PART II

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jean touched the electric button on her desk and Josephine Grimes

appeared with notebook and pencil. She was a tall, spare woman,

impelled through life by devotion to an invalid sister, to the Charity

Organization Society of New York City, and to Jean. The three were

somehow connected in Miss Grimes' mind and she never tried to separate

them.

Jean handed her a pile of mail. "All the regular thing, except that

one on top. That's very extra special. It's from Gregory Allen, the

architect Selina Mitchell thinks might be interested in the tubercular

tenements. He says he'd like to talk things over. So write him,

conveying something between abject gratitude and decent self-respect,

and make it to-morrow at 3.30."

Miss Grimes nodded and turned to the door. She never made any comment

on these semi-personal confidences from Jean, but at night they were

retailed verbatim to the invalid sister.

"And tell any one who rings up that I won't be back to-day, but, under

pain of death, don't give them the house number. Except Rachael Cohen.

But I don't think she will, because she knows I know about the meeting

to-morrow night and I'll be there."

Again Miss Grimes nodded and disappeared. Jean sat on at the desk for a

few moments, smiling into space. Then she locked the lid with a snap,

put on her hat without looking into the glass, snatched her gloves and

black leather wallet and left the office for the Grand Central Station.

The train was just pulling in, as Jean elbowed her way through the

waiting crowd, pressed close to the iron grille. It seemed as if all

the people in the world went by before she saw her, the same stout

figure, the same eager peering through the gold pince-nez. Jean waved

frantically. Mary stopped, stared for a reassuring second, dropped

her grip and came at a trot, calling back over her shoulders to the

bewildered red-cap to pick it up.

"Mary--oh--you----"

"Not a word or I shall weep. Lead me to the decent seclusion of a cab.

I haven't wanted to cry for thirty years."

Safe in a taxi, they looked at each other and laughed.

"Mary, I haven't been able to do a thing since I got your wire. Why

didn't you write me?"

"Didn't know it myself. I just woke up one morning with such a heavy

feeling in the pit of my stomach when I looked at Lucy Phillips that I

knew the hour had come. I took a leave of absence for a year and I may

extend it. I'm going to absorb and study what the rest of the world's

been doing. In short, I'm going to stay until I _love_ Lucy Phillips. I

was going to make my point of saturation Chicago, until I got to really

visioning you. Then I wired. I couldn't very well before, could I?"

"Hardly." Jean hugged her. "Mary, it's been an age. I don't believe

I've known, myself, how much and how often I've wanted you."

"I was thinking about it the other night. Almost seven years since

you came walking into the clinic and told me The Kitten was up at the

studio and you weren't going back."

"And mummy trotted over the next afternoon, and when she found we'd

both gone to keep our engagement with that Building Trades man as if

nothing had happened, she sat down and cried. Poor little mummy."

"How is mummy, Jean? I never could quite picture her here in New York.

I could never make her fit."

"Fits like a glove. But, then, no one can ever tell what mummy is going

to do. She not only likes it, but is happy, really happy, for the first

time in her life. I believe she has learned the trick at last."

"Much incense and lace altar clothes and Jeany all to herself, I take

it."

"Pretty near. But we have been happy, both of us, these six years here.

Mummy still believes social service is connected, or ought to be, with

religion, and she calls my very finest pieces of work 'the act divorced

from the spirit', but she lets me send out all the laundry and have

a woman in once a week--a maid she absolutely forbade--and there's a

church run by Father Something-or-other a few blocks away, and I'd get

fatty degeneration of the soul if it weren't for Pedloe. He gets six

thousand a year and poses as a radical, but he has the imagination of a

mouse. Some day he's going to fire me, if I don't do it first myself. I

work ten hours a day, get more and more furious at the whole business,

and come home every evening like a novice to her convent. Our chief

excitement is having Pat bring the children over for the week-end,

when her husband is out of town. She has two children and is going to

have another, all in four years, exactly like an immigrant. She hasn't

changed a bit, manages her family as if it were a college committee

and her husband adores her. Once in a while she brings an uncle of

Stephen's with her, a fat, good-natured creature about fifty, who, I

sometimes think, is a fool and sometimes I'm sure he's a philosopher.

Mummy likes him and makes all his pet dishes. Years ago he was married

to an impossible creature in an Arizona mining camp and she ran away in

six months. So you see he's had his 'sorrow' too."

"You don't mean that she still looks on Franklin as a 'sorrow'?"

"He's my 'lesson.' She never speaks of him, but I know she prays for

him."

"Good Lord!"

And for the remaining few moments of the drive, Dr. Mary sat chuckling.

"Here we are." Jean led the way toward the cool marble entrance of a

huge apartment house facing the Hudson. Young mothers in summer white

sat on camp stools, doing embroidery in the shade of the high walls,

under the trees that lined the Drive, and in the vacant lot across the

street. They chatted and moved white perambulators with the tips of

their white canvas shoes. Fat white babies slept under dainty white

coverlets. Older children in white played in the earth.

Dr. Mary stopped in the vestibule. "It looks like miles of them. I've

never seen so many baby buggies at once in my life."

"Mary, that sight has done more to inspire me with a love of work than

any other thing I know. Whenever I feel like sneaking a day I just take

one look out there and jump into my office clothes."

"I should think you might. Do they keep it up all day?"

"All day, every day, from spring till fall. They must sew miles of

scallops. Wait till you see the last rites. About six the husbands come

along; they're all young and rather slight, wear blue serge and straw

hats. They all look exactly alike. Each one detaches his special piece

of white property and off they go. Behold the female backbone of our

nation!"

"It makes me homesick for my frowsy crab-fishers and those poor

bowlegged mites that crawl over the hills alone."

As the key turned in the lock, Martha Norris rose from her chair by the

window where she had been reading in the green-gold light that slanted

up under the window awnings. Dr. Mary took the outstretched hand in

hers.

"I suppose you were surprised, but not more than I was myself. When it

came right down to it, I started at a moment's notice."

"I know. Jean was in the greatest state of excitement yesterday when

she got your wire." Martha smiled and it made the small face, rested

in the peace of the last six years, astonishingly young. But she

could think of nothing else to say. There had always been something

breathless about Dr. Mary's energy that made Martha feel inadequate.

Something a little indecent, in an enthusiasm and exuberance that could

carry a woman well over fifty across the continent, at a moment's

notice, to study. It was almost as if she infringed on a younger

generation, wore mental rouge and powder.

"It's a frightful journey, especially in this heat. You must be very

tired."

Martha drew a chair to the window and Mary dropped gratefully into it.

"I'll just make a cup of tea and we'll have cold supper later."

She pattered out and Jean and Mary looked at each other and smiled.

When tea was ready they had it close to the window looking to the

Palisades. Jean made valiant efforts to hold Martha in the talk but

it kept drifting away from her, and soon she was sitting quietly to

one side, as she always did, listening, while Jean and Mary talked and

interrupted one another and made a thousand plans.

"I tell you, Jean, I was getting to be a big frog in a small puddle and

that's not good for the soul. I'm not going to give a single scrap of

advice to a living soul for three months at least."

Jean patted the plump shoulder. "Croak on, Mary, croak on. Why, you'll

be taking the tenements out of my hands, if I don't step lively. Not to

mention the garment strike and Rachael herself."

"Never. I wouldn't offer a suggestion for ten additional years of life.

I'm going to sit to one side and watch."

"Mary MacLean, you'll sit to one side exactly as long as I'll let

you--forty-eight hours perhaps to get rested. And then--Lord; I feel as

if I had been asleep for years. Mary, this is going to be one glorious

summer."

"I have a slight feeling that way myself, Jean."

Martha got up and began clearing the table.

Out in the kitchen, Martha filled the pan with hot soapy water and

began washing the dishes. The voices went on. Once she stopped to

listen.

"Now, Jean, not another word. Please. I appreciate the offer and all

that, but I shouldn't do a thing but sit and stare at that river and

overeat, and where would my serious study be then? No, to-morrow I find

an apartment."

Jean laughed. "All right, go ahead, but you won't escape me that way."

There was a pause, and then Jean added softly: "Oh, Mary, this is going

to be a glorious summer."

CHAPTER TWENTY

A few moments before three-thirty the next afternoon Jean tidied her

desk, settled Miss Grimes with enough work for the rest of the day, and

drew out some notes she had made for Gregory Allen.

At a quarter to four she laid the notes aside and looked at the clock.

At four she verified the time by the big clock in the Metropolitan

Tower.

"Rather rude, to say the least."

At four-thirty she rose impatiently, moved to the outer office, changed

her mind and came back again to her desk.

"It costs a nickel and takes two minutes to 'phone. If he's that kind

of a person, I don't want him mixed up in the thing at all. He needn't

have answered my note if he isn't interested."

Jean looked over the notes again, and when she laid them aside for the

second time it was almost five.

"Well, I'll be darned. If----"

The outer door opened, a man's voice asked for Mrs. Herrick and

Josephine Grimes appeared. He stood close behind her. Without waiting

to hear whether he was to be received, he stepped into the room.

"I'm afraid I've kept you waiting, but I hope it hasn't been too

inconvenient." The tone implied, however, that it would not trouble him

very much if it had.

Jean wanted to say that it had been very inconvenient, but in view of

the fact that he had arrived, she said she was glad he had not been

detained altogether and sat down again at the desk. Gregory Allen

took the chair opposite and stretched out his feet, as if he were

used to making himself as comfortable as he could. He was a tall man,

about forty, with thick, dry, brown hair, full of reddish lights, and

red-brown eyes. His face and neck and hands were tanned as if he were a

great deal in the open, and the hands were long, bony and nervous. They

seemed to express something hidden deep in the rather slouchy figure,

under the ready-made suit that looked rumpled, although Jean saw that

it was really quite new. His shoes were not well shined and his tie did

not strike the note of the tanned skin and reddish hair.

He made no further explanation of why he had been detained and sat

silent, waiting for Jean to begin. Jean wished he would say something

to give her a better clew to his mental makeup, but as he didn't she

plunged in.

"I don't know, Mr. Allen, how much you know about conditions among the

poor, or whether you are specially interested in them. I think you

would rather have to be, to take any joy in this work at all, there are

so many restrictions."

Jean spoke as if she were handling an obstinate committee member,

and Gregory Allen smiled behind his eyes. But the smile did not come

through. Accustomed to classifying people in terms of architecture, he

decided that Jean was like a tower, an old Roman tower, rugged, firm

on its base, built for a purpose and for the accomplishment of it.

Whatever charm there might be would come from perfect accord between

form and purpose. He nodded.

"Not so much a restriction in finances," Jean went on, "but

restrictions imposed by the condition of the tenants. You see, the plan

is this: thousands of people, right here in Manhattan, die yearly for

lack of air and sunlight. Literally thousands of incipient cases of

tuberculosis, and those in the earlier stages, die because of their

living conditions, die needlessly. There is all the sunlight and air in

the universe right here. It is only a question of being able to get it."

Jean paused, but Gregory Allen said nothing. He did not know how many

people died in New York for need of air and sun, but now that he

thought of it, supposed quite a number. Jean seemed very positive about

it, and he saw no reason to comment.

Jean felt like shaking him, and, turning slightly away, made aimless

lines on the desk blotter as she continued.

"There is also a lot of vacant land, doing no good to anybody, just

where we want it. The problem is to get it, but, of course, you would

not be concerned with that, but only to put up a building for the sole

use of families in which there is any one either with, or threatened

with, tuberculosis. I don't want a contractor who thinks that anything

is good enough for the poor. And I don't want an architect who doesn't

grasp the spirit of it, either."

He might just as well get the situation straight to begin with.

Gregory Allen wondered whether Jean always enunciated her purposes so

emphatically, rather as if she were firing small shot at a target. She

was decidedly like a Roman tower, part of a fortification. Amplifying

his own figure, he scarcely noticed Jean's pause for his comment, nor

did he notice the frown as she continued.

"And in addition to this, the building must be as beautiful as it can

be made, beautiful even to details that may seem finicky, in tone and

line and tint. These people, besides being stricken in body, have been

cramped in soul, too, most of them, until they don't know there is

any beauty in the world. Or, worse, they don't believe that it is for

them. As one woman told me, not long ago: 'there ain't no free beauty

nowhere.' Well, we are going to give it to them, all we can possibly

give. It will take a lot of time and there's not a cent in it. It will

lead to nothing else. It is just a gift, the most beautiful gift you

can make, within the bounds of our funds."

"What are the bounds?"

"I don't know yet."

A smile darted from Gregory Allen's eyes to his lips, and settled

there. During his student days at the Beaux Arts, a grisette had told

Gregory that his smile flitted like "un petit oiseau" over his face and

then flew out of his mouth. Jean did not call it "a little bird" but

she liked it.

"Of course we can't go ahead without rime or reason, but we don't have

to stick too close to reason either. They are to be as beautiful as

possible, allowing for reductions if we don't raise quite as much as we

hope, and extension if we do. That's possible, isn't it?"

"Certainly. I take it there is to be a minimum of beauty below which

you will not sink, but you're going to leave the roof off and soar as

high as you can."

"Exactly." Jean laughed, and Gregory added a ray of sun slanting across

the tower. There was a pause. Was he interested, or wasn't he?

"Well," she demanded at last, "does it appeal?"

Gregory Allen looked at her sharply. He wondered whether, sometimes,

she did not pose a little. If he had not been interested by Jean's

first note he would not have come, would not have answered the note,

probably.

"Of course. That's why I came, to talk over the details. I made a

hurried sketch after your note, just a ground floor plan, but I don't

think now it will do." He drew a blue-print from his pocket and

smoothed it on the desk. "This, followed out, would give plenty of

light and sunshine, but there wouldn't be much beauty about it."

There she had sat wondering why he had come, and all the time he had

this blue-print in his pocket!

"He's too simple to be out alone, or else a dyed-in-the-wool egotist

who expects every one to read his thoughts."

Jean was still concerned with the problem as she bent over the plan,

following the line of Gregory's pencil while he explained.

"You see, it's not much more than an improved tenement, this way, a

well-ventilated, all-outside-rooms box." He tore the print across and

threw the pieces into the waste-basket. "I'll work up something else

and let you know as soon as----"

The door opened and Dr. Mary rushed in.

"Found it, the only place in New York worth living in. Got it, moved

into it, maid goes with the furnishings, and dinner's almost ready. For

Heaven's sake, hurry up!"

Then Gregory Allen came into range of the doctor's near-sighted eyes,

and she stopped.

"Mary, let me present Gregory Allen, who is going to draw plans for the

T.B.'s. Mr. Allen, Dr. MacLean."

Dr. Mary offered both hands. "One's for manners, the other for

gratitude."

"Mary, you couldn't possibly have found an apartment in one day." Jean

turned to Gregory. "Dr. MacLean only arrived from California yesterday.

She has never lived in New York and didn't know what part of town she

wanted."

"Can't be done. Impossible. I know. Once every three years my wife

finds our apartment impossible and we house hunt."

Gregory smiled his _petit oiseau_ smile and Dr. Mary accepted him on

the spot.

"All right. Then I include you in this evening's dinner. Come and see

for yourself. Can you?"

"I shall be delighted."

Dr. Mary in the lead, they left the office.

Gregory felt as if he were on a mischievous adventure.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

In winter Gregory Allen always looked forward to summer, except for

missing Puck, as a rest from the weary round of Margaret's enthusiasms,

her uninteresting friends, and the boring parties to which he went

because it was less trouble to go than to fuss about not going. During

the winter he never made any close friends, but always thought he might

do so in the summer. And then, after the first few weeks of freedom to

come and go as he pleased, he began to miss Puck with her long, serious

discussions of the doings of Lady Jane, and the well-managed house.

In these moods he went to the club of Beaux Arts graduates, knowing

beforehand that it would be no more interesting than either of the

other two clubs to which he belonged. But he always felt that something

interesting ought to develop, although it never did. The members who

frequented it were men like himself, neither rich nor famous nor pushed

out of the race, comfortable, moderately successful financially, with

modest summer homes on Long Island, to which they sent their families

from May to September. They had all adjusted their lives as he had,

and beyond the round of their work, were as unmagnetic as the routine

of their days. They all accepted each other as they were, and believed

they were common-sense, practical men.

As for women, Gregory met very few in the course of his work; and, once

relieved from his duty as Margaret's husband to the members of The

Fortnightly, he could no more imagine looking any of them up during

the summer, even if they had been in town, than he could have picked up

a stray companion of the streets and spent a pleasant evening in some

crowded dance-hall. He could no more imagine meeting Caroline Ainsworth

or Mabel Dawson on the street and going home to dinner with them, than

he could imagine doing something careless and impromptu with Margaret.

Gregory smiled as he pictured himself walking off with Mabel Dawson or

Caroline Ainsworth.

At Nineteenth Street the doctor turned east, crossed Gramercy Park and

stopped before an old brownstone front on the north side.

"Here we are." They followed through a wide, cool hall, flagged in

black and white marble, to a huge door on the right. Dr. Mary threw it

open and swept them in with a flourish.

"There, you doubting Thomases. Not so bad, is it?"

Gregory and Jean looked at each other and laughed.

"Mary, I'm glad I didn't bet you that set of Dostoievsky. I would have

been broke for a month."

"As long as you are repentant now, I won't crow. Dinner will be ready

in a few minutes. I'll hurry it up."

Like the hall, the room was high, cool and dim. The heavy, tapestried

furniture seemed built for the ample Dutch forms that had no doubt once

inhabited it. It was impossible to imagine raucous voices or useless

rush between these lofty walls.

"It's the only real bit of Old New York left," Gregory said, and with

one accord they moved to the wide window looking down on the Park.

The rumble of the Third Avenue El, two blocks away, threw into sharp

relief the spirit of the past, the old, unhurried past that hangs over

Gramercy Park. Behind the scratched and rusted palings, the dusty trees

stood aloof, superior to the hustle and roar of the great tide washing

its borders; faithful to dead standards, tolerant of the rented keys

that now open the gates, to the ever-changing stream of tenants that

flows in and out of the brownstone fronts, once the stately homes of

unhurrying men.

"It _is_ a bit of the past, isn't it?"

"Yes. It always makes me think of an old French marquise, stiff,

powdered, poor, but never forgetting. Here, like this."

He took a scrap of paper from his pocket and drew, with a few strokes,

a marquise of the older days.

"But you see, she has to make some concessions, while she waits here,

year after year, for the return of the Bourbons, and so----" Gregory

clapped upon her head a hat, just a little bedraggled and over-trimmed.

"The Spirit of the Present. She bought it at a bargain."

"Oh, Mary!"

"No. Don't, please." Gregory tore up the paper in such discomfort that

Jean wanted to pat him on the shoulder and say: "There, there."

"What?" Mary peered in through the door.

"When is that food coming?"

"In a moment." Mary disappeared.

Gregory looked at Jean and they laughed again. "Thanks," he said.

Until dessert the talk was general, mostly of the great strike of

garment workers, and of Rachael Cohen, the leader.

"She is literally like a flame. And her people follow her blindly. They

will win or lose by Rachael."

"Why lose?"

"They won't. They can't. But, the man whom Rachael loves, hates her

people, her power, everything about Ray that makes her what she is, and

yesterday Tom Dillon gave her the choice of leading this thing--think

of it, fifty thousand people--and winning, because Rachael _will_ win,

and a little house in the Bronx with some chickens and, I believe, a

baby for good measure."

"Poor girl," Mary said sadly. "Jean, do you remember Carmen?"

Jean nodded. "Oh, Mary, it makes me sick clear through sometimes."

And then, for a little while, they talked of old times and people

whom Gregory did not know, but he did not feel left out, only he

wondered whether there were many women in the world like these two.

Their interests were so varied and deep and they were so, almost

exhaustingly, alive.

But with the coffee and cigarettes, they came again to the plans, and

Gregory sketched his new idea. They all bent together over the table,

suggested, disapproved, argued and contradicted each other, until

Gregory forgot he was working with women at all.

It was half past nine when Jean pushed the plans away and stood up.

"Not another word, please," she begged, "or I'll begin on that

sun-porch idea of mine and then I never will get to the meeting."

"Does every one's pet wrinkle get included in the general plan? Because

I have a couple up my own sleeve," Gregory demanded, as he gathered up

the sheets, disappointed that the evening was over.

"Certainly. Didn't I tell you the limit was an expanding quantity? You

ought to have seen Mr. Allen's face, Mary, when I told him we didn't

know how much we would have to spend."

"We may not know the amount but we know how we're going to get it. And

now we've seen you, I think we will notch it up a few pegs, eh, Jean?"

Jean pretended to survey him critically. "Yes, I shouldn't wonder. Oh,

Mary, they'll just eat it up, won't they?"

"Who? Me?" Gregory felt a little silly at this banter, but enjoyed it.

"No, the cake, which you will hand 'round."

"Never."

"Don't be alarmed. It won't be to-morrow. Not until winter. Right

after the first blizzard we give a tea, very exclusive, only the rich

invited. You've made a nice technical plan full of dotted lines and

cross-sections, guaranteed to confuse any living female. Said plan

hangs upon wall, real live architect, all dressed up, explains. Money

pours in. By summer tenements are. Tenants move in. Q.E.D."

Gregory shook his head. "Plans until you're both dizzy with them, every

female in the world sick with the blind staggers--but no tea."

"Oh, by that time, you'll be such a reformed character you'll beg to

come."

Laughing, Jean moved to the door and Gregory followed. Dr. Mary came as

far as the front door and watched them down the steps. On the sidewalk,

Jean held out her hand.

"Good-night."

But Gregory Allen fell into step beside her. "Don't condemn me, please,

to a roasting hot apartment alone or to a Broadway show. Mayn't I come?

I'd like to see this Rachael."

"Of course, gladly, if you care to. But a lot of it will be in Yiddish

and it will be fearfully hot and smelly. I want to talk with the

committee and after the meeting is the best time."

Gregory did not answer but walked along beside her. She told him more

of Rachael, banished by her family because of her love for the Gentile

Tom; of the frightful conditions in the garment trade and the faith of

her people in Rachael. Gregory Allen heard only stray phrases here and

there. But he felt Jean's strength and belief as she swung along beside

him, as unwearied as if the day were just beginning. When a woman was

wonderful she was very wonderful indeed.

The hall was packed. From wall to wall a flat surface of women's

dusky heads swayed like a dark sea, with here and there, like rocks

rising above the surface, the hatted heads of men. From this sea rose

a suppressed rumble, so that the walls seemed to vibrate with the

throttled protest. As Gregory followed Jean to the seats instantly

vacated for them, he felt as if he were dropping down far below the

daily surface of his life. And as he took his seat it seemed to him

that a trap literally closed above him, a trap of foul air, so thick it

had the quality of iron, and of rebellion so unbreakable that it had

the resistance of steel. A trap that, once having sprung, would never

again rise above the imprisoned below. He looked to Jean. But Jean did

not seem to be imprisoned in a foul subsurface. Her eyes glowed with

excited interest and he realized that this was not a strange scene to

her, but part of her daily interest.

"Do you think they will lose?" she asked, with a look that made Gregory

feel as if her strong, white hands were drawing him gently with her

into this seething mass, rumbling below the settled plane of his life

with Margaret and Puck. But, before he could answer, the door at the

rear of the platform opened, and a man and woman came out.

"He's the National Secretary of the Garment Workers. And she's Rose

Kominsky----Ladies' Waist Makers. I wonder where Ray is."

The National Secretary was short and oily, with none of the dignity of

his race. Western hustle was grafted upon Eastern servility. In the

midst of bluster, he might suddenly cringe. He was a radical, but he

appreciated the good job of being National Secretary, and if it had

not been a tenet of his radicalism to despise insignia, he would have

delighted in a gilt badge. He made a long speech, shouting and beating

in his meaning with furious gestures of his fat hands. He amused and

disgusted Gregory.

The local secretary followed, riding in on the wave of the other's

emotion, with stated facts and proved data. As she flung her last bunch

of clinching statistics to the ceiling, scattering it like confetti on

the heads of the people, the rear door opened again, and a slip of a

girl in black, with great black eyes in the dead whiteness of her face,

came forward. The local secretary broke off her last sentence in the

middle and sat down. The girl came to the very edge of the platform and

waited quietly for the applause to cease. At last it died, and Rachael

began to speak.

She spoke in Yiddish but Gregory felt that the terrible silence of the

listening mass was a medium through which her words were registering

in his consciousness. Jean was right. She was like a flame. Like

an acetylene torch burning its way through all barriers of race

difference, social strata and language. So fully did he feel that he

knew what Rachael was saying that he scarcely noticed when at the end

she swept into English.

"Wait," she cried, "wait in patience and in courage. For thousands of

years our people have waited. For ages we workers have waited. And

now the time is coming, each year a little nearer, with every battle,

another inch. It is near, our freedom, near. Wait. Wait. And out of

that waiting rises the thing we demand. It hears us calling. It is

coming. It is there always, under the ashes of past hopes, never dead,

always burning, a light. Keep heart. Keep faith. Do not kill the little

spark. After all the years we have waited, can we not wait in faith a

little longer?"

Before the roar of applause ceased, Jean and Gregory were out on the

sidewalk. Here the heat was like a cool touch after the fetid heat of

the hall.

"Whew."

Jean turned to him: "Did you get more than you bargained for?"

"Yes. In a way, I did," he answered slowly.

"I warned you."

He might have been a child who had disobeyed. Gregory frowned.

"I know you did," he said shortly, and then added, with a look that

made Jean wonder what he meant, even after he was gone, "Thank you."

Did he mean for taking him? Or for the meeting itself?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"What are you doing, daddy?"

Gregory started, for Puck had come so lightly in her little

rubber-soled sandals that he had not heard her.

"Making a house, Pucklets."

"Let me see." Puck spoke with Gregory's quiet determination, as if she

always expected to have to hold out against some opposition. It sat

oddly with her golden hair and the delicate oval of her face which were

Margaret's.

"Well, look at it. See, that's the floor and these are the walls."

Gregory moved so that Puck could come closer, but went on with his work.

"What's that?" A ridiculous duplicate of Margaret's forefinger pointed

to a square separated from the main plan.

"That's a room."

"A room?"

"Surely. Look; there are the two windows and there's the door."

She made no comment and after a moment Gregory forgot her, standing so

still, her chin just touching his shoulder.

"There isn't any top on that house," she announced suddenly. "It's a

funny house. I don't like it."

At the same moment Margaret Allen appeared in the doorway.

"Why, Gregory, aren't you going to take her? It's after eleven now."

"Um." Gregory was making lines on a separate sheet and heard only the

modulated run of the words. He rarely paid any conscious attention to

Margaret's remarks in the making, because he could always come in on

time at the end.

Puck looked from her father to her mother. Her under lip drew in as her

mother's did when she was hurt, but it was with the man's straight look

of facing a difficulty that she turned away.

"I guess daddy's too busy to play with Puck. The house hasn't got its

roof on yet."

"Gregory! She's been looking forward to it so all week. Why, you're

working!"

"What did you think I was doing?" Gregory looked up curiously; he so

often felt as if she were the child and Puck the woman.

"I thought it was one of those water color things."

Gregory sometimes rested his eyes during these week-ends through the

summer, sketching the woods and soft green fields. They were not bad

sketches, but Margaret had no respect for them. Subconsciously she

was jealous of them. They stood for something in Gregory that had

escaped her. With more courage than any one gave her credit for,

Margaret Allen had long ago buried her early belief in her husband's

ability. She had been very sure when she married him, a year after his

graduation from the Beaux Arts with honors, that he was going to be a

rich and famous architect. Neither the fame nor the riches had come

in spite of her early efforts to connect with people who could be of

service. Nor later, when she had recognized the uselessness of trying

to force Gregory along these paths, and turned her influence to taking

a personal interest, which meant asking questions about technical

details which she could not understand. The little water color sketches

were like relics that Gregory had kept from the years before he knew

her, and when he had gone back to the office on Monday mornings, and

she came on a sketch among the scattered sheets of the Sunday paper,

she felt almost as if it were the possession of some woman who had an

illicit place in her husband's life.

Margaret bent over the plan.

"Greggy, did you get the Stevens house?"

Gregory watched her with a faint smile. She was very near, so that

the same clean, sweet odor drifted to him as when he slipped his arm

about Puck. The same little tendril, too slight to be a curl; brushed

Margaret's neck just below her ear.

"But what on earth is that? Surely the Stevens aren't going to have a

front like that?"

"Hardly. What's the good of making a fortune in five years if you don't

write it all over the place?"

"What is it then?"

"Tubercular tenements."

"What?"

"It's a building where the poor, who either have or are going to have

tuberculosis, can get as much air and light as the rich will let them."

"It sounds terribly socialistic."

"It's terribly individual."

Margaret straightened and locked down with a glance that reached him

from the far citadel of pride to which she retreated when she was not

sure whether he was making fun of her.

"Who's putting up the money? It's not just building itself, I suppose."

Gregory laughed outright, for he saw Dr. Mary and Jean and himself

standing at the table, that first night six weeks ago.

"It's got to be raised yet."

"I don't see anything so amusing about that. It means that you're not

sure of your fee, as far as I can see."

"Oh, I'm quite sure about that. There is no fee. I'm doing it for

nothing."

"Well, I must say----" Margaret broke off. It was the one fixed

principle of her relations with Gregory that they never had an open

difference of opinion, especially before Puck. Above all things

Margaret Allen was well bred and she could no more have cleared the

atmosphere in a burst of anger than she could have struck some one.

She never dynamited an obstacle with outspoken objection. She returned

again and again and scratched at it.

"Is the contractor giving his time, and the laborers?"

Gregory was still looking off to the line of trees and smiling.

"It isn't started yet. But they may."

Margaret moved to the piazza rail and sat down. She was slight and so

fair that she seemed part of the sunlight sifting through the thick

green of the wistaria.

"Who's backing it? Somebody must be behind it all."

"Oh yes. There's some one very much behind it; in fact, two people."

It was impossible for Gregory to think of the plan without Dr.

Mary--Dr. Mary and Jean and himself in Gramercy Park.

"There's Dr. Mary MacLean and Jean Herrick."

"What! Jean Herrick! The Charity Organization woman?"

"She works with the Charities. It's her scheme."

"Well!"

Words failed Margaret.

"Well what?"

"How long have you been working on them?"

"About six weeks. Yes, just about six weeks," he repeated, and went on

with a detail of the entrance hall.

"Sometimes it seems to me that you do things to be deliberately

annoying. Why didn't you say anything about it? You know I'm interested

in public things like that, and besides The Fortnightly is going to

take up housing and public dependents this winter. Mabel Dawson is down

to get the first speaker, and we've talked over Jean Herrick a good

deal."

"You have?" Gregory suddenly stopped working on the detail.

"She's becoming terribly popular, in the front line of everything,

the last word in feminism and all that, you know. A lot of the most

progressive clubs have her down for winter talks. But The Fortnightly

has to be careful. We have a good many of the old families and we have

to go slowly. Mrs. Herrick is extremely radical and speaks at labor

meetings and strikes and all that kind of thing, you know. Besides,

she's divorced."

Gregory's pencil jabbed a hole in the blue-print. "Is she?"

"Yes, one of the horrid kind." Margaret's tone separated divorces,

tolerated some and excluded others. "Mabel wrote to a cousin in

California to find out before we asked her. Goodness knows we're not

straight-laced, but there are things one can't stand for officially.

This Herrick was an artist, Mabel says, did futurist things before any

one else heard of them and drank like a fish. He abused her shamefully,

but she stood it as long as she could."

Gregory got up and pushed back his chair.

"But when he began to bring women right into the house, she left him.

So of course it wasn't her fault. Mabel says she's a wonderful speaker,

just a little masculine in her manner, but then such a life wouldn't

make her specially clinging or gentle. We've about decided to have her."

Gregory closed the drawing board and Puck came hopefully to his side.

"You mustn't tease daddy, dear; he's busy."

Margaret moved toward the door and beckoned Puck. "Can you take her for

just a little walk this afternoon, before the Dawsons come? They're

going to bring Squdgy, you know." By raised eyebrows Margaret indicated

the need of Puck's being perfectly happy before the arrival of Squdgy,

whom she disliked and was apt to ignore completely.

Puck slipped her hand into her father's. The motion drew his notice.

"It's all right, Puckie, go and dress Lady Jane and I'll take you now."

"Do you _really_ want us to take Lady Jane, daddy? I ought to take

Matilda; Lady Jane went last week."

"Well, I'd rather have Lady Jane, because she knows the first half of

the story already and I'd have to go all over it from the beginning for

Matilda."

Puck sighed her relief and scampered off.

"Greg, don't tell her any of those terribly exciting things. You never

seem to understand how highly strung she is. All last week she kept on

giving the most terrible versions of that bear story to Lady Jane. You

don't realize what an imagination she's got."

"Thank God," Gregory snapped, and wished that Margaret would sometimes

give him an excuse to be as rude as he felt.

Out in the woods, with Puck trotting by his side, Gregory tried to push

the picture Margaret had brought before him into the cool shade of the

trees. But, in the shortest interludes of Puck's silence, it was there

before him again, hot and glaring and tawdry: Jean Herrick, married to

a libertine. A man who, in sottish sensuality, turned from one woman

to another. And she had "stood it,"--that ghastly compromise of weak

women--until it had passed beyond bounds.

It was impossible. And yet what did he know of women?

There had been that one grisette in Paris, who had embarrassed him

so by calling his smile "un petit oiseau." A single month's mildest

flirtation with a pretty stenographer, who was more like a mischievous

boy than a girl. And Margaret. He had married Margaret because she was

so different from the grisette and, yet, when he had put his arms round

Margaret for the first time, and she turned her sweet, unresponsive

lips to his, he had wanted to crush her, hurt her in some way, just

as he had once wanted to choke the grisette. As Margaret wasn't a

grisette, Gregory had believed the big love of his life had come.

Afterwards the need of making his place in the world had claimed him.

And, now, occasional moods he dispelled with extra work and Puck.

Margaret had always told him he was interested in nothing that he could

not draw, and did not know what was going on in the world. Perhaps

women were part of the "things going on." Perhaps he was old-fashioned.

Perhaps it was a puritanical streak, this intense repulsion to thinking

of Jean married to a drunken libertine. It would not have been a happy

memory, but Gregory could imagine a dozen men he knew, himself even,

living down such a memory, doing useful work in spite of an unfaithful,

drunken wife put out of their lives. How did he know but that----

"Dad-dy, _did_ the bears get the children?"

Gregory came back to a realization that Puck had been asking this for

some time.

"No, the bears did not get them, Puck; not in the end, but they had a

hard time of it."

Puck's eyes blackened with suppressed excitement. It had a startling

effect, had excitement on Puck. It was like an acid that ate out all

her resemblance to Margaret, obliterated the softness of outline,

seemed to devour even the delicate tints of her coloring. Excitement

brought Puck up the years to meet him, sent him racing backward to her.

"Oh, I was _so_ frightened they'd get all eaten up and left out there

without their mothers and daddies knowing where they was."

Her hand clutched Gregory's, and her other arm protected the beloved

Lady Jane.

"Lady Jane's been terrible frightened, too. I couldn't get her to sleep

last night, not for a long, long time."

"Dear me, that's too bad. I guess we'll have to settle the matter right

now."

Gregory sat on the ground under a huge chestnut and filled his pipe.

Puck curled close, cautioning Lady Jane to be "very, most perticular

still," and Gregory began a rambling sequel to the tale of the Three

Bears. Behind the Three Bears--Jean stood with Herrick.

They were late for luncheon, but Margaret made no comment. Puck did

not look over-excited and Gregory was in one of his silent moods.

Margaret wanted to ask him details about the Tubercular Tenements, and

Gregory knew, by her mole-like burrowings about the subject, that she

was pleased with his connection. In a way he could not unravel, it was

connected with a new wing some millionaire friend of Mabel Dawson's had

just donated to St. Luke's hospital in memory of a dead baby.

As soon as lunch was over, Margaret and Puck went to take a nap before

the coming of the Dawsons, and Gregory took the detail his walk with

Puck had interrupted, out to the hammock under the maple. But the

lines grouped themselves to pictures of the last six weeks and he did

nothing. Six weeks! For the first time, Gregory blocked the period out

of the past and the incredible richness of it startled him.

Six weeks, forty-two days since he had come two hours late to his

appointment with Mrs. Herrick of the C.O.S. and wondered whether she

did not sometimes pose. Six weeks since he had gone with her to the

meeting and heard the rumbling of the world below the safety of his own

conventional social strata. Only six weeks since he had again begun

to feel the stirring of the old dreams that he had believed dead. So

that now, after he left Jean in the evenings, it was hard sometimes to

remember that the plans they discussed were not things he was actually

doing, instead of the things he had forgotten he had ever hoped to do.

At five the Dawsons came. Mabel and Margaret retired to the end of

the piazza, Squdgy was unloaded upon Puck, who obediently took him

off to the play-house, and Bill Dawson, fat, moist, as bored by

Gregory as Gregory was by him, did his best to start a conversation.

Gregory wished he could follow Puck's example with Squdgy and give

Bill a picture book. He listened, however, as well as he could, to

the perspiring stockbroker's denunciation of Socialism and all "this

fashionable parlor radicalism," politely assisted him to a plank of

personal reminiscence and prophecy, and, with a breath of relief, saw

him presently fall off the plank into the stock exchange, where he let

him wallow happily in his native medium.

He was still in it, when the maid wheeled out the tea-wagon and

Margaret and Mabel came to join them. Gregory knew by the look in

Mabel's eyes that this was the first time Margaret had ever come in

under the wire first, and, by the new respect with which she treated

him, that the tenements linked him favorably with the great civic

achievements of The Fortnightly, Puck brought Squdgy, delivered him to

his mother as if he were a sacrifice and climbed into Gregory's lap.

Nor could any frowns or suggestions that "big girls sit in chairs"

dislodge her.

At last tea was over and the Dawsons went, Bill leading with the now

sleeping Squdgy in his arms, Mabel and Margaret sauntering behind. They

passed down the lane and disappeared. The gold in the sky dissolved to

palest yellow and faint green. Crickets chirped. The earth, freshened

by the coming coolness, threw back to the world, in spicy sweetness,

the garnered heat of the day. Puck slept in his arms.

In the kitchen the maid finished the dishes and went across the

creeping dusk to the next house. Snatches of laughter came to him and

he saw the two girls come out and sit on the back steps. In a few

moments the chauffeur from the big house up the road joined them, and

they all went off together.

Gregory carried Puck in and laid her on her bed. Then he went into the

library and switched on the light. He spread the blue-print and began

again on the delayed detail. It was the last touch to the plans, and

he had promised to bring it with him to-morrow night. But the weight

of the day just passed pressed down upon him, and ideas came slowly.

Margaret had been long in bed, when he finally drew the last line and

turned out the light.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"What on earth is the matter with you to-night? You look as if you had

lost your last friend and been evicted for non-payment of rent." Jean

was leaning back in her usual chair to the right of the window, drawn

just far enough to keep in view the tops of the trees, beyond sight of

the dry, trodden grass. Her chin tilted, she looked at him sidewise,

laughing.

All day, at every interval not crowded with work, Gregory had been

pushing the thought of Herrick away. The need to do this had filled him

with a vague anger at Jean, and he had not intended coming to-night.

But the evening had stretched so empty before him that he had come, and

now he was angry that he had.

"Cheer up, it can't be as bad as all that," Jean bantered.

The words jarred and the tone annoyed him. "I beg your pardon. I didn't

realize that I was so terribly glum."

He spoke with a stilted conventionality that made Jean glance at him

quickly. The smile went out of her eyes. She wished she had not spoken.

A silence fell between them, unusual in its artificiality. Jean tried

to think of something impersonal to say, but there had never been

anything effortful in these hours with Gregory and the present need

made her uncomfortable. After all, a thousand incidents of which she

knew nothing might have happened to depress him. He had spent the

week-end with his family. The hinterland of Gregory's life came close,

and Jean felt that she had intruded.

The silence deepened. Jean wished that Mary would come. She thought of

getting a book, of finishing a report that she had begun, of going into

the kitchen. But she never picked up a book when she and Gregory were

together, nor finished office details, nor looked after Mamie in the

kitchen. And this feeling that she must move, get away from Gregory,

break the silence, filled her with an almost physical uneasiness.

This sudden need to move beyond the reach of some tangible element in

the silence, frightened her. So that Gregory, turning unexpectedly,

surprised a strange, unusual look on Jean's face, that made the

conventional remark he had finally succeeded in capturing unnecessary.

Jean, too, was in a new mood to-night.

The silence tingled with something that Gregory felt must always

have been in it. Something was pushing into the foreground, from its

seclusion in the carefree weeks behind. The need to know definitely

about Herrick was there before him at last. He could admit Herrick or

exclude him. For a moment he had the choice, and then Jean said:

"I am afraid Rachael is going to be ill. She looked like a ghost

to-day."

"What?" Gregory leaned forward, peering through the words to Jean's

purpose in uttering them.

"They are getting dissatisfied. Things are not moving fast enough. And

Rachael is very tired."

Jean seized Rachael and dragged her forward, held her there between

herself and Gregory.

Gregory slouched back in his chair.

"That's too bad. I suppose it's the heat."

"No, it's more than that. Tom is pestering her. If she gives up, the

whole thing will go under."

There was a silence.

"Do you think it very much matters after all? It's a pretty big price

you want her to pay."

The words brought a picture of Herrick on the night he had kissed her

and she had locked the door of their room. Jean moved as if to get up,

but her own motion drove back the memory, cleared her brain and forced

Herrick's hot eyes into the past.

"When personal need reaches the depths it has in Rachael," Gregory said

slowly, "it becomes cosmic."

"That sounds like fatalism."

Gregory looked at her quietly. What had been her own need, when she had

married Herrick? What had been his, when he had married Margaret?

"It's all so unreal when it's over, but----"

And then Mary was in the doorway laughing.

"Well, of all the gloomy-looking objects!"

The words exploded in the narrowing space between them. Smiling, Jean

dragged herself up from her chair. "We're so hungry we're perishing."

Why did she say that?

But Gregory too was glad Mary had come.

"We weren't gloomy. We were thinking--a process quite unknown to you,

Doctor."

"Absolutely. Mine's action." Mary threw her things on the couch but

did not sit down. Her eyes twinkled. Her whole plump person emanated

mystery.

"Mary, what have you got up your sleeve? You're just about ready to

burst with it."

"Well, it's not so bad, but it needs the accompaniment of food. Mamie!"

"Dinner's ready."

"Come on. I'll tell you when we reach the demitasses."

Nor could she be persuaded or trapped into a statement until the table

was cleared for coffee and cigarettes. Then she said:

"Dr. Fenninger is in town."

"Mary! Not really!"

"Yes, he is. I met him to-night in the Subway."

"Who is Fenninger? The Great Poohbah?"

"Just about, as far as we are concerned. He prescribes bread pills for

every exhausted society woman in town and diagnoses the indigestions of

millionaires at a thousand per. Jean, do you think mummy would get up a

dinner for him? He's going to be in town a week. We won't tell her how

important he is, just that he is alone in town, family away, 'simple

little home dinner, you know,' 'just ourselves in summer,' 'impromptu,'

'home atmosphere,' and so forth."

"I think she would. I'll ask her."

"But why does this man get asked to dinner because he prescribes bread

pills for society women?"

"Have you forgotten that we have to raise funds for the T.B.'s? Now,

does light glimmer?"

"Not a glimmer."

"It's this way," Jean explained. "We invite him to dinner, very

expensive and elaborate and described as a simple little home affair.

We make him very comfortable and mention the tenements. We go on eating

and mentioning gradually. By the time we get to the black coffee he

believes he thought up the whole thing; gives us a check--but that

doesn't matter so much--is pledged by his own masculine conceit to

prescribe an interest in raising funds to every bored patient he has.

By the time The Tea comes off, there you are."

"Well! Of all the round-about, feminine methods of procedure, that

takes the cake. Just explain to Mrs. Norris that there will be two

extra guests. I wouldn't miss it for anything."

"Yes you will. Because you're not asked. Nothing like that. Home

atmosphere to a man means himself. We'll tell you about it, but that's

as near as he'll get, isn't it, Jean?"

Jean laughed. "I'm afraid it is. We may be able to work Fenninger in

on mummy, but she's heard about you and thinks you're a frightfully

important person. It would scare her stiff to have you to dinner."

"Give her another name, anything. I've got to be in at the death."

"Besides," Mary interposed, "we'll have it on Sunday--best set for

lonely man in city without his family, dismal Sunday, etc."

"Well?" Gregory's eyes met Jean's for a second.

"You couldn't come on Sunday. You--won't be here."

There was an imperceptible pause, and then Gregory said quietly:

"No, in that case, I can't."

In a few moments they left the table and went back to the living-room.

But Gregory did not sit down again. He moved restlessly about the

room, reading bits out of magazines which he picked up at random under

pretense of trying to find an article he had seen the week before.

A little after nine he said he was tired, and had work to do at the

office. When he had gone Mary turned to Jean.

"Well, of all the extraordinary manifestations! What on earth is the

matter with the man?"

"How should I know? Nothing, probably."

"Rubbish. He got all fussed up and peevish about something. Do you

suppose he was really hurt that we wouldn't let him in on the dinner?"

"No, of course not. Besides, how could he come? He always goes home

over the week-end."

"I know. But there was something. I never saw him act like that before."

"Oh, men are likely to do anything. They're--they're so inconsequent."

Jean wondered what she meant, as she lit a cigarette and took the chair

facing out to the tree tops.

But later in the evening, when they were not talking of Gregory at all,

Mary said suddenly.

"Jean, do you suppose we'd better make it some other day? Sunday is the

best, but I wouldn't like Gregory to be really hurt."

"Nonsense, Mary. Of course Sunday is the best day. No. Let's leave it

that way."

But she too left earlier than usual.

* * * * *

As Gregory Allen walked slowly uptown in the hot night, he was aware

that something decisive had happened. Some thread, carried over from

the moments alone with Jean before dinner had snapped, when Jean said:

"You couldn't come on Sunday."

All through these summer weeks, he had felt alone with Jean. But the

conditions of his life, his home, his wife, his child, his obligations,

which had entered not at all into his consciousness, must have been

present to her all the time. She did not think of him as a separate

human unit, in the way he thought of her. He was married. He had

obligations. He conformed to the conventional social usage. Married men

went home over the week-ends. Therefore it was impossible for him to be

present at the dinner. Jean had not for a moment seriously considered

the possibility of his doing it. And he would have, gladly. He would

have broken the habit of years. He would have stayed the two stifling

days in town. He would have done this thing if Jean had not said:

"You won't be here."

Why would he have done it? Why did he want so much to go?

Again and again Gregory cut through the tangle of false explanations

and reached this point. But beyond it he would not go.

"Oh, the devil!" Gregory turned at Forty-Second, passed the Subway

station and continued on to his office.

The elevator had stopped running and he walked the three flights.

The last mail lay on his desk as the office boy had stacked it. On

the top, anchored by a paper weight so that he would be sure to see

it instantly, was a telegram. Gregory tore it open. It was from Amos

Palmer, asking him to come at once. The Palmers were hastening their

departure for Europe and wanted some changes made in the plans.

For weeks the Palmer place had been a joke with him and Jean and Dr.

Mary. They had taken turns in designing terrible ornamentations which

would advertize for miles Palmer's success in the leather trade. Dr.

Mary had insisted on a golden shoe for a weather-cock on the ten

thousand dollar barn, and Jean had suggested carving cattle all over a

turret. Gregory smiled as he recalled Jean's painful efforts with the

cow.

It was the biggest job he had had for years. But--the remaining month

of summer shut up with Amos and his wife and the ten-thousand-dollar

barn.

"I'll be damned if I----"

Gregory stopped, sat down at his desk and lit his pipe. He smoked one

pipe and lit another. Again and again he filled his pipe, lit, and

smoked slowly.

It was very late when he took down the 'phone and sent an affirmative

telegram to Amos Palmer.

Then he looked up trains. There was one at eight in the morning.

Gregory wrote a note of explanation to Margaret and laid it on the mail

to be sent out first in the morning. Then he took a sheet of paper,

started a note to Jean, tore it and began one to Dr. Mary. When he

read it over it sounded as if he were apologizing for going at all.

He tore this and tried again. Now he seemed to be asking permission.

This followed the others to the waste-basket and Gregory locked his

desk. There was really no need to write at all. They would understand

that he had been called away, and anyhow the plans were finished. When

he returned, things would be different. Summer would be over. Gregory

whistled as he packed the Palmer plans, and all the way down the three

flights to the street.

It was after one, but the crowds still moved in four streams, two up,

two down. Gregory wondered why so many people walked in the night, as

if the city, like a nervous woman, must never be left alone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Fenninger dinner was a success, and Jean waited all the next

morning for Gregory to 'phone. She so thoroughly expected him to, and

waited so impatiently, enjoying in anticipation certain shadings which

she knew would delight him, that, late in the afternoon, when the

alternative of calling him occurred to her, Jean could not do it. She

did not like to feel this way, and told herself that her own interest

had colored her perspective. There was no need for Gregory to rush to

the 'phone as soon as he came back from his week-end with his family,

when she would surely see him in the evening. Nevertheless, that night

at dinner, when Mary asked her if she had heard from Gregory, Jean felt

a relief out of all proportion to the explanation she had forced on her

own logic.

"Funny, he didn't ring up."

Jean cracked a walnut with great deliberation. "I suppose he's extra

busy."

"Not so busy as all that. Jean, you can say what you like, but he

was angry. I imagine, in some moods; he would be awfully touchy, and

evidently he was in one that night. But he'll never be able to resist

long."

Jean picked the meat carefully from the shell and ate it slowly.

"Let's string him a bit first," Mary continued, "pretend we couldn't

work Fenninger and then spring it on him. He'll smile, then gurgle and

finally explode like a small boy."

Jean reached for another nut. "He is like a small boy, very often."

There was a silence, while Mary chose a bunch of raisins from the nut

dish and ate them thoughtfully.

"It's a damn shame," she said suddenly, apropos of nothing.

Jean rose and pushed back her chair.

"Oh, lots of things are a shame," she returned flippantly, and they

went into the living-room.

But when a week had passed without hearing anything from Gregory, Mary

rang up his office. He was out of town. No, they did not know when he

would be back, exactly, certainly not for another three weeks. He was

at the Palmer place.

"Well I'll be darned!" Dr. Mary apostrophized the tip of her cigarette,

and in acquiescence, the little ash-head fell off. "That's not like him

one single bit. Not even if he was called away in a hurry. I wonder

what----"

She did not see Jean for two days, but when she did, asked abruptly:

"Have you heard from Gregory yet?"

"No. Have you?"

"I rang up the office. He's gone to the Palmer place, will be gone for

a month."

Under pretext of laying aside her things, Jean turned away.

"I suppose they rushed things at the end, one of the whims of the idle

rich."

"That's no reason for his acting like a boor."

"Of course it isn't. But then he has."

"I don't believe it. There was something----"

"Didn't I tell you men were queer?" Jean spoke without turning.

"They--they don't have reasons, not good ones, for everything they do.

They----"

"Fiddlesticks! Maybe they don't know their own reasons, but they have

'em. Nobody, not even a man, switches round like that without some

cause. Why, he's been coming here three and four times a week, and he's

enjoyed it, too. I feel as if he belonged somehow, don't you?"

Jean was looking into the Park, to the trees, a sickly green with their

coating of summer dust under the arc lights. But she could see Gregory

lounging in the empty chair at the other end of the window, could see

him very distinctly, his nervous hands on the dark tapestry of the

arms, his head tilted back.

"Yes. He does seem to go with the place."

"Are you sure you didn't do anything? He looked awfully glum that night

when I came in."

"I don't know. Maybe I did, but I can't think of anything." Jean

continued to stare at the dusty trees. "Anyhow, if he's the reasonable

being you insist he is, he'll get over being huffy, and then we'll

know."

Mary laughed. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. But I'll

confess that it annoys me. Doesn't it you?"

Jean faced into the room. "No. But then I have real annoyances to

contend with."

"You've been at it again with Pedloe!"

"I certainly have. He's having a fit because I'm on the committee

for arranging strike relief. Of course, personally, Mrs. Herrick,

my sympathies are all for the strikers, but you understand that

officially----' Round and round he goes like a frightened squirrel.

Honestly, it's pitiful. He can't come out openly on either side. He's

just as shackled by that $6000 a year salary as a convict with a ball

and chain. What do you think he told me?"

Jean forced aside the figure of Gregory and put Dr. Pedloe in his

place. Holding the head of the Charity Organization firmly before her

eyes, she began walking up and down.

"Almost anything, from the way you look."

"He said that this strike, it's got fifty thousand women now and it

may become sympathetic before it's over and take in hundreds, was

essentially a struggle of Jewish workers. That the Hebrew Relief

should supplement strike benefits. And that in the cases of others,

Christians, well, he did not know just what they could do, but he was

very sure that the Organization could do nothing. Why? Because the

roots of the thing ramify so that some of our very heaviest subscribers

are in the tangle, and he doesn't dare go against them."

"What's he want you to do? Resign from the committee?"

"Yes. He hinted around for an hour, hoping I'd help him out, I suppose,

but I just sat and let him fidget. So in the end he came out flat

and told me he could not stand for having me officially mixed up in

it and I told him that I was not officially mixed up, that it was

purely a question of personal belief,--you ought to have seen him at

that,--and friendship for Rachael Cohen. He got off the strike then,

quick, and began to hint that in other ways I did not measure up to

Organized ethics. I always knew he was furious at those talks I gave

last winter, but he never said anything before. He was quite worked up

to-day, however, and finally put it just about as plainly as Tom did to

Rachael. You know he gave her the choice between him, a decent home in

the Bronx--and her people."

"Do I understand that Dr. Pedloe----"

"Scarcely. But he did intimate that in future he would be grateful if

I would attend to my duties as per Organization and nothing else. I

told him I would think it over and he almost fell out of his chair. He

simply can't conceive of any one throwing up a perfectly good job 'with

a certain position in this community, Mrs. Herrick.'"

"Are you going to?"

Jean walked the length of the room and back without answering. Then she

came and stood before the doctor.

"Mary, I'm getting pretty sick of the whole thing. It's just one

tangled mass of red tape. Here we are, literally hundreds, right here

in New York--and think of the whole country--intelligent men and women,

doing what? We feed a huge machine with our strength and brains, and

what comes out of it? What are we _doing_? What evils are we curing?

What are we constructing? Nothing! Absolutely nothing. We are an

obsolete institution. We are of no more use than the rudimentary fifth

toe of a horse. And we're not even honest about it. That's the greatest

danger. We pretend to ourselves and to society, that's too lazy to

look into it, that we are tremendously important. We get out reports

that look as if we were safeguarding humanity from all kinds of evil

and imposture, and spend thousands in keeping alive the fact that Mrs.

Jones got half a ton of coal last month. If we'd only be honest about

it! But we pretend we're doing good. The whole business is a pitiful

survival of the days when a kind lady went round in a pony cart and

gave away red flannel."

"I know it. But most of us can only go on plodding in the road that's

already made. We do what we can to broaden it or make it straighter,

and then we die. But if you see another, Jean, get down on your knees,

like mummy, and thank God."

"I have been thinking a lot lately about something I would like to try.

I suppose you and the T.B.'s have stirred some sleeping ambitions.

I don't know that in the end it would set the world on fire, but at

least it would have the vigor of honesty. It won't be going round in

a rut worn a mile deep by others. I want--hold tight, Mary--to gather

together all the strength going to waste in women's clubs and harness

it."

"Good Lord! Women's Clubs!"

"Go right on, Mary; there isn't a thing you can say that I haven't

thought of. I know all about the fiddling little sections for doing

fiddling, unnecessary things. I know all about the bickerings and

miniature storms, every drawback to getting efficient action out of

our sex. But--this is _our_ century. It is our first real chance in

history, and I don't know but what we're measuring up pretty well. I

suppose there are a dozen bigger things one could do, but for some

reason I want to get in on the ground floor of this."

"You want to start something all your own."

"That's it. I want to start something. I want to organize a body, local

at first, but national before we're through with it, a kind of woman's

congress to deal with all national questions that concern women. If

we have problems we ought to settle them, not one little handful here

and another there. And if we haven't, then let's stop ranting. I don't

want a national representation of clubs that have separate interests.

It's--well--'congress' is just as good a name as any other."

"Jean, I'd give a good deal to be fifteen or twenty years younger. I

wouldn't let you get into this alone."

Something choked in Jean's throat, and the old feeling that she had had

years ago in the clinic on the Hill, of gathering courage from this

white-haired woman, swept over her.

"Sometimes, Mary, I feel as if all the women in the world, who can't

get out somehow, were behind me, pushing me on."

Mary reached both hands to Jean's shoulders. "They are, Jeany--I

believe they are."

"And sometimes, Mary, I wish to Heaven they'd let me alone."

With a laugh, Dr. Mary sank back into her chair.

"Well, they won't. Now, tell me all about it. It's got the T.B.'s

beaten a mile."

"Not to-night. This is one of their pushing days, and I feel as if they

had me just about over the edge. I'm all in, and anyhow, it's pretty

vague yet."

So they smoked and talked of other things, but not again of Gregory nor

why he had gone without a word.

It was close on twelve when Jean let herself into the apartment, and

saw the light go suddenly out under Martha's door at the end of the

hall. Jean tiptoed to the door and opened it.

"Mummy, I saw you do it this time."

"Well, dear, if I can't sleep, I didn't know that I was not allowed to

read."

"Not without glasses. Did you go to the oculist's to-day?" Jean sat

down on the side of the bed.

"I didn't have time to-day. I'll go to-morrow."

In the shaft of moonlight, Martha looked very small and frail. Jean

bent and kissed her. "Please, mummy, don't put it off any longer. You

do need them."

"Yes, dear. I'll go to-morrow. I really will. I promise."

It was not often that Jean came and sat on the edge of the bed, and it

made Martha happy. She wanted to draw Jean down as if she were a little

girl again, only she knew that Jean hated more emotion than the mood

called for; so she only patted Jean's hands and smiled.

But to-night Jean would not have objected. She was tired to the point

of being glad to feel the worn fingers on her own. For all the way home

in the train, back and forth behind the plans for the congress, which

the quarrel with Pedloe and Mary's faith had brought sharply to the

foreground of her thoughts, had moved the thought of Gregory.

Why had he gone like that? Gone for weeks. What had it to do with the

strange mood of the night he had sat so silent, at the window? Why had

he looked at her like that when he had said: "Well?" Why had he said so

strangely: "No, in that case, I can't."

"You're tired, dear."

"Yes. I guess I am. It's been a busy day and I had one of my periodic

fights with Pedloe. Some day he's going to fire me, or I'm going to

resign, and he'll be the most astonished thing alive."

"Remember, dear, once you thought this the most wonderful work in the

world."

"I know. But I've outgrown it. It's such a useless round. It doesn't

get anywhere."

Martha stroked Jean's fingers. "I wouldn't do anything hasty, if I were

you. Lots of things straighten out if you give them time."

Jean smiled. "You don't know Brother Pedloe, mummy; a million years

wouldn't straighten out the kinks in his soul. Besides, I guess he fits

well enough. It's the whole institution that's worn out--a relic of

twenty years ago. I feel as if I were in prison."

"Well, don't make any change hastily. Wait until you see clearly. You

want things to come so quickly, Jean, and you want them so hard."

"I know." Jean slipped from the bed and leaned over the quiet face.

"But not to-night, mummy. I want nothing in the world but my own

comfortable bed."

Martha looked anxiously at her. "Pat was over this afternoon, to see

whether you were dead or alive. She says she doesn't suppose she'll

ever see you again until the building's up."

"I don't suppose she will."

"She's so proud of the baby, Jean, and he is a dear. Don't you think

you could take an hour or two and run over? She would be so pleased.

Pat loves you, Jean."

"I'll try. Maybe. Good-night, dear, and don't forget to wake me. Seven

and not a quarter past. You will, won't you?"

"Yes, dear. Good-night. And try not to think of work, but go straight

to sleep."

Jean promised and shut the door.

But the weight of Martha's unshakeable patience, of Pat's efficiency

and unswerving love, of Gregory's life beyond her knowledge, all this

settled security, this sureness of others, oppressed her, so that, even

between cool sheets, the ordered round of daily intercourse seemed a

difficult and intricate maneuvering among unknown quantities.

Why had Gregory gone like that?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

For the first week a feeling of relief in going without writing to

Jean had persisted in the background of Gregory's mind. But as the

heat increased, and the improvements suggested by Amos Palmer and his

wife rasped Gregory's nerves to snapping, he realized that he had been

colossally rude. He had acted so badly that he could not write except

to apologize, and he could not do that without explaining; which was

impossible because there was nothing to explain, at least nothing that

would not prove him the fool he had been.

What had been his motive? He did not know, and now that he was speeding

back on the Express to New York, he did not care.

From Harlem to the Grand Central, Gregory sat in the smoker, his

suitcase at his feet, his hat on, hoping that Jean had no engagement

that would prevent her from going to dinner. He wanted to sit opposite

Jean and tell her about the Palmers, the endless alterations that

every few days, had thrown him into a rage and a resolution to quit.

He wanted to tell her about the house, as it was finally working out,

a compromise between Amos' ideals and his own efforts to keep the

man from being a laughing stock. He wanted to hear Jean's chuckle of

appreciation, for now that he had left it all definitely behind, it

certainly was funny.

When Jean heard the telephone in the outer office ring, she answered

quickly. It was one of those blindingly hot afternoons in late

September, after a comparatively cool spell, when summer comes back

with vindictive pleasure, like a cantankerous relative from the verge

of the grave, to spoil one's just expectations. For two hours Jean had

clutched her patience and held on through the exhausting insistence

of the Friday Committee to do its duty. With the excuse that she was

expecting an important message and would have to answer personally,

Jean escaped for a moment.

At the sound of Gregory's voice, Jean's heart beat furiously and then

seemed to stop.

"Hello. HELLO. I want to speak to Mrs. Herrick, please."

"This is Mrs. Herrick."

"Hello. This is Gregory Allen."

"Well!" It came with just the right degree of heartiness. "When did you

get back?"

"About two minutes ago. Am I in time to take you to dinner? Hello.

_Hello._ I say, Central, you've cut me off. I want----"

"Hello. No, they haven't cut off. I'm trying to 'phone, and listen to

a meeting in the other room at the same time." With the ease of this

falsehood, Jean's composure crept back.

"Who is it,--The Dalton?"

"Yes, after a month's rest."

"I'll come straight down and rescue you. Give everybody a ton of ice

all around and close the meeting."

"It's milk," Jean whispered into the receiver, "the Caseys have had a

quart a day for three weeks! We've been half an hour on it now."

"It sounds like an all-night session, but I'm coming just the same. Six

thirty, will that be all right?"

"Six would be better. I promised Rachael to see her to-night before

eight."

"All right. Six. How's everything?"

"Beyond our dreams. Did you put on the turret?"

"Worse. A cupola with an electric globe on top, a kind of spherical

Star of Bethlehem."

"Nothing but a blue-print will convince me. Bring it down."

She hung up and sat staring at the floor until a sudden cessation of

voices in the next room attracted her. Reluctantly she went back.

"We've decided to continue the Casey milk for another week, Mrs.

Herrick, until I have had time to look more thoroughly into the reason

of Casey's losing his last job."

Mrs. J. William Dalton's expression conveyed that after that, not even

Jean herself could do anything.

"Very well, I think that would be wisest." Jean did not sit down again,

but stood at the table fingering the mass of records. "And I think

we've done enough for to-day."

Mrs. Dalton opened her lips, thought better of it, and made no

objection. It was hot, and if she started to fight out the Monarco case

with Berna it would be another hour before she could get home, take

off her corsets, and have William forbid her "once and for all to go

getting all tired out with that Charity dope."

"Very well."

The Friday Committee groaned with relief, pushed back the chairs, and

gradually rustled away.

Jean washed her hands and changed to the clean blouse that she kept for

emergencies. She had just finished when the elevator stopped, the outer

door opened and Gregory crossed to the private office. Jean opened the

door before he knocked, and they stood for a moment, one on each side

of the threshold.

"My, but it's good to get back. You look ripping."

Every pulse in Jean answered so suddenly and unexpectedly to the

clasp of his fingers, that she almost lost the non-committal greeting

flitting in her brain.

"So do you, and I don't believe a word about the Star of Bethlehem."

"Well, it's true, whether you believe it or not. A heavily-powered

arc-light right on top."

Jean withdrew her hands and turned to get her hat from its peg. Gregory

watched her. She was extraordinarily strong and cleanly cut for a

woman. Every motion she made was firm and carried decision with it, as

if from a mass of possibilities she chose that particular thing and

nothing else.

"All right, I'll believe it. After all it's not more extraordinary than

what we accomplished. You're not the only one with news."

"Is Fenninger still alive? Or did he make his will in your favor and

die of indigestion?"

"Neither. But you'll have to wait. I'm not going to read my lines

without the proper back-drop."

"Will The Fiesole do, or isn't that swell enough for the Doctor?"

"It will do nicely; he'll think he's slumming."

The Fiesole was Mary's favorite place, and this was the first time

they had eaten there without her. Jean wondered if that were why it

seemed so different. She felt that this was a new environment, and yet

there were the same long rooms, stretching back from the street balcony

on which they sat. There were the same waiters, hurrying at the same

gait, as if they had been wound by machinery to a set speed which they

could never lessen or increase by their individual wills. There was

the same orchestra, sheltered behind the dingy palms, playing the same

semi-classical, popular music. There was the steady buzz of talk and

the same people might have been sitting there for months. The heat had

in it the same feel of dust, as if it held the disillusioned souls of

millions, ground to powder in their struggle for forgetfulness; there

was the same odor of highly spiced food, like too strong scent; the

same sensuous music, the passion in its heart hidden under the cloak

of form, except when it broke through and flicked the senses, till men

touched women's hands in filling their glasses and the women leaned

across the table.

"Well, you look as if you had never seen it before. Doesn't it suit

Fenninger, after all?"

Across the table Gregory was smiling. He looked happy and younger than

Jean had ever seen him.

"Perfectly. But he'd like any place where he was the richest man in it

and people could see him spend money."

While they waited for the first course, Gregory told her of Palmer's

suggestions and Mrs. Palmer's struggle between pride at being able to

spend as much as she liked, and uncertainty as to the taste.

"She has just one criterion, a hotel she once worked in that had green

marble walls in the hall, and blue velvet furniture in the lobby. It

was evidently large and rather quiet because she has kept an impression

of something 'terribly genteel.' She measures everything by it, the

timbre of your voice, the way you take off your hat, and the thickness

of the stair carpet. She's as pretty as a picture. The whole thing

would be repulsive, that old man wallowing in his money and passion for

this child, except for a kind of honest eagerness in the girl herself.

He wants to take her somewhere abroad to get the edges rubbed off, and

give his grown children a chance to cool down. She'll get the edges

rubbed off, and some of his, too, long before he thinks it's time to

come home. But she'll always be grateful, and never let people make fun

of him."

"Poor child. I hope they won't get rubbed too smooth before she sees

the star again."

"No. It'll take a bit longer than that. Besides the pergola will be

the first to go; she isn't sure of it even now, with Turkish lamps of

colored glass and Japanese wind-bells. In about three years she'll

make him sell it."

"I'll keep an eye on it. It's rather far, but it would make a glorious

convalescent home, if we could get it for nothing."

"No doubt _you_ could."

They laughed in understanding.

"Exit Amos. What did you do to Fenninger?"

"It worked like a charm. We didn't tell mummy a thing except that a

friend of Mary's was in town for a few days, and she wanted him to have

one really good home dinner. Mummy rose to the bait and begged for

more. As a relative I can't brag about that dinner but, by the time we

got to a frozen dream of mummy's invention, he believed that the whole

idea had originated with himself. And by the time the percolator got to

bubbling he gave me a check for three thousand as if he were hiring me

to attend to a few minor details he had no time for."

"Poor devil! And his part's only just begun. Does he know he's going to

operate on people for the remainder?"

"He's not. He just advises the operations; Mary and I do the surgery."

"Who is it?" Gregory was grinning, his small-boy grin.

"It's not a 'who.' It's an it. Fenninger's pet case is a millionaire,

cirrhosis of the liver, with two pieces of property on the East River,

one in the upper fifties and one in the nineties. He thinks we can get

either on a small lease; it can't be deeded over altogether because of

some legal tangle, but it's perfectly safe. Mary and I are going to

make our choice this Sunday."

"I want to help, may I?" There was a pause. Something hung in the

balance. And then Gregory said dully:

"Be sure to choose the right one."

"We will. Mary is good at that kind of thing."

The waiter brushed off the crumbs and brought the coffee. When they

began talking again the mood had changed. Gregory told Jean of a

competition to build a Peoples' Auditorium in Chicago. It was open to

the architects of America, and he had played with the idea through the

hot, lonely nights of the past month.

"Whenever the pergola got too much, I took a swat at this."

"Well?"

Gregory shrugged. "It was good fun. It saved Palmer's life more often

than he knew."

"When can I see them?"

Gregory ground the ash of his cigarette into the cloth as he answered:

"They're in the waste-basket. I was afraid to keep them around, like a

drunkard with a bottle of whiskey."

"Why?"

After a moment, Gregory answered: "It's years since I've done anything

but Stephens and Palmer houses."

Jean reached for the little silver coffee pot and held it over her cup.

But it was several moments before she noticed that there was no more

coffee in the pot. She put it down.

"That's no reason."

"Oh, yes, it is. If I don't try, I can't fail."

Gregory's lips smiled but his eyes were tired. Jean looked away.

"You wouldn't fail. I'm sure you wouldn't fail."

"It's almost twelve years since I left the Beaux Arts, and I'm putting

electric stars on Palmer pergolas."

"You are not!"

"Yes, I am, and glad to do it. You don't understand. Why, the night

that I thought most seriously about entering the contest, I felt as if

I were presuming, doing something I had no right to do. I walked till

almost morning in the woods, and then I threw the beginnings I had

made away. You don't understand. The worms have been at work too long

inside."

"They have _not_." The emphasis pricked like a sword. Jean was leaning

to him across the table. "You are not glad to put arc lights on

pergolas, and the worm has never gnawed at all. It's not what you do

that makes a failure or what you don't do. It's what we no longer dream

of doing, and--you _do_ want to enter."

The throbbing assurance drew Gregory's eyes. He tried to smile.

"But think of all the young, undefeated men whose souls have not been

Palmerized."

Jean's eyes were black and stern, as Puck's were sometimes.

"Your soul has not been Palmerized. Nothing can hurt us unless we let

it."

Gregory's fingers trembled as he lit another cigarette. Did she believe

that really, of every one? Was it abstract faith, a gauge by which she

measured men, or was it for him? He had to know.

"Then why didn't I go ahead? There's nothing exterior to prevent me."

"Because," Jean said slowly, "because, when we can really do big

things, the light at first blinds and rather confuses. But you get used

to the light and go ahead. You will draw the plans again."

There was a long silence, before Gregory said, without looking up:

"I believe I shall. And it will be all your fault."

Jean's smile was uncertain, too, as she replied:

"All right. I'm willing to take the blame."

They drank the last drops of cold coffee to The Auditorium, and then

Jean looked at her watch and got up quickly.

"There seems something specially fatal about plans and the strike. I

promised Rachael to see her to-night. I've got to run."

"Wait. I'll walk down with you."

"I may have to stay some time. I'm worried about Ray----" Before

the look in Gregory's eyes, Jean stopped. She knew he had not heard

although he was looking directly at her. She sought for words to

prevent his coming, but she knew they would be useless even if she

found them.

Gregory paid the check and they left the restaurant. In absolute

silence they walked along Division Street, between the rows of

shrieking hucksters, and past the babies tumbling in their path. They

halted before a dirty tenement on Essex Street. Again Jean tried to

think of something to say that would turn Gregory back, and could

not. So close that she could almost feel his body touching hers,

they mounted the first two flights with their imitation tiling and

flickering gas, the third with its cracked plaster, the fourth with no

lights at all, and the fifth, so dark that they had to feel their way

by the greasy wooden wall.

There was no light under Rachael's door. "I don't believe she's in.

There must be something wrong. Terribly wrong."

Gregory did not answer. She could hear him breathing in quick, deep

breaths. She began knocking sharply and calling. But no one answered.

Jean turned the handle. The door opened. It was silent and dark and

stifling.

"I think I had better leave a note." Jean entered the kitchen, and

Gregory crossed the threshold and stood close.

"Have you a match? I--think--I'd better--leave a note." Against the

weight holding her back, Jean forced herself forward toward the front

room, lit palely in the light from the street lamps far below. Gregory

could see her outlined in the hot blackness. He turned and closed the

outer door.

"Haven't you a match?" Jean groped in the space before her, for Gregory

was crossing the kitchen now, was coming to her.

"Haven't you--one--match?"

"No," Gregory answered at random, "no." His mouth was parched, although

his whole body was bathed in cold damp.

Jean's hand touched a little brass match safe under the wall

gas-bracket. Her fingers closed on it, and for a moment she stood

gripping it, leaning against the bamboo table under the bracket. Then

a yellow glare absorbed the darkness, and Jean sat down at the table.

Gregory drew one quick, deep breath and moistened his lips.

Jean found a scrap of paper and a pencil in her handbag, and the

pencil, obeying a law of its own, moved. Jean folded the note and stuck

it in a corner of the mirror. If Rachael came home she must see it.

"There." Jean rose and stood with her hand on the gas-cock. "If you'll

light the light on the landing first--it's just outside, it's hard

negotiating this labyrinth."

Gregory obeyed. Jean turned out the gas and followed. They went down

the stairs in silence. Without a word they walked through the crowded

street and turned west to the nearest Subway. At the entrance Gregory

stopped.

"I think I'll take the El. It's just as near for me and a lot cooler.

Good-night. And don't abscond with the strike benefits."

Jean nodded. "No. I won't. And don't put a pergola on the auditorium."

The tone was brisk. Jean smiled back as she vanished into the entrance

hole. Gregory turned away. He hated her.

Jean was grateful for the stifling air of the tunnel, the noise, the

lights, the groups waiting for the train. It was familiar and safe.

Wedged between a fat Jew in a black alpaca coat, and a sleeping Italian

plasterer, covered with the dust of his trade, Jean stared before her.

Had she said those last words at all, or only mouthed them?