Two months are supposed to have elapsed.
Barbara sat in the study of the hundred-thousand-dollar house. It was a
good place for her. Many places are provided in the world where men and
women may repair for the purpose of extricating themselves from divers
difficulties. There are cloisters, wailing-places, watering-places,
confessionals, hermitages, lawyer's offices, beauty parlors, air-ships,
and studies; and the greatest of these are studies.
It usually takes a hypotenuse a long time to discover that it is the
longest side of a triangle. But it's a long line that has no turning.
Barbara was alone. Uncle Jerome and Nevada had gone to the theatre.
Barbara had not cared to go. She wanted to stay at home and study in
the study. If you, miss, were a stunning New York girl, and saw every
day that a brown, ingenuous Western witch was getting hobbles and a
lasso on the young man you wanted for yourself, you, too, would lose
taste for the oxidized-silver setting of a musical comedy.
Barbara sat by the quartered-oak library table. Her right arm rested
upon the table, and her dextral fingers nervously manipulated a sealed
letter. The letter was addressed to Nevada Warren; and in the upper
left-hand corner of the envelope was Gilbert's little gold palette.
It had been delivered at nine o'clock, after Nevada had left.
Barbara would have given her pearl necklace to know what the letter
contained; but she could not open and read it by the aid of steam, or
a pen-handle, or a hair-pin, or any of the generally approved methods,
because her position in society forbade such an act. She had tried to
read some of the lines of the letter by holding the envelope up to a
strong light and pressing it hard against the paper, but Gilbert had
too good a taste in stationery to make that possible.
At eleven-thirty the theatre-goers returned. It was a delicious winter
night. Even so far as from the cab to the door they were powdered
thickly with the big flakes downpouring diagonally from the east. Old
Jerome growled good-naturedly about villainous cab service and blockaded
streets. Nevada, colored like a rose, with sapphire eyes, babbled of
the stormy nights in the mountains around dad's cabin. During all
these wintry apostrophes, Barbara, cold at heart, sawed wood--the only
appropriate thing she could think of to do.
Old Jerome went immediately up-stairs to hot-water-bottles and quinine.
Nevada fluttered into the study, the only cheerfully lighted room,
subsided into an arm-chair, and, while at the interminable task of
unbuttoning her elbow gloves, gave oral testimony as to the demerits
of the "show."
"Yes, I think Mr. Fields is really amusing--sometimes," said Barbara.
"Here is a letter for you, dear, that came by special delivery just
after you had gone."
"Who is it from?" asked Nevada, tugging at a button.
"Well, really," said Barbara, with a smile, "I can only guess. The
envelope has that queer little thing in one corner that Gilbert
calls a palette, but which looks to me rather like a gilt heart on a
school-girl's valentine."
"I wonder what he's writing to me about" remarked Nevada, listlessly.
"We're all alike," said Barbara; "all women. We try to find out what is
in a letter by studying the postmark. As a last resort we use scissors,
and read it from the bottom upward. Here it is."
She made a motion as if to toss the letter across the table to Nevada.
"Great catamounts!" exclaimed Nevada. "These centre-fire buttons are a
nuisance. I'd rather wear buckskins. Oh, Barbara, please shuck the hide
off that letter and read it. It'll be midnight before I get these gloves
off!"
"Why, dear, you don't want me to open Gilbert's letter to you? It's for
you, and you wouldn't wish any one else to read it, of course!"
Nevada raised her steady, calm, sapphire eyes from her gloves.
"Nobody writes me anything that everybody mightn't read," she said.
"Go on, Barbara. Maybe Gilbert wants us to go out in his car again
to-morrow."
Curiosity can do more things than kill a cat; and if emotions, well
recognized as feminine, are inimical to feline life, then jealousy would
soon leave the whole world catless. Barbara opened the letter, with an
indulgent, slightly bored air.
"Well, dear," said she, "I'll read it if you want me to."
She slit the envelope, and read the missive with swift-travelling eyes;
read it again, and cast a quick, shrewd glance at Nevada, who, for
the time, seemed to consider gloves as the world of her interest, and
letters from rising artists as no more than messages from Mars.
For a quarter of a minute Barbara looked at Nevada with a strange
steadfastness; and then a smile so small that it widened her mouth only
the sixteenth part of an inch, and narrowed her eyes no more than a
twentieth, flashed like an inspired thought across her face.
Since the beginning no woman has been a mystery to another woman. Swift
as light travels, each penetrates the heart and mind of another, sifts
her sister's words of their cunningest disguises, reads her most hidden
desires, and plucks the sophistry from her wiliest talk like hairs from
a comb, twiddling them sardonically between her thumb and fingers before
letting them float away on the breezes of fundamental doubt. Long ago
Eve's son rang the door-bell of the family residence in Paradise Park,
bearing a strange lady on his arm, whom he introduced. Eve took her
daughter-in-law aside and lifted a classic eyebrow.
"The Land of Nod," said the bride, languidly flirting the leaf of a
palm. "I suppose you've been there, of course?"
"Not lately," said Eve, absolutely unstaggered. "Don't you think the
apple-sauce they serve over there is execrable? I rather like that
mulberry-leaf tunic effect, dear; but, of course, the real fig goods
are not to be had over there. Come over behind this lilac-bush while
the gentlemen split a celery tonic. I think the caterpillar-holes have
made your dress open a little in the back."
So, then and there--according to the records--was the alliance formed
by the only two who's-who ladies in the world. Then it was agreed that
woman should forever remain as clear as a pane of glass--though glass
was yet to be discovered--to other women, and that she should palm
herself off on man as a mystery.
Barbara seemed to hesitate.
"Really, Nevada," she said, with a little show of embarrassment, "you
shouldn't have insisted on my opening this. I--I'm sure it wasn't meant
for any one else to know."
Nevada forgot her gloves for a moment.
"Then read it aloud," she said. "Since you've already read it, what's
the difference? If Mr. Warren has written to me something that any one
else oughtn't to know, that is all the more reason why everybody should
know it."
"Well," said Barbara, "this is what it says: 'Dearest Nevada--Come to
my studio at twelve o'clock to-night. Do not fail.'" Barbara rose and
dropped the note in Nevada's lap. "I'm awfully sorry," she said, "that
I knew. It isn't like Gilbert. There must be some mistake. Just consider
that I am ignorant of it, will you, dear? I must go up-stairs now, I
have such a headache. I'm sure I don't understand the note. Perhaps
Gilbert has been dining too well, and will explain. Good night!"