolled her eyes to heaven. "They always develop something!

Walter's wife was undecided whether to develop t.b. or cancer, as a

matter of pride, you understand--not that she wasn't at bottom quite

ready for a divorce herself."

"No. It's heart disease all right," said Grace coldly. She might

show a sardonic good sense about the loves of others, but she

resisted any effort to undermine the solemnity of her own.

"Then perhaps you won't have to bother. She might die."

"Wives _never_ die," declared Letty. "I know. Aren't I a wife?

Even if they have cancer they don't die. Look at Ruth's boy friend's

wife. She's had cancer for years and she won't die."

"As someone says somewhere, 'They only die--in happy marriages,'"

quoted Grace. Her eyes fixed themselves on space, taking on their

mournful depths. "It's just as well this way, I suppose," she said

at length. "I don't see that marriage is any more--happy. Less, in

fact."

"What's that you said about Ruth?" queried Dee. "Is his wife still

alive? Why, she's had cancer for at least five years--that I

remember. I've already lost my faith in God. _Don't_ let me lose my

faith in cancer," she implored them, rolling the morsels of words on

her tongue and lavishly rolling her heated eyes. "In spite of what

you say," she added with fervent decision, "I'm taking no chances.

Marriage is very convenient, you have to admit. Walter has it all

arranged to go to Mexico. Millard and I are all set for Reno. And

we're to meet and marry in California."

"It ought to be a slogan for the tour companies: 'Get divorced and

see the world,'" commented Letty.

Dee appreciated the wit of this as well as anyone. She began a racy

account of how Millard and she were rehearsing the way he was to

strike her (before witnesses) en route to Reno. "He's so afraid to

hurt me." To a question, she grew sober in the midst of her

radiance, as one might at a party at the mention of a dead comrade.

"Twelve years," she replied gravely. "Mal's very much upset. I'm

sorry for him. But what can you _do_?"

And, having remembered to pay this tribute to the dead, she went on

with the opulent wit of her recital.

The men said nothing. They were a little shocked by the

conversation. Besides, it did not concern them. It dealt with

women's matters.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Grace nearly always went "out" in the evenings. All the girls whom

she admitted to equality and who admitted her to equality went "out."

It was the basis on which attractiveness and status were judged; it

was a rigid convention, a game which one had to play in her sphere

under peril of social neglect, just as in some circles it is

necessary to play bridge for the same reason. Thus, Anita, when she

came home later than usual, would find her curled up on the couch,

horn-rimmed spectacles outlining her enormous eyes, the lamp shining

on her book in those November twilights (so like heads just sprinkled

with iron gray) as she read intently and chewed hard candy

reflectively to the luxurious sound of running bath water. Grace

enjoyed books, current ones by preference, since these had the

additional use of keeping her up with current literary talk. If she

were going "out" with Blake or the second-best young man of the

moment, a dinner or afternoon dress would most often be spread out in

the bedroom, as denoting the intimacy rather than the display of the

engagement. These second-best young men formed a slow procession

that advanced in single file, as it were, each member halting,

involving Grace's spare attention for a while, then making way for a

successor.

If, however, Grace were just having a "date," the dress would usually

be an evening dress, with, beside it, the brocaded, furred cloak that

Mrs. Kline, in token of reconciliation, had fashioned out of Grace's

old sealskin. The escorts on such nights were merely pawns in the

game of going "out"; were chosen for their utility, the money they

had, the places they could take one to, rather than for their charm.

And on such nights Grace would stay out exceptionally late, making

the most of her chance to be escorted to the new fashionable

restaurants and dance places and night clubs. She was not a

"drinking woman." Her set did not frequent speakeasies, except from

curiosity.

At first it was a source of wonder to Anita how Grace could find

sufficient entertainment for so many nights, but she learned that it

was very simple really. Grace had no desire to abandon herself to

pleasure. She used pleasure for her own purposes. Grace did not

seek for conviviality, or for amusement. She only sought to be

present. She liked, as a matter of business, to see all the motion

pictures that were talked of. Although she relished the theater, she

had to see plays also so as to be able to pass her measured opinions

on them. The theater and the movies were vital matters to the people

she knew. A large part of their talk was of plays and players, and

Grace had a memory for and a store of information about these as

perfect and detailed as a boy's memory for the showings of athletic

teams.

Between routine work, avocations, and social life, it might be

considered difficult to fit in the writing of a novel. But there is

always Sunday, when one does not have to go to the office, and when

even social life disintegrates. Grace wrote her novel on Sundays.

She planned it according to a simple mathematical formula: twenty

chapters--twenty Sundays--five months. She applied herself to it

with the astute, persistent, and organized vigor which she carried to

all her undertakings.

She had not used the depths of intelligence suggested by her

beautiful eyes, her clear, grave, deliberate diction, she had not

used her assured bearing, her wide circle of acquaintance as well as

her concrete accomplishments (some articles on motion pictures

printed in large magazines)--she had not used all these to no

purpose. They had all helped to "plant the idea," as she said, that

she was "a young writer of promise." She was also prominent. She

was seen often at luncheon in the places where one should be seen at

luncheon, in the Algonquin and later in Sardi's. She was seen at

first nights, where she greeted and was greeted. She believed the

compliments which important people paid her and, divesting them of

any qualifications, repeated what had been said to her in a

simplified and exaggerated form.

She had some acquaintance among publishers and these she arranged for

her agent to sound. One she impressed sufficiently with her beauty,

her tactful certainty, and her knowledges to extract a contract and

an advance from him. It was a good idea, he agreed, to write a novel

about a girl who wanted to be "free." The novel about girls who want

to be "free" is as hardy a perennial as the novel about

newspapermen's adventures among womankind.

Then Grace proclaimed that she was writing a book in every quarter

where she had or could get entrée. She knew reviewers, she knew

colyumnists, she knew a few critics. She exhibited her loot among

her friends. So-and-so would run her picture, and another person had

promised to print a preliminary announcement; she had met a critic

from Cleveland who would say nice things about it; she knew some

bookshop owners who had bound themselves to feature it in their

windows. She only hoped the "breaks" would be "right," and that she

could establish the beginning of one of those settled and accepted

reputations which, from her publicity work, she knew to be so

valuable.

On Sundays Grace would put a meaningful question to Anita: "What

are--your plans for to-day?" It implied that Anita, according to the

original pact, was to keep out of the way as much as possible. If

she could not go out, she would sit and read in the bedroom.

Whenever Grace had a free evening, it was also arranged that Anita

should make a date and disappear between the hours of seven and

twelve. Her dates were nearly always with Dennis. She and Dennis

would go to dinner, then to the theater, or, if the cold chanced to

be fine and clear, they would first walk up and down Fifth Avenue.

In the Fifties this street at night has the hush and luxury of deep

carpets; the shops amble by and the lovers amble, and the faint

lights among the glassed-in treasures seem to amble too. They

stopped to gaze in great show windows, shining and magnetically

smooth as the smooth backs of cats. They examined the titles of rows

and rows of books. They stood long before pictures. Fifth Avenue

would be growing stiller. All nevertheless would be throbbing

softly, thrumming steadily with the steady flow of the motor cars,

echoing the powerful note that lower down and one street west pulsed

so insistently, struck so heavily, pounded hard and loud on the ear,

while roundabout new buildings bloomed like great white roses in the

sky and the lights of towers and windows chanted their golden melody

in all shades, from amber to topaz, from pearl to copper color, and

the excitement of all was overwhelming. Oh, they understood very

well why people lived in cities, pooling their small forces palpably

so that a turbulent, ceaseless, diversified river of force should

tear them along, so that its mighty roar should deafen them to the

faintness of their individual rhythms, so that from the resonance of

its composite power they might extract some slight vibration of

strength in their weakness.

Late at night they would return, clambering up the musty stairs that

had only one pale bulb to light them, halting at the silent door.

Before Anita could use her key, it opened on an interior permeated

with warmth and electricity, framing Grace in the doorway, a Grace

glad to see them, tired of being alone. Or they would find her

tapping out the last words on the typewriter. A bag of hard candies

was spilled on the shabby gray paint of the table among a clutter of

sheets. The terse light summed up her hair and her cheeks and her

plain tan jersey dress, her "office uniform," leather-belted and

collarless. But no laconism of light could squelch the soft glow of

her hair, eyes, skin, and the beads at her throat. She would shuffle

the last sheet in with the others and turn, stretching, satisfied.

"Look. I did eight pages to-night."

And, if she were not expecting Blake, who objected to the smell of

smoke about her, she would ask for a cigarette and relax and give

them her news. She always had some news. "Blake asked Letty to

choose my Christmas present with him. It's his own idea. Guess

what? A diamond wrist watch!" She sniggered lengthily. "I really

didn't expect--what we said the other night to have _that_ effect."

Or:

"I had to buy Christmas things for Blake's child to-day. And what a

job that was, too! Still, it's not so bad as Ruth Frick. She has to

help choose--_hats_--for Carl's _wife_."

Sometimes she would put her finger to her lip, and after a silence

they would become aware of a pounding next door. It was the

lady-next-door, of whose profession they could not help acquiring

some knowledge, quarreling with her Jack. "He's been hammering on

the door and threatening to kill her all evening," murmured Grace.

Between giggles and in hushed accents, they speculated on the

possibility of a murder. Grace always followed murder trials in the

papers with an absorbed curiosity, with an open and defiant

understanding of the ways in which the skeins of a life might be so

tangled as to importune that sort of cutting. She had once told

Anita how, in the early days of her love for Blake, wrought up to a

final frenzy of harassment by her mother's insistence, she had

grabbed a kitchen knife against her.

Then Dennis would insist that one of them read aloud from a poetry

anthology. He had a racial streak of artistry, formless and

unformulated, as all his ideas and opinions were, and though he

preferred Francis Thompson and Clarence Mangan, he could listen

tirelessly to almost any sort of poetry. If neither Grace nor Anita

would read, he would read himself, in a stumbling sing-song,

mispronouncing or eliding half the words. But if he came to a line

or verse that struck him--Anita noticed how often it was apt to be an

admirable line--he would raise his voice as his only way of giving

unusual expression.

This was on nights when Dennis remained actually sober throughout.

On other nights he appeared to escort Anita to dinner a little

"mellow," after his description, became more mellow in some

restaurant where he was known and served accordingly, and could not

be prevented from finishing the evening in a speakeasy. Anita, in

order to avoid a scene in public, would be obliged to let him see her

home.

Dennis would then take up his station on the couch and announce that

he meant to spend the night. Wilting a little under stony stares and

firm commands, he would plead with much native pathos that he felt

"so womanless" when he woke up of mornings, sick, in his hotel room.

At first Grace was on his side; she advised caution but she was ready

to put her tolerance on record. Soon, however, she also became

obdurate, because she had learned something of the female company

which Dennis kept intermittently. Grace would have pitied Anita if

Dennis had been swerved from her by more imposing attachments and she

would have been far more interested in Dennis, but nothing lowers a

man so much in the eyes of most women as the fact that he is

attracted by her inferiors. No humiliation is more resented by a

woman in love, at once removing her triumph over other women in at

least having set up for her lover a criterion to which all those

others must conform hereafter, and at the same time forcing her to

brush elbows in his memories with women she would not choose to

associate with in actuality.

Grace felt a bit patronizing toward Anita. Whatever Blake's faults

were, he did have good taste in women. Still, she thought Anita had

better hold on to Dennis. Since men are not like foxes and the scent

of the last victim merely makes the trap more alluring, he might at

least be used to catch more eligible admirers. Only, Anita, not

notable for patience, saw so much of him that Grace was curious about

the exact state of her emotions. She would have been surprised to

learn that Anita had plenty of patience of a sort, that she could

bear any set of circumstances provided she had marked off in her

mind, like a date in a calendar, when it should end.

The novel was finished in April. After Grace had found a striking

tide by searching through volumes of familiar quotations, it was

delivered.

Then, Grace made up her mind to go abroad. The time was propitious.

For expenses, she had her advance on the novel. She knew someone who

would get her concessions from a steamship company. Things were very

dull in the office; a periodic wave of economy had swept over it from

the coast and Mr. Graves would be thankful if she took a leave of

absence without pay during the summer months--in fact she was afraid

he might require this of her and so it would be best to anticipate of

her own accord.

The only flaw was that she did not want to leave Blake. "These long

separations!" she said sagely. "It has always been my opinion that

one should--stick around." However, leaving thus on the crest of

accomplishment, at the height of her glory, she felt that this would

be the time when Blake would miss her most and most long for her

return. This would be the time when he would apprehend how many

potent affairs of her own might call her from his side.

She departed on a Saturday morning, amid all the rites of farewell.

Grace herself religiously observed occasions for ceremony among her

friends. She generally kept them for the reason that people

generally do, not because she wished to exactly, but in order to

safeguard her own ceremonies from the forlornness of neglect.

Blake stood somewhat aloof from the group on deck of which Grace

formed the focal point. It was one of the smaller boats, and there

were only a few conspicuous-looking passengers, "interesting people."

Now and then some girl or a man by himself would glance at Grace,

choosing her and approving of her as a fellow traveler. No one would

have dreamed that her traveling costume had been gathered with so

much thought and taste; still, just because its harmony was so

simple, it caught the attention of more expensively dressed women,

who wondered what trick of modishness lay in the crisp pleats of her

navy-blue printed silk, its suede belt, and the stockings which were,

after all, just stockings but which seemed so exquisite on her legs,

so in accord with the soft and graceful lines of what were, after

all, merely suede shoes.

Mrs. Kline, who dressed well herself but with no such imaginative

attuning to the event as Grace, could be seen gloating over Grace's

"outfit," Grace's companions, and Grace's "friend," her title for

Blake. Mrs. Kline knew him now. She even took a veiled

semi-proprietary interest in him, as token of her approval, always

asking after his health and his activities, especially now that his

plays had been successful and he, a real playwright, provided her

with free tickets to them. What inkling she had of the situation was

not known, probably not even by Mrs. Kline herself, as she would not

care to define suspicions which would force her to destroy her new

amity with Grace and with so much of a personage as the playwright

friend. Grace thought that her mother knew because she no longer

questioned. To give Mrs. Kline a chance to further hide her head,

Grace had suggested that marriage was so unsatisfactory, in view of

the comments that Mrs. Kline herself made, that she preferred her

independence. Mrs. Kline seemed to agree. As Grace said, "She

agrees--if driven to it. She prides herself on being very modern.

She has to pretend to agree, anyhow, seeing how--extraordinarily

unsuccessful her own marriage was. And it was one of those real love

matches too! She tells all her friends it's only--natural--I should

hesitate."

At the sound of the first warning, Mrs. Kline proudly ceded Grace's

final farewell to Blake. They clung together in wordless last

promises, in last assurances drawn from each other's lips and arms.

Mrs. Kline, keeping her eyes carefully off the pair, looked from one

to the other of Grace's friends with a touching triumph. They might

be safely married, but which of them would be relinquished--and only

for a few weeks, too--so unwillingly?

Blake was tight-lipped. It was the first time that he had been left

behind, not Grace. Without waiting for the others, he plunged from

the leave-taking directly into the crowd that shoved down the

gangplank.

Grace delayed Letty for a moment. "Look after him, will you? Make

dates with him, Let." She had asked them all to "take care of him,"

partly so as to feel that he was safe within the bosom of her circle,

partly because she was really worried lest he be left alone. It was

Grace who had welded both of them into the group by her greater

sociability that thus became another asset since, if Blake were to

lose her, he would miss her twice as much, for herself and for the

circle of companionship in her wake.

When the boat had gone Anita had the good luck to elude Mrs. Kline,

whose eyes were swollen and whose tongue was feverish with the

necessity for pouring out in sympathetic ears a résumé of the

tributes paid to Grace. She set out for home, climbed the four

flights of stairs, opened the door upon unexpected order--due to the

efforts of Mrs. Kline, who had superintended the packing--and sank in

relief upon the chafed gray velours of the couch cover.

They had no time to bother with the dressing and undressing of the

apartment. Summer and winter--except for the time when Grace had had

an orgy of repainting and the other time when she had added a gray

carpet and a daybed in a burst of extravagance--the furnishings

remained the same. The place was a bit close now. Some roses sent

Grace too early and stuck into a milk bottle in the kitchenette sink

were dropping a withered perfume. Anita disliked odorous flowers.

She got up and flung them into a bright yellow waste basket and, as

the basket overflowed with rubbish discarded by Grace, she set it

outside the door. After a moment she rose again and picked up some

bits of tissue paper and ends of twine that clung to the gray wicker

armchairs. She looked into the bedroom whose dowdy odds and ends

Grace had never thought it worthwhile either to banish or adorn. It

was quite clear. Nothing of Grace remained. The furniture, the

bowls and books and pictures, all of Grace's choosing and owning,

were yet neutral enough to transfer themselves readily to the

personality of the present occupant. Even the photograph of Blake in

a silver frame seemed to have been placed on the bookcase only as an

impersonal adornment.

The telephone rang. It always rang, ft seemed to Anita, when she had

a moment to herself in the house. She did not feel like rising

again. In any case there was no real need to answer it; the call was

sure to be for Grace and Grace had gone. She let it ring unanswered.

To Anita, who disliked the telephone, there was a great feeling of

release in this.

She did not have to answer the telephone if she did not like. She

did not have to go out, according to the unwritten code that had

grown up between her and Grace; she did not have to go out even with

Dennis, retaining him as an escort from a sense more of duty than of

pleasure, because of a cowardly conformity to the social routine that

was now expected of her. Grace's social scheme left no room for

voluntary solitude for herself or anyone about her. Now that Anita

was freed from it, she could see what a strain had been the constant

necessity for going out, for making dates as a definite scheme of

life, a scheme imposed on her, without a word, by Grace's example and

assumption, by her own human fear of the incomprehension, the pity,

the contempt, meted out to the dissenter.

Dates! Anita, having for nearly two years scrutinized a succession

of dates--Grace's elaborate ones, as well as her own more modest

ones--was sure that for herself the amount of effort involved in

dates would be too high a price to pay for any entertainment or any

tributes to her vanity she might get out of them, or for any use she

might subtly make, as Grace did, of the "dated" men. So much

trouble! So much purposeful dressing; so much calculated listening

and admiring; so much amiability; so much pliancy; so many bores to

put up with; so many inane opinions to agree with; so many fumbling

approaches to avoid or make fun of or be irritated by. And for what?

For a meal, a couple of dances, a couple of drinks which like as not

one didn't want, for two hours at the theater, for a telephone call

next day or next week, and for the ability to exhibit the fact that

one could entice. All in the wistful hope that once in a blue

moon--oh! once in a very blue moon, perhaps--one would happen on a

personality that was in harmony with one's own, whose companionship

would be not a distraction from but an enhancement of pleasure; on

that rare bird, a man with charm; on that even rarer bird, a modest

man; on a conversation that required the activity of one's own mind;

on love making that called for more than toleration.

The energy Grace expended on dates! The energy she expended on

Blake! Anita understood that such effort might be expedient and no

more onerous or even less onerous than effort spent on any other of

the affairs of life for many women to whom marriage remained not only

the most accustomed but the most profitable profession. But it was a

profession which Grace's mind struggled to reject; she did not intend

to be "only a wife," she proclaimed. Yet the obsession which

possessed her, that she must not lose Blake, the instinct which urged

her to adopt every means to secure herself to Blake, which bade her

follow him regardless--would that obsession and that instinct leave

her much of herself to withhold from the common plate? Perhaps such

an obsession, such effort, was inevitable. It might be inevitable to

set one's passion on a pedestal, then break one's neck trying to get

to it. Anita only knew that, for herself, in the midst of any love,

no matter how enthralling, she would always retain a sneaking

suspicion of its comparative insignificance to her. This suspicion

was to her like the most trifling chink in the wall of a prison,

unmarked by all but the prisoner, but to become for him the means of

his escape. A fatal sense of proportion, the ruin of many and many a

love affair, would always hinder her.

At present she did not care if she never made another date, never

went "out" again in her life. As for Dennis, someone would marry him

pretty soon, Grace said, "unless you hurry, the first little sap who

makes up her mind will get her hooks into him." Which, Grace

intimated, was a pity on general principles, as little saps with

their simple certainties and serviceable rules-of-thumb were apt to

get away with so much, get the best end of everything. For once,

Anita thought, Grace was right. And she would miss Dennis, too; she

admitted that she was not unmoved by him, but was he, on the whole,

worth for her the bother of maneuvering a marriage or the greater

effort of glamorous love as she had observed it? It was beautiful,

she insisted to herself--it must be beautiful. Grace and Blake were

as devoted to each other as two people could well be.

Only--only--neither could she hide from herself the under side of the

pattern, which she had been forced to examine, the under side where

there was no gloss and knots were tied.

Grace would say, of course, that she was a fool to "miss the

experience." Grace quite granted that there were experiences other

than sexual. She was skeptical of the theory of sexual experience as

a sort of patent cure-all, particularly for the ills of women, with

an inherent, magical power of enrichment possessed by no other

eventuality, causing talented women to rise from the pillow geniuses,

vixens to be transformed into saints, naïve souls into women of the

world, and mean spirits into generous. At the same time, her

imagination of the universe did not venture much beyond the realm of

sex and she took it for granted that an experience was a certain

concomitant of an action and necessarily nourishing.

To Anita there was nothing at all so inevitable about the value of an

experience; it was merely the sum total of the delicate adjustments

between a character and a situation, and that sum total might be for

good or evil, for value or worthlessness, depending on the

individual. She was influenced sufficiently by Grace's point of view

to half-agree that perhaps she was a fool "to miss the experience."

But the idea rebounded as harmlessly as a rubber ball from the

granite common sense at the bottom of her nature. She simply could

not see how a night with Dennis Meloney could make her a better

woman. And the experience of marriage with Dennis Meloney would

certainly make her a more bitter one.

Before she went off to lunch she took a last reassuring look about

the place. Nothing was there to question, to collide or interfere.

She was free to leave, and when she was ready she would be free to

return. It was left alone like all space, and when she reëntered she

would be alone in it, as in all space. The thought clutched at all

the unrestrained and unrestrainable particles of her being and tugged

her upward like a balloon. At the same time she paused in fear, with

a premonitory chill, feeling the first weight of solitude press down

upon her heart.

_Book III_

GRACE KLINE ANDREWS

CHAPTER ONE

One Sunday of the following March Grace set out to walk from her

house to Letty's. She had been waiting now for three months since

the event which even Grace had never fully dared to expect and which

had caused her incredulous friends to exclaim as with one gasp, "What

a marvelous break!" Blake's wife was dead.

But still Grace waited. Even in her work she felt becalmed. Her job

had chosen this time to vanish; her book had sunk almost without a

ripple, and she could not, as ordinarily, generate within herself

sufficient power to counteract these circumstances. The best she had

been able to do was to maintain the noise of activity, to keep the

engine whirring on the same spot. She went about indefatigably as

usual; the difference was not yet visible to the naked eye. She gave

no hostages to failure; she wrote; she got odd jobs of publicity;

whatever she economized on, she was careful not to economize on her

appearance. Meanwhile, the circle of her friends stood about,

cocking ears and eyes inquiringly and impatiently for the climax.

They had been present a long time at this affair and did not hesitate

to let her know that they would feel cheated unless it came to a

fitting close. Renie Harrington suggested, when she had Grace up to

dinner to observe with her own blue, ingratiating, cutting eyes, that

"it would be so convenient to be able to put them at last into one

bedroom on week-end visits." There were bets laid as to whether or

not a marriage would occur.

Grace was taciturn. Drawing herself up with that retreat of her chin

and advance of her eyes which had the effect of holding the other

person at the end of a very long arm, she said with dignity,

"I--don't know--what--our plans--will be."

Only Letty knew. As in the very old days when Grace had rushed up to

the one-room-and-alcove harbor on Riverside Drive to spill tears on

Letty's glossy spreads, and had cramped herself into the living-room

couch of nights to cry in peace at Letty's house, so the road led

back again to Letty.

Grace marched along briskly, decisively, but her cheeks were hollow,

the skin drawn tense and translucent over them, while her eyes, twice

as huge, the narrow coat from Paris patterned all over in orange

wools and brown wools and held tight across her flat body, the gleam

of queer, fragile stones set in spidery silver at her throat--all

these conspired to resolve her into a new aspect, to give her a

jeweled, plumaged, bird-of-preyish look.

On Sundays, the maid's day off, Harold and Letty spent the morning

providing their baby with fresh air in Central Park. Grace knew

where to look for them, just past an entrance by a little summer

house. Harold was reading the Sunday papers within, while Letty

walked slowly without, keeping pace with her little girl. She was

about two years old, dressed in a short green wool coat and bonnet,

and she shoved herself around in a tiny pen on wheels. Grace looked

her over indulgently, admired her with preoccupation. Then the two

girls sat down on a bench, while the child jerked herself back and

forth by their knees.

For a long time Letty listened, nodding now and then. Too many

confidences were deposited with her; she was a strongbox to her

friends. And these confidences were all so simple really. They all

boiled down to the fact that the man one wants is always the most

difficult man to get, and that was no news to Letty.

"It's not that I'm not--sure of Blake in a way," concluded Grace.

"But he's so--evasive. He _won't_ see."

Letty nodded briefly. "I know."

"Well, I'll tell you what I can do," she said at length in a

matter-of-fact tone. "If you like I'll make a date with him and talk

to him like a Dutch uncle. I'll tell him that he's causing you a lot

of unnecessary trouble and worry and embarrassing you before your

friends and that it really is about time he realized it. I think

that should work. Blake likes me."

"Yes, he does," agreed Grace. Some such plan had been in her mind.

She gave a long sigh of relief but added almost at once, "Don't be

too--don't rub it in, Let. Be a little careful. You know--you

can't--bludgeon Blake."

"Oh, of course," said Letty, shrugging. "I'll be tactful. Little

Mrs. Tactful Fix-It, that's me."

The two girls looked into each other's faces. Letty's eyes wavered

before the intent appeal, the clutching hope, in the countenance of

Grace. She stared at the asphalt path, dejected, somewhat petulant

before the present necessity and the final futility of her errand.

Why did Grace have to clutch so? And she could no more feel why than

one with full control of his muscles can feel why a person in a

nervous spasm is powerless to unclose his fingers. She had to stop

and search for reasons in her mind and from them argue herself into

sympathy. She had to remember that to share a home with Harold and

only Harold, to have him and him alone there in the morning and there

at night, had once seemed to her the most blissful of all

eventualities. Consciously there was no accounting for this

sentiment now; the veiling, aching glamour effused from, old times,

old feelings, rose ever and ever more wanly on the horizon and ever

and ever more imperceptibly faded like receding smoke. But far be it

from Letty to counsel anyone against even the slight sustenance of

distant smoke! She said in a lower voice, "I suppose I might as well

make the date right away--can't Monday; got a date with li'l

Leroy--Tuesday maybe--and talk to him and get it settled."

Grace and Blake were married a week later. Blake had always liked

and trusted Letty. Once she had set before him, with a directness

that--as she was not involved--could be at once persuasive and

unexacting, what Grace's feelings were and what his inaction seemed

to mean to outsiders, he had understood. He was surprised. He

supposed he had always intended to marry Grace, that she was aware of

his intentions, and that therefore the need for action nullified

itself. Some day he supposed they would find themselves standing

before a justice of the peace who probably would fall from heaven

before them at the propitious moment. He was rather resentful to be

confronted with the reality of arrangements while he was in the midst

of a mild, unmarried peace, while they were both free, he thought.

Still, if delay made Grace miserable, he agreed with Letty that they

might as well get it over with. He only stipulated that, lest his

haste should seem indecent or suspicious to his parents, the nuptials

should be secret until he had had a chance to "plant the idea" in

their minds. Grace thoroughly comprehended such a plan. As for his

state of mind, it no longer hurt her though it would always make her

sigh. After so many years, she had still to scheme in order to

convey to him subtly, so as not to frighten or antagonize him, what

to her were the plainest phases of human relations. So it was. And

so, no doubt, it would always be.

The morning of the wedding was dank and gray. Grace awoke earlier

than usual, dressed in a sticky half-light, and tramped through the

living room to bang the coffee pot on the gas stove. A good deal of

methodical noise always followed her risings and Anita, shaken out of

sleep by the hangings and tramplings, stared at her resentfully from

the daybed. Since the loss of her job Grace had developed a

systematic mania for avoiding the purchase of meals. She collected

lunch dates and she collected dinner dates and she had taken to

fixing her own breakfasts. Anita could only admire the resourceful

way in which she circumvented ill fortune, but in the mornings it was

quite a nuisance.

The coffee boiled; Grace shut the bedroom door and spoke through the

telephone, very low. By prearrangement, she was calling up her

mother, who had exacted a promise to be at least told of the

marriage. Grace said over the phone, "Ma? How--_are_ you? ... Well,

I'm calling according to schedule.... Yes. To-day." She gulped her

coffee over the sink in the kitchenette. Although she went back and

forth from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen, crossing the living room

every few minutes, she avoided Anita, who lay with eyes half shut and

the bedclothes pulled tight and warm about her. The latter was

accustomed to Grace's intervals of self-sufficient hauteur. They

meant that things were entirely satisfactory with Grace at the moment

and she had no need of encouragement. Anita would ask no questions.

There were three rings of the bell and Anita heard Grace trample

through the bedroom, down the short hall, and the sound of a brass

key in a brass lock.

Letty was waiting downstairs in the chill, early-morning grimness

that overlaid the street. People passed, silent, preoccupied, bent

on work and nothing else. From the Fifth Avenue corner came gigantic

hammer blows, hard, spiteful, even, one, then an--other--then

an--other ... then the long, raucous shriek, the bellow tearing raw

flesh from raw flesh, of a riveting machine. Grace was aware for the

first time that the old houses near Fifth Avenue, guarded by plaster

statues of lions and angels, by moldy lawns and rusted iron

gates--the house where Diana Reece had once had a studio, where Grace

had gone to draw fresh, sheer stockings over her white legs on the

way to new, exciting dates with new, exciting men in the days of

Harry Strauss; where she had borrowed Dee's key and met Blake in the

days when he used to return to Brooklyn for dinner; where Anita had

once lived as a ghost--those houses had vanished and the steely ribs

of a skyscraper were being riveted together in their stead. They

must have been demolished some time ago but Grace had never noticed.

"Look, those old houses are gone!" she exclaimed to Letty.

They paused and peered up and down the street. Two new structures

had been built across the way, where there had once stood a modest

red and white brick hotel and some rooming houses. They were of

sandstone, beetling as far as possible over the sidewalk, projecting

as high as possible into the sky. They were tipped with gold and the

long strips of windows straight up and down, divided by strips of

sandstone straight up and down, glinted iridescently. The old

brownstone fronts and the old red-brick fronts and the small, white,

rebuilt houses seemed compressed to suffocation between skyscrapers

at the head and impending skyscrapers at the foot.

"The street's changing so," said Grace rather wistfully.

They turned the Sixth Avenue corner, continued past the El station

and so down to Blake's house. Grace rang three times. This street

was still serene with glossy shops composed behind their shut doors

and their smooth displays, with a limousine dozing before the tall,

white apartment building across the way and next to it a sedate

little gray dwelling sleeping with shuttered windows behind a No

Parking sign. All the speakeasies in all the basements of all the

sere-looking brownstone houses were closed at this hour.

Blake came down rather pale and cold, a little hoarse, blinking. He

never rose so early. They caught a taxi to the Tube station at

Herald Square. Letty giggled. "We're off at the post," she said.

The train to Newark was not as deserted as they had expected and a

headachy light oozed through it. What weird people to ride to Newark

at such an hour--old women with newspaper bundles that somehow hinted

to the senses of pickles, men in overalls with pitted noses. What

_for?_ "They can't all be going to get married," said Letty

wonderingly.

Grace knew a lawyer, an old admirer, who had an office and political

influence in Newark. She had arranged with him to prepare a secret

way for them. They taxied around a gray-green park into a region of

tall, sooty granite. Grace's friend was waiting in his office and

his car was parked on a side street. They walked to it, Grace with

the lawyer and Letty with Blake. Recovering from the blight of the

chilly morning, Letty hugged Blake's arm. "He mustn't get away," she

called back to Grace.

"By the way, have you got a ring?" said the lawyer suddenly.

Blake had never thought of it. They halted on the sidewalk and

laughed and laughed.

"You could use mine," said Letty. "It married me good and fast."

But Grace's friend stopped at a jeweler's and insisted on buying one

for her. A thin circlet of white gold. "It's a wedding present," he

declared with a smirk.

Blake was still sleepy. Grace was nervous and curious.

The judge into whose chambers they were ushered mistook Letty for the

bride. When his error was pointed out he turned but languidly to

Grace, appearing to feel that she would do as well. He asked each

whether they had been divorced. It seemed that he had a prejudice

against marrying divorced people. He was so sure there would be a

divorce somewhere--"He smells a divorce," Grace murmured to Letty--so

sure that he would not have to bother after all, that he hardly

looked up at them before this question.

There was an element of triumph in replying that Blake was a widower.

Even the judge raised an eyebrow and devoted one whole glance of

interest to Blake alone. "I thought he was going to say, 'Well,

aren't you the lucky guy!'" giggled Letty afterward. In five minutes

the ring had been slipped on Grace's finger. The judge noticed at

last that she was good-looking and he kissed her.

"Ugh! One of those nasty, wet kisses," said Grace to Letty,

scrubbing her mouth with a handkerchief the minute the door closed

behind them.

The lawyer thought they ought to have a breakfast, but Letty had had

hers and Grace wasn't hungry and Blake professed to distrust New

Jersey coffee. The lawyer shook hands with them. He stood on a

street corner, hesitating between sentiment and skepticism, and

finally discarded the former as likely to amuse such sophisticated

people. He wished them luck with a wink and left them.

"Well, you're married now," said Letty to Blake.

"I know. I've been married before," retorted Blake.

Grace and Blake were both disposed to be glum on the ride back. Even

Letty was pensive. Though they joked and Grace sniggered and Letty

giggled from time to time, the vows that had been uttered struck them

all with a sense of disappointment. Beside the glamorous shadow of

the unwritten, unspoken, yet irresistible promises that those two had

been conscious of so long at every meeting, the vows, articulated at

last, became disconcertingly meager and pallid, as a cherished

thought, a lovely symbol in the mind, forms itself into but a

sentence of the usual words, the common and oft-repeated figures of

expression, when put down on paper.

Blake left them, after kissing Grace lightly, to finish his morning's

sleep which the wedding had interrupted. Letty hailed a taxi,

squeezed Grace's hand, and left to finish her morning's duties which

the wedding had interrupted. And Grace, that having been attended

to, set out in earnest to find herself a new job.

As the marriage was such a very secret one, Anita did not learn of it

for several days.

CHAPTER TWO

Though it had not been discussed between Blake and Grace, it was

taken for granted that the difference in their status would be only

one of convenience. There was even a certain novelty? a certain

spice, in the fact that they could now listen to the footstep on the

stairs with the serenity of those who know that a wedding certificate

can, hey, presto! be produced, like the serenity of a magician who

knows that he can at will produce the vindicatory rabbit from his

coat sleeve. For enough of the tradition in which they had been

reared lingered on, like the rites of a religion in which no one now

believes or the grammar of a language that no one now uses, to

necessitate the devices of secrecy when both the reason for and the

secrecy itself were gone.

A honeymoon certainly had no place in their ideas. Soon after the

wedding Blake and Jerry went off to Havana. Afterward, Jerry refused

to believe in the marriage on this account; he said no bride would

have let a bridegroom roam so freely. When finally convinced, he

could not recover from the injustice of a state of things that caused

him to have more trouble with the girls he didn't marry than Blake

had with the girls he did marry.

On Blake's return it happened that Grace had an opportune invitation

to visit friends opportunely far away. There was no reason for her

to refuse, as she claimed the same freedom that Blake did. In

consequence, when she came home their reunion crystallized into a

motor trip with the Moseses. Grace was rather amused at the

simplicity of a trick, not quite conscious on her part--and such an

old-fashioned trick! She supposed she would have to plan for these

marital vacations, exactly as Beatrice Fairfax advised.

Blake had bought a car. Years of suppressed desire seemed to lurk

behind his proud engrossment with it. He would keep to the wheel

each day as long as possible, ignoring the protests of Harold and

Letty, who had had to bring their child, and becoming more and more

irritated by the fretfulness of the child. Grace, too, began the

journey by annoying him. It was raining when they started, and after

lunch in a small Connecticut town Grace and Blake went into the first

shop to buy a slicker for her. The rural shopkeeper looked from one

to the other in some surprise when Grace opened her purse to pay.

Blake pushed in front of her and threw the bills on the counter. He

walked out of the shop, Grace following, smiling, sighing resignedly

to herself. They were so silent for some time afterward that Letty

finally demanded to know the reason. But Blake would not answer.

Grace said quizzically, "It's because I can't get used to

being--legitimate."

And, in truth, the restiveness between them had its source, as she

guessed, in the uncertainty of her own attitude. She had long ago

accepted the fact that Blake never wanted all of her at any one time,

that he was scared and bewildered by and resentful, too, of any hint

of a self that lay beyond the part which suited his mood of the

period, refusing to regard it as another hue in the spectrum of a

personality but considering it, in the way in which a man considers

those traits in a woman which do not coincide with his own

expectations, as blameworthy or inconsistent.

On this journey, the first they had ever been able to take together,

Grace was abstracted with searching for what part of her antagonized

Blake now, so as to eliminate it and substitute that which he might

expect now. She had not thought he wished her to act "wifely," as

she would put it to herself. Indeed, she had felt that while, with

her, he saw no other way that could so fittingly make the world take

for granted their attitude toward each other, the marriage had come

before he had quite had time to think that he had decided for

himself--that he was irritated by the idea of compulsion--and it

behooved her to keep her state of wifehood as much in the background

as possible. The scene in the shop seemed to offer a clue of another

sort. But it was hard to reconcile his offense at a small motion of

independence before the world with the gloomy silence in which she

remembered he had received news of the final loss of her job. She

had not blamed him then at all, discerning in his silence his

memories of an economic reliance that had oppressed him in the past.

She was well aware that her attitude of self-sustenance in every way

had been one of her chief attractions at first, in contrast to the

then irksome attitude of his wife.

Not yet having come to any conclusion about his present mood, she

took refuge in patience. She did not hear, she did not see, she was

as unobtrusive as possible, she said nothing. It rained during the

first two days in which they traveled about Connecticut and

Massachusetts.

When they reached the seaside hotel that Blake had chosen, the sun

came out, a glad and powerful ally that caused Grace to loosen her

armor. She came down to breakfast cheerfully next morning, fortified

by a marcel. Letty and Harold were feeding their child with a great

deal of parental care and merriment. Grace did not mind. She was

fond of the little girl and laughed as indulgently as Letty when the

child banged her spoon on the plate or dropped oatmeal with a pensive

preoccupation over the tablecloth. On Blake's appearance, they had

all eaten and were sitting back, in the sun.

"Hullo," said Grace, quite forgetting her disguise.

And Letty, who had been taking her cue from Grace, commented briskly,

"How come you're up so early in the morning?"

"Probably wants to get some golf. The links here are good," said

Harold.

They all looked toward him eagerly to share their good spirits.

"I don't want to get some golf," said Blake with emphasis. "I did

want to get some sleep, but Grace being one of those risers with the

dawn, I suppose that's out of the question."

Grace's eyes turned slowly from one to the other of the Moseses as

she adopted her special tone, at once resigned and explanatory, for

Blake's idiosyncrasies. "Blake has such a hate on mornings. I tried

not to make any noise," she murmured. "I walked about in stocking

feet, honest to Ga-awd!"

"Is that so? They sounded more like bricks," said Blake. He

examined her closely. "Was it for that marcel you got up? I might

have known. That will be Grace's initial step on entering Heaven,

won't it, Grace? As soon as St. Peter opens the gates you'll sweep

past to locate, by instinct, the nearest beauty parlor, won't you,

Grace? How does your instinct work in that respect, by the way? Is

it by the sense of smell you locate them or by a sense of direction?

Tell us."

This was one of Blake's humors which Grace recognized and knew how to

combat, or rather how not to combat. She was even a little gratified

at his acute observation of details concerning her; if habit had

sharpened, it had at least not dulled his awareness of her. She

could even smile at the pungent truth of some of his remarks, albeit

it was a rueful smile.

"And he used to rush up to me on the street and say how beautiful I

was," she interpolated under her breath to the others.

Blake snorted.

"If you want to quarrel on your honeymoon, far be it from me to

prevent you," said Letty. "Harold and I started ours with a grand

scrap. Remember?"

It was Harold's turn to look rueful.

"There were some awfully cute bellboys in the hotel," explained Letty

with a giggle, "and Harold thought I paid too much attention to them.

But don't fight about a marcel," she besought Blake. "Save that for

when you've been married a long time like us. It'll come in handy

then. Now, it seems so--so picking!"

That last had been a mistake, as Letty understood instantly. Anger

with Blake was a state of ice, not of heat. Instead of quickly

bursting with it, he slowly froze about his anger, locking it

securely within. They were all chilled by him, even the child who

had been trying to reach his place across the table with her spoon.

He glowered at her so that she began to wail. Blake rose and flung

down his napkin. "I'd better leave this happy domestic circle," he

said, and walked away.

Harold was too wise to open his mouth. Across the table the two

girls glanced at each other and Grace shrugged so as to convey her

bafflement to Letty. Nevertheless, she went quickly upstairs and

subjected her face and hair to the mirror. Any criticism of her

looks, even this which she knew arose from other reasons, was sure to

terrify Grace. The wave was a bit too tight. This reflection filled

her with an unease which all Letty's reassurances could not still,

which a pale yellow felt hat, pressed down till the brim met her

eyebrows and, in the sun, enhancing her skin to a brilliance that

made it a plastic materialization of the brilliant air and deepening

her eyes to soft midnight, could not remove. Only the visual

admiration of the lobby and the beach, the impression which she made

on other people, finally brought back her composure.

She wore her hat hopefully to lunch. But Blake, though freshened by

golf, still clung to his ill-will; there was no one like Blake for

remembering what had annoyed him. As the child had been the last

focal point of irritation, he surveyed her mannerisms very coldly.

Grace thought it had been a pity to bring the child, but after all it

was Blake who had planned this trip for all of them. If anyone's

fault, it was his, and she rebelled against the shafts that, flung at

her, she knew were meant for the Moseses and the child. Letty knew

too and was tired of being tactful. "What an oil can of a husband

you turned out to be," she said crisply.

The long day drew to the close which might have been foretold. Letty

and Harold sat morosely over the dinner table; the child had been put

to bed, and Grace was in a state of mounting and stifling resentment.

She was so very quiet that she might have been on the verge of tears.

Blake thought so. She went up to their room very suddenly. When,

some time later, he followed, he expected to find her in that

condition which would finally thaw a mood of which he himself was

tiring but which he had, from early childhood, learned to rely on

others to evaporate for him.

Grace was just finishing her evening toilette. It always soothed her

to look after herself physically. She slipped a barrette about her

hair at the nape of her neck, smoothed down the waves which enclosed

the now clear forehead, the cheeks that seemed rounder, in a sleek,

soft frame. She was pleased with the effect and studied it for a few

moments in the glass. She turned to him and would have spoken but

remembered and swallowed the words. He spoke for her.

She considered the glass without expression, very still.

He spoke again with a sneer.

"All right," she said evenly. "You can torment me as much as you

like. But when it gets too much for me, I have a way--to make you

sorry."

He was so taken aback that he laughed out loud.

"What'll you do?" he said.

She made a small, menacing nod to her reflection in the glass. "I

know what I can do."

This time she planted her eyes full on him, eyes so dry, huge,

shooting such a triumphant brilliance at him from the hard pupils and

the distended, gleaming whites, that he blinked. He watched them

with a half-amused curiosity turning into a vague alarm. "Tell me.

What will you do?"

"Nope. I won't tell you," she said. She curved her lips about the

secret which seemed to give her a malicious pleasure. "Only, if you

ever make me do it, you'll be sorry."

He remained silent now, she could see, really worried. Stealing

looks at her from time to time, the set of her face scared him. And

she was so dry-eyed. It was not that Grace cried easily, but he

seemed to recollect that no fault of his, or at least nothing that

had been a grave fault to her, had been revealed to her hitherto

without his being able to measure the extent of her hurt and his

pardon in the melting of her eyes and the upwelling and flow of her

tears. Now he was at a loss. She had not been hurt--could not be

hurt--as her actions and demeanor declared to him--so how could he

sue for pardon? A phrase he had once used to her, in the need of the

moment, not half-meaning it but using it because it rose to his lips,

returned to thrust itself at him, to become fatefully clear--like an

old prophecy. "When you don't cry any more, I'll know you don't care

any more." And this explanation was so apparent to him that he grew

quiet and pale with it. He waited, sunk in imagination, watching her

move about the room, more and more anxious for some sign that might

reassure him.

At length, as she made no such sign, he was forced to remind her of

what he had once said. The words dropped from his lips

involuntarily, as a tentative inquiry. But, falling slowly from his

lips, stumbling across such a wide distance, they reached her, these

words with their old associations, like old friends in some dire

trouble whom one must at once, without question, comfort and aid. So

she was placated.

He had behaved very well after that, Grace told Anita. She said with

a smile that changed into the motions of her deliberate snigger on

further thought: "I had no idea what I would do, you know. I just

said it on the spur of the moment to _stop_ him. He was

getting--unbearable. And--you know how--you can frighten a person

more by a threat if you don't--don't define it? If they don't know

just--where--they're going to be hit? Blake was very scared. He

pretended to tease me about it afterward, but just the same I could

see--he had it on his mind.'"

She paused. Her lips drew together in a resolute line and in her

new, slower tone there lingered a trace of vindictiveness. She had

just picked up a clock from the dresser and her fingers grasped it

tightly as she faced Anita.

"But when he kept asking me what I meant to do, joking about 'my

little mystery,'" she added, "I started to wonder what I really could

do--if it came to that--what really would punish him. And now--I

know." She halted again, savoring her victorious secret with her

eyes and her smile.

She would have continued even without the prompting question, had to

continue, would have ignored and overridden any interruption, like an

actress finishing her speech regardless of all distractions.

"It occurred--to me," she said, and articulated each phrase slowly,

"that--all I would have to do would be to go to his mother, who

thinks--he is so very perfect, and tell her the whole story--how we

lived together long before Edith left him, in what circumstances the

baby was born, and why he _didn't_--get called Junior!"

She laid the clock down firmly on top of a suitcase and concluded,

"She'd never recover from the shock."

"Oh, you wouldn't actually do that," said Anita.

"I might," said Grace with a shrug.

They were packing up to leave the apartment. Grace as usual "knew

someone" who would take it off their hands, as it had been decided

that she should move into Blake's place.

"I don't think I'll take that--or that," Grace said, flinging old

things into a corner. "Can you use this?" She held up a dressing

gown that Anita had long admired.

"What do you want for it?" said Anita.

Grace hesitated. "It's old--but it's still good." She was torn

between her first generous impulse to give and the later impulse,

fruit of experience, not to give without a return. Anita had always

been careful, she hardly knew why, not to permit Grace's first

impulses to win, never to accept without a return, and the return she

preferred to make, the return that seemed to her least complicated,

was of money. She hazarded a price. It was too much, but somehow

she had always rather give Grace too much--in money--than too little.

It eased her conscience.

Grace handed over the dressing gown. She closed the last suitcase.

She felt a little uncomfortable about accepting the money, Anita

could see, and when she had put it into her purse she said suddenly,

with the effect of having found a way to make the transaction fair,

"It's not time for the moving men yet. Let's go down. I'll buy

you--a soda."

Anita smiled.

They stepped over the luggage. Grace searched for her keys. From

the hallway Anita could see the sad, dead spaces of the living

room--piles of shapeless furniture, heaps of miscellaneous débris.

With a final bang, the door swung to.

CHAPTER THREE

They were to continue to see a great deal of each other, as Grace was

not the sort of old-fashioned spouse who is swallowed up by her

husband's life. And at first she did manage to meet Anita often,

usually when she was troubled and wore what Anita had begun to think

of as her "bird of prey" aspect, the signal for some new worry or

some new need. She couldn't make any dates, she confided in a tone

which tried to be humorous while her eyes exhibited her very real

concern. Admirers, both long-established and potential, had suddenly

vanished. Or, if she chanced upon one, as she did several times on

the street and in restaurants when Anita was with her, their

withdrawal was obvious enough to embarrass Anita. They were glad to

see Grace; they looked at her with pleasure. Then, when, on leaving,

Grace fixed her eyes on them and said, "Why don't you--call me

up--sometime?" or, with a measured insistence, "Let's have--a date

soon--shall we?" their uneasiness became apparent in the wandering of

their eyes and the hasty indefiniteness of their replies.

"Do you see? They couldn't run from me worse if I had the plague!"

exclaimed Grace.

Another time, at a dinner party, she sat next to a one-time boy

friend who had not been entirely tractable in his day because of

doubts as to her status. Such overtures as she cared to make now,

however, had been circumspectly passed by. "My Gawd! You ought to

have seen the _respect_ with which he treated me," said Grace, with

some alarm in spite of her satisfaction.

She applied to Anita: "Letty says it's because I've just been married

and they think I can't want to make dates with other men, that I'm

only--kidding them." Her eyes implored Anita for serious

consideration.

Anita thought it might be so.

"If they only knew!" wailed Grace.

"Blake has a girl now," she said disconsolately. "A nice little

chorus girl. He has quite a crush on her. He says it's such fun to

use the old line and tell the old stories to some girl who drinks

them in as if they were new." An indulgent smile hovered about her

mouth. "I know--just how he feels."

After a pause she was struck by a thought which, it occurred to

Anita, probably had been in the back of her mind all the time. She

raised her eyes and tested the ground with her phrases. "I

thought--I might even start something--with Dennis," she said. "I'm

that desperate!" She added, "That is, if you don't mind."

Anita could not help chuckling. "You'd better apply to Dennis."

"Oh, Dennis!" said Grace confidently.

But Anita was not so sure, since Dennis was in the throes of the very

fate Grace had foreseen. The very girl of her prophecy apparently, a

sweet, firm little creature, whose tactics Anita noted with

admiration, had Dennis in tow, or so nearly in tow that it didn't

matter. He went about proclaiming over convivial tables, "To think

that a sweet little girl like that should care for a bum like me!"

However, it was not long before Grace came to call on Anita in a

happier frame of mind; she had a job, a better job than the old. She

wanted to borrow Anita's house in order to entertain a new swain that

evening. Blake had planned to stay in and work, thus making her own

home unavailable.

"It feels so strange to have to borrow apartments again," she

complained. "Ironic, isn't it? For the first time since I left Ma I

haven't--even a nook--I can feel is quite my own."

She looked around Anita's room with the disappointment with which it

always filled her. The house stood in the old Chelsea district on a

block that was still pimpled with tenement houses. Though it shone

to the point of bedizenment with varnish and fresh paint, it was a

rickety, meager little house. And Anita's home was so bare--bare

floors, nearly bare walls, painted furniture and not much of it that

seemed stripped to the bone; color, charming and harmonious color,

that decorated instead of softening. The vague, comfortable, and

comforting quality in a room that makes one sink into it and wish to

stay in it, the quality meant by "lived in," which has nothing to do

with taste, which means only perhaps that the room is accustomed to

people, needs them, is ready to adapt itself under their eyes to

whatever they require of it--this quality was missing here. Grace

was always a little on the verge of leaving in Anita's home.

The second summer of their marriage, the Andrews' went to London to

put on one of Blake's shows. Grace's return was heralded by such a

vigorous determination to get Anita to go apartment hunting with her

and by such a mound of worries in connection with her father and

mother-in-law, who had moved East with Blake's child, that the mere

sound of her voice began to bring to Anita the immediate, warning

reflex, "What does she want now?" By the following year, Anita

barely knew that Blake had thought of taking a house in Great Neck,

buying a house, perhaps, as Grace informed her dejectedly in the

course of a sudden telephone call. This overture brought the same

reflex with it, had the sound of a distress call from a proud liner

to a humble little tramp steamer which never would have got the least

attention otherwise. Anita had long ago resolved not to make initial

advances to Grace because, unless these came at the propitious

moment, Grace did not trouble to disguise their inconvenience. A

remnant of gratitude still caused her to feel that she ought to come

when whistled to, but she was so disinclined that Grace had been

compelled to offer inducements other than that personal company which

is usually considered sufficient for old friends.

"Well, since you can't have dinner with me," she had said at last

incredulously, "if we do take the house, you must come out for a

week-end. I'll let you know."

Nor did Grace forget. Anita was an assistant now, instead of a

secretary, and one day, in the absence of the chief, the employment

bureau's press agent "hung" a story on to her. The afternoon that

story appeared, Grace called up to congratulate and to give a

definite invitation. It seemed more than a coincidence to Anita.

What a perfect scent for success Grace had! Nevertheless she felt

ashamed almost at once of so cynical an appraisement and scolded

herself. It was kind of Grace to ask her out; it was indeed a long

time since they had seen each other. She agreed to call for Grace on

Saturday afternoon.

Grace was working for a theatrical producer and had her name on the

elevator directory, her name on the door, a stenographer and a room

almost to herself, concrete evidences of her rise which she felt she

ought to acknowledge ironically so that no one could think she was

proud of them or that they really meant anything to her.

A new musical comedy was being cast and, as Grace shared her office

with the man who "saw" people for it, she with her appurtenances was

almost swamped by a collection of show folks who stood, sat, chatted,

were quiet, yet nevertheless had all the same attitude and the same

expression--the patient attitude, the waiting face. The man who saw

people, of course, had not yet returned from lunch, might not return

at all that day, as Anita heard Grace reply a dozen times within the

few minutes. At the same time, she was carrying on a telephone

conversation with the press agent for a charity ball who wished her

to urge the cast of _We Are Three_ to attend for the good of the

firm--and the ball. While Anita waited, she concluded the talk,

scribbled some notes on her date pad, and declared, "That's all I'm

going to do for Sweet Charity _this_ bright Saturday afternoon." She

picked up a large, pale blue silky straw hat from her desk and made

for the door, only to be summoned back by a fresh ring of the phone.

It was the dramatic editor of the Weehawken, New Jersey, High School

_Gazetteer_, demanding free tickets to review _We Are Three_. Grace

rolled her eyes in despair and said politely that she was sorry but

this was impossible as the show was selling out. "You see," she

confided gravely, "I would be glad to--oblige you but I am not even

allowed tickets for the daily paper people.... Yes.... Later

perhaps.... Good-bye. Come along," she gasped to Anita, "before any

more pests call up."

Once outside, she tucked her hat over her hair, using the glass of

the elevator shaft as a mirror, and heaved a great sigh of relief.

"I can't bear to be around when there's casting," she said. "All

this week I've been grabbing my hat at odd hours and dashing out of

the office. They're so--pitiful! It's no good telling them Mr.

Whoozis won't be in, probably'll _never_ be in. They won't believe.

And they won't go. I don't see how you can stand having people come

to you for jobs day in, day out."

"Oh, well... It's rather nice anyhow when you have the jobs to

distribute," said Anita. "You ought to know. You've found work for

plenty of people."

Grace sniggered. "Yes. Blake says I ought to open--an employment

bureau on the side. I've even got into the bad habit of suggesting

girls I run across for his shows."

She was wearing a pale blue silk blouse and skirt, minutely tucked

and pleated by way of flaunting its simplicity. The color, so

unusual for her, had by its novelty the effect of emphasizing anew

the hazy glow which her skin shed under the summer sun, the gentle

fullness which her cheeks now had. She looked lovelier than ever,

Anita thought, and said so.

"That's a nice dress you have on, too," said Grace, scrutinizing the

green of Anita's summer jersey. "The nicest I've ever seen on you.

I suppose it's--by way of celebration?"

The warning signal jerked in Anita's brain while she hated herself

for it. She was liking Grace so much at the moment.

"And that reminds me," went on Grace, "speaking of jobs and all. You

wouldn't need--a stenographer--would you? My little cousin is

looking for work."

"No. We've already got one," said Anita shortly. After a moment she

amended: "It's not exactly in my line; we're only supposed to get

work for adolescents or the handicapped. But I run across all kinds

of jobs. I'll--I'll watch out for her."

"I'll let you know," were words Anita had sworn would never, never

pass her lips.

They had still to call for Blake at a theater where he was rehearsing

a road company of his last show--he now staged his own shows, Grace

explained.

They walked a few blocks which seemed surprisingly gay and sunny.

White structures had sprung up everywhere, taking the place of the

squat old tortured frontages--a slender and glittering generation,

slimly arrogant, flaunting a hard chastity of line in a sunlight

that, striking full on every revealed angle, could not abash but only

made them more shining. The theater was new and also white. The

asphalt in front of it had but just been laid and returned to the sun

a million infinitesimal sparks, as if it were set with diamantes.

They went around by the stage entrance and found some chorus girls

issuing brightly and, just within the open door, talking to Jerry

Barker, a man of whom Anita could observe at first solely the crease

made by fat above the pink-striped collar of his shirt. Coming

nearer, she was disconcerted to recognize Blake. She had seen less

of him than of Grace and had not met him at all these last months.

Hitherto, a slight expansiveness in his bearing and appearance, an

ease of flesh and movement due to prosperity, had been attractive.

But all Anita could think of now was how the flesh had finally spread

and filled every inch of his fine gray suit. Her expression must

have been obvious. Blake said almost at once, in the unconscious

avowal of one who knows just what the fault is for which he desires

to forestall blame, "I'm going to reduce." However, at the same time

he looked at Anita hopefully, as if trying to judge from her face

whether, after all, it would really be necessary to reduce. To

Anita's surprise, he remarked, "You look well yourself" (the first

time she had attracted so much of social amiability from Blake), and

asked them to wait with Jerry while he fetched his car from the

garage.

They were waiting thus when the principals tripped out. All of them

greeted Jerry and several greeted Grace. Then followed a few chorus

men and finally a last relay of chorus girls. A few of these also

knew Grace and waved to her as they walked into the street. One girl

left her companion for a moment and dashed over.

"How nice you look, Grace!" she exclaimed, running her eyes over the

large hat and the pale blue of the dress.

"Thank you."

"You look so stylish!" added the girl. "Real up-to-date," she

pronounced with an approving nod of her head, and sped away.

There had been a frigid note in Grace's voice which did not quite

accord with the quizzical glance she gave Anita. "I suppose I'm just

another little-wife-in-navy-blue-georgette to them. Probably because

I wear sleeves in the daytime," she murmured.

CHAPTER FOUR

On the way out, Grace and Anita sat in the back seat, Jerry in front

with Blake. Grace said that Letty had been asking about her and that

soon they must "all get together." Only, it was difficult to arrange

for week-ends; there were so many people one had to invite.

Anita was embarrassed, sensing a subtle apology which Grace, in fact,

did feel that she owed. Grace had always declared that when she had

a house Anita would be free to come and go in it. She had found,

however, that a hostess who wishes her hospitality to be effective is

like a producer who must choose his players for the contributions

each can make to the success of the show. Anita was simply "not the

type." Grace didn't believe Anita cared. She remembered that she

had asked her up now and then for dinner when no other people would

be present and Anita had not seemed very eager. Nor had Anita ever

shown much interest in the crowd. But she certainly did not wish

Anita to feel, because of the necessary gaps in their social

relationship, that Anita had been dropped as a friend.

Anita turned the subject by inquiring after Letty.

Letty did not look so well, Grace said; her hair had a lot of gray in

it. "She says all she seems to do now is take care of her child and

sit around and watch 'us active people.' But Harold is getting to

be--quite the ladies' man. He sends roses to Evelyn Linden whenever

they have a date."

"To Evelyn Linden? I shouldn't think Harold would be interested in

Evelyn Linden."

"Harold and Evelyn Linden?" said Grace, and took on her remote look

of having and withholding secret information. "Is _that_ going on?

Oh, my! Apace!"

Anita knew of old that Grace's omniscience demanded an audience. But

there was a tinge of satisfaction, almost of malice, in her tone

which took Anita by surprise. It was almost as if she enjoyed the

advantage over people of knowing something about them--liked to "have

something on them."

"Evelyn Linden as good as told Letty," went on Grace after a pause,

"that if it weren't for their friendship the affair would

be--serious."

"And what did Letty say?"

"Said it was all right with her. But I don't think she cares for the

idea especially. I notice she and Evelyn don't see so much of each

other. However--that is not why Letty looks as she does. It's

because--she has no one now. She's hunting around, as it were. I've

always said there was nothing like love to improve one's appearance,"

she concluded with unction.

Anita was aware that Grace glanced at her expectantly. She made no

answer. She had begun to suffer from the same strange, harried

tension in Grace's presence that she had felt at their last meeting,

as if she were running a sort of race with Grace's troubles, flying

before Grace's inevitable confidences, yet not being able to avoid

glimpses of them out of the corner of her eye (as one subconsciously

follows the movements of a pursuer) and at the same time being

obliged instinctively to protect her own.

It was a relief anyhow not to be shown through the house, a temporary

one and therefore, though lavish enough, not considered worth the

showing. Anita had decided that the showing of houses was a mania

inherent in suburbs, to which even people who would never dream of

exhibiting a city apartment succumbed. She was grateful not to be

forced to eulogize her surroundings. The living room was large and

cool as a cave, with half-drawn shades and curtains of a thin beige

silk through which the sun oozed yellowly, and the couch and

armchairs, disposed about the brick fireplace, allowed one to sink as

into feather beds. There was an enormous piano and an only slightly

less enormous radio and a glossy phonograph from which Grace drew the

melodious sorrows of a Negro spiritual. Grace had adopted "Water

Boy" to be intelligently and critically ecstatic over as Anita

recollected she had once adopted the plump little f's of a well-known

illustrator, and she insisted on analyzing the effect of "Water Boy"

upon her soul as she had once insisted on analyzing the effect of the

little f's.

They ate Virginia ham and spinach and marshmallowed sweet potatoes

and a pudding of a golden flakiness that had slices of rose gelatin

tucked into it. There was a white-aproned Negro cook in the

background and a red-cheeked youngster, a "mother's helper," who

waited on table.

Blake had apparently turned over his child to Mother Andrews (Grace's

name for her mother-in-law) as the result of an old agreement that he

was to be relieved of all that harassed and be tendered only that

which could be enjoyed. She was mild, pretty, faded, with thin lips,

and she sat obscurely at table. The boy, Jamie, sat by her and

received from her, in an undertone, the few corrections which he

disregarded with an almost exact copy of Blake's manner of disregard.

Grace had said that Jamie was just like Blake.

He was still a little shy with Grace, and she was not so foolish as

to throw herself abjectly, sweating with the anxiety for approval, on

a child's mercies. She had once explained to Anita that she believed

the best way to get his affection was, with a child as with a

grown-up, always to leave some concrete evidence of good-will. When

Jamie had first come East, and she used to visit him with Blake, she

had never appeared empty-handed. She still returned to the formula

from time to time. To-day she had brought him a book of stories and

pictures of pirates.

After dinner he came to her side in the living room and took her

hand, looking sideways in embarrassment and flushing a little, in

token of thanks. He wished to have the pictures explained. The two

girls put their heads together to concoct suitable versions under the

watchful eyes of Mother Andrews. She said nary a word. But Anita,

as Grace had managed to convey while they stood for a moment by the

piano and waited for the others to leave the dining room, had used

the word "devil" at table in front of the child. It seemed that

Mother Andrews had revised certain words for Jamie. A devil must not

be termed a "devil" before him but suffered a saccharine change and

become a "monkey."

The child listened with wide-open, clear blue eyes, across which a

flash, caused by a deep breath, shot now and again. They knew he was

pleased only because he offered, with his sideways look and flush, to

show them how he "took falls." They went to the door and watched him

in the fading light tumble down on the cropped lawn many times and

regain his balance gracefully, swiftly. "You'll have to disown him,"

said Grace to Blake. "He'll turn into a hoofer yet." Blake made a

face. Hoofers were people he professed most to detest. The child

looked from one to the other avidly, not understanding but sensing

another reserve that perhaps ought to hedge him in.

However, in spite of his outward detachment, Blake looked up when

Jamie was sent to bed and waited and bent his cheek forward for the

good-night kiss. The boy went on to Grace and kissed her, too, then

lingered before Anita, who had lit a cigarette. It was the cigarette

that held his attention. No doubt he had been told that every

cigarette was a nail in one's coffin. He looked like that. At

length he made up his mind not to notice her. He hastened by without

so much as a murmur, turning and peering at her as he made his

farewells to the others and sending her one last, clear-blue,

reticent gaze from behind the banister at the foot of the stairs.

Then he could bear it no longer and revealed the judgment which had

been on the tip of his tongue. "Ladies don't smoke," he said.

Anita was irritated enough to ask, "Who told you that?" despite

Grace's optic warning.

"It said so in a book," he replied securely.

"Is that so?" said Anita, less to the child than for the benefit of

Mother Andrews. "There are a lot of other things in books. For

instance, it says in a book, 'Children should be seen and not heard.'

Do you believe that?"

They all laughed, even Mother Andrews, and the child himself saw the

point and bent his head a little ruefully. But no one spoke. Blake

wore an air of assent, rather than otherwise, to the child's

prudishness.

Mother Andrews went up to bed soon after, making various tactful

signals to her husband to remove himself also. She was very good

about that, Grace whispered, in contrast to Dad Andrews, whom Grace

liked better but whose delight in the company of young folks made him

often far too stationary. He sat on for a long time that night,

nice-looking, gentle, youngish, and rather wistful except when the

numerous opinions he had formed about the theater and the traffic

situation, even in so short a period, led him to inject himself into

the talk. Blake set his chin and ignored the interruptions until the

constant calls of his mother from above finally tore Dad away. Then

Grace, sighing with relief, wished to know what they meant to do with

the rest of the evening. "Marie Drum wants us to come over and see

her house," she said, to Anita's alarm. The men debated whether or

not they would work.

"Or we might go over to Olive Lytell's," added Grace. "I had to see

her at the theater last night and she said she was giving a party."

"Well, why don't you and Anita go over while we work?" suggested

Blake with unwonted kindness.

But Grace said decidedly that she would not think of going without

him.

They went to the Drums' after all because Marie and Ted Drum burst

into the house to fetch them. Ted Drum was--had been--a

song-and-dance man and had been featured in one of Blake's shows. He

was dark, curly-haired. Grace introduced him as "one of those freaks

of Nature who can't read notes and never took a lesson in their lives

but who can play any tune on the piano by ear." Marie Drum

rhapsodized on the subjects of furniture, landscape gardening, the

prices of trees, and the difficulties of getting in touch with their

architect. "He's not at his office for weeks and he doesn't answer

his telephone. Of course, they say he's a dipso and his private life

is smeared all over the place, but I haven't found anyone to suit us

so well. The only way to get him is to send him a night letter to

his home, I've found. He's got to open a telegram."

"We must remember that," said Blake to Grace--and to the Drums, "I

was thinking of getting him myself."

Finally, it seemed easiest to go and inspect the Drums' house.

All bungalows made of pink stucco were exactly like all other

bungalows made of pink stucco to Anita. This pinkness stood against

the sky, dark blue as it should be, and over the house a slim moon

was poised, a wispy, silvery circlet. Marie Drum pointed to it with

pride, as if it had been a stage property. Such a nice moon for a

pink stucco house! Anita followed in resignation, observing the

house from every angle, observing it from top to bottom, observing

"cute" staircases and the patchwork quilt in the guest room and the

Colonial furnishings of the bedroom and the polished purity of the

kitchen and the rosy tiles and pink-embroidered towels of the

bathroom, while Marie Drum tripped on feathery feet (she had been a

dancer), in a huge black hat which never left her head even in her

own home, tripped before them up and down stairs, opening doors and

explaining antiques. Grace asked questions about the furniture,

after which she made an excuse to Anita, "I may have to choose some

myself soon." The Drums had overlooked no accessory that could

contribute to their domestic pride. They had a dog and they even had

a visitors' book.

The living room was strictly and stiffly Colonial. Balanced sedately

on the high-bred chairs, one breathed one's thankfulness to catch

sight of a grand piano--and then a radio--and then a ping-pong set.

And the white bearskin before the fireplace, spontaneous effusion

from the hearts of Ted and Marie Drum in the midst of glacial floor

spaces, was like a dear, dear old friend.

While Ted sat down to the piano and strummed popular tunes without

ever having taken a lesson, Marie fluttered about, coralling them to

sign the visitors' book. Grace took up the pen first, unwillingly,

and signed herself, "Grace Kline."

Marie objected. "Oh, no. Sign your full name. What do you want to

join the Lucy Stone League for?"

"I _don't_ want to," said Grace. "I don't have to. I can't _get_

anyone to call me anything but Grace Kline. When the grocer says

'Mrs. Andrews,' I jump. Really."

She peeped toward Blake, who was listening. "Well, since you

insist..." she remarked and put down an "Andrews."

Marie Drum stood over her. "And write something--write something

bright under Remarks." Grace hesitated, then added a dash after

"Grace Kline Andrews" and wrote "--By Request!" with a flourish. She

watched Blake read it and handed him the pen. He set down firmly,

"Blake Andrews," and in the Remarks column he wrote, with a snort,

"--By Command!" and threw down the pen.

Marie Drum had to ponder over the comments for a few moments before

she saw the point. Then she burst into surprised laughter, calling

to the others to come and see. "You little eggs!" she cried. An

elaborate smirk was pasted to Grace's face. She was neither abashed

nor hurt. It was nothing, she knew. He was quite comfortable,

perfectly satisfied. This was just a last obeisance, demanded by the

convention of his youthful creed, toward an unattainable freedom

which it had been part of the creed to yearn for, but which he had

sagaciously never made any attempt to attain and which he would not

know what to do with if it could be attained. She sat down by Blake

on the bearskin and closed her two hands over his arm in an arch

attitude of consolation. They still had moments of embracing in

public, or rather of staging their carefully burlesqued yet absorbed

caresses, but these were no longer so compelling to watch, no longer

acted on the audience as reminders of a love which transcended all

obstacles. The audience was even a little impatient; after all,

Blake and Grace could very well now embrace in private.

Jerry, who was a good musician, pushed Ted off the piano stool and

began to play a song from the show he and Blake were working on.

"What do you think of that?"

Ted nodded and asserted that it ought to be a hit. It made him

think, he said, of "Your Kisses Are Blisses," which had been their

biggest hit.

"Funny about that," said Jerry reminiscently. "We had every song in

the show picked for a hit but that. Blake was all for 'Is There

Anything a Little Girl Can't Do?'"

Blake disengaged himself. "I'm still for that," he called. "It's a

good lyric and a good tune."

"Maybe it was too much for them to remember," suggested Ted. "A tune

ought to be simple, that's my idea."

Marie interrupted to say that this didn't always follow, naming one

composer of many hits whose tunes were often complicated. They

turned on her in mockery.

"Yeh, but what tunes!" said Jerry. "That fella knows his classics."

They began a rapt discussion of lyrics, tunes, what the public likes,

and of what exactly had made "Your Kisses Are Blisses" so popular.

Grace kept still, with her eyes fixed on space. During a pause she

raised them and articulated gravely, "There's--something I

thought--to tell you, Jerry." They all watched her.

"There's one thing that all hit tunes have in common," she

pronounced, "whatever the other ingredients may be. They may or may

not have words of one syllable, though they usually have. But

whatever else they are, they're all--_definite_. For instance,

'Who--Who stole my heart away?' Or, 'Your Kisses--Your kisses are

blisses.' _One_ thing to settle in your mind."

There was a long silence while they all somehow felt that they should

ruminate on this. Ted roused himself with an effort to prepare

drinks. Marie Drum said, "We all go to bed early here," so they

stayed only long enough to have some highballs and to play a few

games of ping-pong. And then, since it was merely midnight, they

trooped forth to a lunch wagon near the station to terminate the

night life of Great Neck fittingly with sandwiches and coffee.

CHAPTER FIVE

A real-estate agent called for Blake soon after the lunch-breakfast

to show him some land. Grace, plumped on the couch, was a spot of

orange severely vivid in the midst of the Sunday morning frowsiness

of the living room--flattened, disordered cushions and untidy

carpets; a small green bowl on the piano spilling cigarette stubs and

ashes. She was scanning the Sunday papers to see which of her

publicity stories had got in. Every now and then she pounced on a

sheet, stuck the point of her scissors through it, and neatly clipped

an item.

"I'm busy collecting li'l items," she said sardonically, "li'l scraps

of pa-a-aper! You go with Blake, Anita, and see the town."

So, from the back seat of the car, Anita solemnly surveyed the town.

There seemed to be quite a lot of pleasant green grass and blue sky

and sunshine and houses on hills and houses at the foot of slopes and

houses along smooth streets and many vacant lots between.

Occasionally, Blake stopped the car in front of one of the latter,

while he and Jerry and the real-estate agent discussed its special

virtues. They drove a good way out to a point of marshy land through

which the Sound had filtered in pale streamlets and tiny pools. To

one side an arm of the Sound stretched, long, blue, and deep, bearing

yachts on its tranquil surface and many boats and a pier. Blake

indicated the narrow fringe which was Sands Point Casino and another

fringe which was Port Washington. A second agent joined them and

stood with one foot on the running board, calling attention to the

beauties of the landscape and suggesting other spots which they might

see. The car faced the water, which drew their eyes over and beyond

it with the insistence of all horizons. Even the real-estate agents

gazed over their shoulders once in a while.

"Take Lake Success now," said one reflectively. "Been there yet?

That's a mighty pretty country around Lake Success."

Anita, who had paid little heed, looked up quickly. The agent's face

was quite blank as he went on to describe another section of this

countryside. She glanced at the other agent and from him to Jerry.

They were both absorbed in the talk. She grinned to herself and

caught a sudden answering glint of amusement from a corner of Blake's

eye, accentuated by the slightest turn of his head, so that it was

like a wink between them. Anita at once forgave him the crease of

fat above the collar of his shirt, blue-striped to-day.

They returned past a huge stone castle that resembled a church.

Blake halted before it and told Anita to bow her head in

contemplation. "That's Jack Omley's house," he said, mentioning a

wealthy lyric writer. "The house that jack built. Must have cost

around two hundred thousand. I go and look at it when I want

inspiration. It's a monument to book-and-lyrics."

Jerry clamored to be shown a house that music had built. "It's you

lyric writers who make the jack," he complained.

After they had called for Grace and delivered up Jamie in terror to

his first social engagement--a children's party given by Mrs. Saling,

young wife of the producer for whom Grace worked ("And what a soft

thing _she_ fell into," remarked Grace, as they left the place with

its curving lawn decorated by gay colored balloons and the party

dresses of children) they spent part of the afternoon looking at more

houses. An airy, delicate, wistful little gray cottage "that

nestled," Grace said; white frame buildings with green blinds; bright

stucco bungalows; houses as precise as little jewels cut out of

glowing brick, with tessellated walks surrounded by clipped verdure;

romantic structures obscured by trees on hilltops--all these Grace

liked. Blake wished to buy a lot and build so that his parents could

live with or adjoining them, while Grace preferred a small, separate

place which they could use for summers.

They passed by the dwelling of a famous writer, humped on a hill like

a white elephant, which Anita had asked to see, and--just beyond--the

convivial house of a famous editor, where women in all colors of silk

sport dresses and men in shirt sleeves and men in tennis trousers

were playing croquet on the lawn. "That crowd has a perfect passion

for games," said Grace, peering from the car. She knew all the

people and called off their names to Anita: the celebrities of a

certain set in which she did not move though she had cast glances

thereon.

Blake swerved the car and re-passed. "I suppose you want to get a

glimpse of Raphael," he said to her teasingly, but with a hint of

irritation. Grace did not answer. "Or should it be Rafe now?"

persisted Blake. She smiled a secret, half-complacent smile and

looked at Anita. She said they might as well stop by and visit Betty

Rose Crawford who had the lead in _We Are Three_. "You might be

interested in her," she told Blake and Jerry. "You know--Saling

picked her from a chorus. This is only her second part. She sings

and dances quite well."

"She wouldn't do for _Boy Friends_," said Blake. "No name."

"Well, it wouldn't hurt you--to just talk to her, would it? And you

_might_ happen to like her."

They found Betty Rose Crawford with her hair down her back, sitting

under a striped awning on a sunny lawn. She was being entertained by

the young actor whose house it was and whom she hastened to introduce

with due decorum as her fiancé, managing also to inform them that her

mother shared the house as chaperon. She was very pretty,

brown-eyed, brown-haired. A faint simper lingered about her mouth as

she talked in a sweet, high voice with the Anglo-American stage

accent. She had the syrupy self-assurance of some stage children,

and, sitting under the becoming colors of the awning, with her

charming hair about her, sending her young man here and there for

chairs and cocktails, chattering back-stage gossip, she put even

Grace in the shade with her utter consciousness of herself as the

center of attraction. She was the sort of girl who signifies her

girlish purity and naïveté by telling, a little humorously, stories

about children (little boys always) who lay flowers at her feet and

old people (old men always) who worship her. After having

interpolated into her talk suggestions of the many business offers

she was always getting, she took them into the house and urged Jerry

to play for her. He played some of the tunes for their new show,

while she hummed them and laughingly took a few dance steps.

Jerry was ready to be smitten. On the way home he proclaimed that

she was a sweet girl.

"She's pretty enough. But she wants too much money," said Blake

thoughtfully. "We can get someone better known for that. Nancy

Tuxson, for instance."

Grace remonstrated. "But she's so homely! For this show, it's my

idea that a pretty girl who's not known is much better than a homely

girl who is known."

Through dinner they debated the relative merits of Nancy Tuxson and

Betty Rose Crawford and, upon withdrawal to the living room, they

continued against a background of radio and Dad Andrews. Anita sat

and waited. She had seized upon Jerry's announcement that he meant

to borrow Blake's car and drive home that night with an eager

explanation of how she had to rise so early to be on time for work

that it would be much more convenient for her to accompany Jerry.

Grace's objections had been overruled. There was now nothing to do

but wait. Jerry took his place at the piano. Blake chanted the

words of a lyric that he had lately finished while Jerry drummed the

tune to go with it. Blake, Anita inferred, was uncertain of the song

and wanted to know what the rest thought. She said it was very nice.

Grace, however, had heard the words before. She undertook some

helpful criticism. It was a good enough song but it didn't "hit"

her; she couldn't "be crazy about it."

"It's not up to the standard of the funny songs you and Jerry have

written," she said.

"It's not meant to be a funny song," replied Blake coldly. "It's an

answer or theme song."

He and Jerry busied themselves over the piano, Jerry strumming while

Blake changed a rhyme here and a sentence there. They went on to

other tunes.

"We might as well go upstairs," said Grace. "We're not wanted here."

"You might as well," said Blake, still frozen. Jerry, from the

piano, promised abstractedly to call Anita when he was ready. She

had no choice but to follow Grace up to her room.

Grace settled herself on the linen cover of the bed in a field of

green wool embroideries. Anita lingered by the door with an anxious

ear cocked for the first long pause of the piano.

"They'll be hours yet," Grace assured her. "Move a chair over and

shut the door, will you?"

Anita sighed within herself and moved over the armchair of maple and

rested her elbows on its graceful arms. There was a silence. She

could feel Grace's eyes fastening themselves in full somberness upon

her. She stared at a rag rug of aquamarine and emerald and apple

green and rose.

"What do you think of all this?" said Grace directly.

"Oh, it's all right." Anita, glancing up for a second, repented.

There was that somber appeal in Grace's wide-open eyes which she

never could withstand. It was as if Grace's topcoat of assurance

were blown aside by a puff of wind and revealed her for that moment

in all her nakedness--living tissue eaten alive by all the ants of

care and worry; living tissue, shuddering, covered with the cold

sweat of subterranean fears. "Well, you know, suburbs were never

much in my line--a childhood inhibition, I guess," she said uneasily.

"Were they ever in mine?" demanded Grace. "It's like a judgment on

me!" she exclaimed. "To get away from Ma and uptown domesticity only

to fall into the clutches of Mother Andrews and--suburban

domesticity. You know Blake's idea, don't you? He'd be--perfectly

satisfied to live out here all the time with Mother and Dad and

Jamie."

"Not that I'd mind bringing up Jamie," she went on, "or even living

here so much--alone. But it's _Mother_ Andrews who brings up Jamie,

and you see how, don't you? The way she brought up Blake! Of

course, Blake won't see and I can't--interfere. But I have to watch

it. And Mother Andrews! She was crazy about Edith, you know. And

she doesn't say a word, but every time she looks around the house I

can feel her thinking--how much--Edith would have enjoyed all this."

She paused. Anita did not know what to say.

"And I thought Blake wanted to be free!" Grace concluded with a

sardonic twist of her mouth.

After another pause she muttered, "I wouldn't mind being free

myself--if you should want to know." She peered at Anita to see how

startled she might be.

Anita was, in fact, a little surprised. "You don't mean a divorce,

do you?"

Grace's eyes became huger than ever and took on the remote depths of

tragedy. "I had--thought of that," she said slowly.

As Anita did not reply, she lowered her eyes, then refastened them to

Anita's face. "I have--grounds, too," she stated. The effect of her

words, the sudden lift of Anita's brows, was satisfactory. She

added, "Oh, nothing I can actually point to! But--I have my

suspicions. And I would have found out, too," she said with a

reminiscent giggle. "I had almost got it out of Jerry one

afternoon--you can get anything out of Jerry, you know--but Letty

happened to be staying here and she came in and guessed what I was up

to and jumped on me. She said I would resent Blake's cross-examining

a friend of mine about my doings and so I had no right to ask Jerry

about Blake's. I've never seen Letty so--_boiling_ mad!"

"She was right, too," said Anita.

"I suppose." Grace shrugged. "I didn't mean to do anything about

it. I just wanted to know. But I'm--practically sure anyhow."

"Well, it would be very funny for you to rave on the subject of

marital infidelity," said Anita without further ado.

Grace was not abashed. "So Letty said. But I don't mean to rave.

Only--one can get a divorce on that ground, can't one? It's

something to know."

"And Blake has changed so," she continued more soberly. "Honestly, I

don't mind this--not much. No, I don't," she repeated to Anita's

slight glance of disbelief. "I get crushes too easily myself--not

to--understand--infidelity, if it's only physical. You know I always

did draw a distinction between physical and mental infidelity," she

reminded Anita. "I don't--like the idea, but I can see how--some

little chorus girl you don't give a _snap_ for can _get_ you

physically. It didn't last long. Only I gave Blake credit for--for

more fastidiousness. You remember the girl who rushed up to me

Saturday--while we were waiting for Blake? That's the one. She's

so--so coarse! And he's changed in other ways. He used to read a

lot, you know, and talk about--things and now----"

"And he's getting fat," she sighed.

Anita thought that the piano had stopped below, but as soon as she

half-rose she heard it again. The words that had been shaping

themselves in her mind at last forced themselves impatiently past her

tongue. "Oh, it's not really so bad," she said. "Aren't you rather

dramatizing all this?"

There was a sudden movement of Grace's eyes; deliberate and

velutinous, they stared into Anita's--simple, as simple as opalescent

windows uncurtained to the world because they need no curtains to

hide their interiors, presenting surfaces full of light and an

embossed blankness behind which anything may be fancied and anything

lurk. "I suppose so," said Grace, and smiled.

The eyes of the two girls met without passing each other, leaving

them no wiser in words or in the mind, wiser only in inarticulate

imagination. The moment fled and they could not recall just what it

was they had tried to understand but they were pleased nevertheless.

Some of the present constraint vanished and they talked for a while

almost as they had in the old days when, just before going to bed of

nights, they had undertaken to clarify to each other and to visualize

each other's universes.

"Not that I don't admire your talent for self-dramatization," Anita

said. "It's by making oneself all-important and the things one wants

all-important, after all, that one gets them. That's where I miss

out. I never could make any idea seem important enough to bother

about much, or any person, not even myself. Whereas you exalted the

idea of yourself and Blake together and made everything and everyone

subsidiary to that idea and--you got what you wanted."

"Not quite," said Grace.

She added shrewdly, "You always did give me credit for too much

calculation, you know. A lot of things were just--by-products, just

happened. I had some good breaks. But you're right, in a way."

She thought for a while, moving restlessly. "Oh, I suppose

I'll--settle down," she said, and shrugged. At the same time her

eyes began a new plea to Anita.

"Sometimes," she said, "I think I might as well drop it all, be a

dependent woman and cling and live in the suburbs and all that. It's

so much easier. But when you've--not been dependent for a long time,

it's hard to change. And then there's Ma. I have to take care of

her."

She went on slowly, with her insistent eyes enlarging themselves on

Anita's face. "I could have a baby. I'd even--thought of _that_! A

baby might--solve everything. I'd sit around and be supported and

keep house. In that way I'd get rid of Mother Andrews. And Ma would

have to--manage. Blake would get used to the idea. As a matter of

fact, I don't think he'd mind so much any more. He's made a good

deal of money, you know--and he thinks he may get a movie

contract--soon--which will mean more."

She paused expectantly. Anita was about to dismiss the subject with

a prosaic, "Well, why don't you have a baby then?" but this sounded

too brusque even to herself. She said instead, "Blake might not

mind, but don't you think you might?"

"Oh--I don't know," said Grace. "I used to be so ambitious. But

sometimes I think all I want--is to sink way down, to have an easy

life, a soft life, money, clothes, good times, not be so--taut all

the time with work and Blake and mother-in-law. I'd like to find

some way of--abandoning myself!"

She said in a lower voice, while an expression faintly complacent,

faintly defiant hovered about her mouth, and her eyes acted as a

searchlight on Anita's face: "I've been--making a few experiments

along those lines, if you should--care to know. I seem to be--more

sensual--than I used to be."

Anita didn't care to know and hurried from the verge of further

confidences. "Well, abandon is something one certainly can't plan

anyhow. The minute you plan it, it isn't abandon."

There was another long silence. Grace sat there, her feet dangling,

her hands in her lap. And at length the words which Anita had felt

would be spoken some time that night emerged from her lips:

"All the same, I wish--Edith hadn't died."

They seemed to linger for an instant on the air.

"It was all so much better then," Grace said. "She would have got a

divorce in time," she explained quickly. "She would have kept the

child, you see, and I--wouldn't be in for all this mess of

domesticity."

"'Ah! the good old days when I was so unhappy,'" quoted Anita. She

rose and stretched. She was somewhat contrite to be so eager to go

and, turning to Grace, she added, "But I don't think you and Blake

will break up. I hope not. It would be such a pity."

"No," said Grace, "I don't think so either." She shook her head.

"I don't really believe I'll ever give Blake up," she admitted

quietly.

And these, Anita thought, were the most sincere words that Grace had

uttered. Less than most people would she be able to concede that any

drama, in which she had fought and agonized and plotted to build up a

principal part, could ever be trivial.

Something in her attitude, so still at the moment, summoned from the

past a wraith that rose and fringed and shielded like smoke the

familiar contours of her sweater dress; her clutching eyes; her long,

pliant lips held together with just a trace of hauteur. Did she

remember? Did she remember a girl with big eyes in a thin face,

twisting a handkerchief tight enough to tear it, twisting and tearing

with fingers like teeth, and another girl keeping quiet as a mouse

from sympathy that was greater without words? Was she thinking

perhaps that the misery of that moment had all been wasted? Or was

the misery of that moment some subtle sustenance to her? Did it have

its part in the veiling, aching glamour effused from old times, old

feelings, thus softening now and then the troubled insistence of her

eyes?

"You know," said Grace, "I really--believe--I wouldn't mind having a

baby. It wouldn't interfere so much with my work. I needn't have a

job. I could--write. And then it would be--an experience. What do

you think?"

The air of the suburban night filled the interim with the nauseous

singings of mosquitoes and the chitter of insects. Surely Jerry must

be through! She must get home to-night! And the pressure of Anita's

boredom and her distaste was so great that she had an instant when

she could feel her nerves squeezed out of her and swimming before her

eyes: infinitesimal iridescent worms swimming in liquid air before

her.

THE END