Nan felt a sense of drama as she rang the bell of her friend's house.
The houses in the row were all exactly alike, built of a new small
dark-red brick, and each was set on a little square of new turf, as
smooth and neat as an emerald-green handkerchief. To make matters
harder, the house numbers were not honest numerals, but loops of silver
ribbon festooned above the front door bell, so that Nan had almost
mistaken the five she was looking for for the three next door.
She had not seen her friend for four years; and four years is a long
time--a sixth of your entire life when you are only twenty-four. It
seemed to her that they had been immensely young when they had parted;
and yet she had never been too young to appreciate Letitia--even that
first day back in the dark ages of childhood when they had found
their desks next to each other at school. Even then Letitia had been
captivating--lovely to look at, and gay; and, though it seemed a
strange word to use about a child in short dresses, elegant. She came
of the best blood in America; indeed, in the American-history class it
was quite embarrassing because so many of the statesmen and generals
whom the teacher praised or condemned were ancestors of Letitia's. She
was a red-gold creature with deep sky-blue eyes, and, at that remote
period, freckles, which she had subsequently succeeded in getting rid
of.
She had charmed Nan from the first moment--none the less that Nan
understood her weaknesses as well as her charms. No one could say that
Letitia was untruthful; to lie was quite outside her code; but if at
seven minutes past eight she was late, she said it was barely eight
o'clock, and if you were late she said it was almost a quarter past.
Someone had once observed to her mother that Letitia distorted facts,
and Mrs. Lewis, had replied, after an instant of deliberation, "Well,
undoubtedly she molds them."
She molded them particularly in conversation with the opposite sex; she
could not bear any competition as far as her admirers were concerned.
Strangely enough, though Letitia was much the prettier and more amusing
of the two girls, she was always a little jealous of Nan, whereas Nan
was never at all jealous of her. Letty herself explained the reason
for this once in one of her flashes of vision: "It's because whatever
you get from people is your own--founded on a rock, Nan; but I fake it
so--I get a lot that doesn't belong to me--and so I'm always in terror
of being found out."
After their schooldays the girls had seen a great deal of each other.
Nan's father was a professor in a small college, and it was pleasant
to be asked to stay with the Lewises in their tiny New York flat. It
was also agreeable to Letitia to be invited to share in commencement
festivities with their prolonged opportunities to fascinate. Then Nan's
father had accepted an appointment in China; but the separation did not
lessen the intimacy--perhaps it even increased it; you can write so
freely to a person living thousands of miles away. Letitia had written
with the utmost freedom to her friend, who at that distance could not
in any way be regarded as a competitor.
Letitia always described the new people she was seeing, and Nan noticed
that the first mention of Roger in her letters had in it something
sharply defined and significant:
"I sat next the most romantic-looking boy I ever saw. No, my dear, no
occasion for excitement; he must be years younger than I am; but the
most beautiful person you ever saw--hollow-cheeked, broad-browed like
that picture you adore so of Father Damien, oh perhaps I'm thinking of
an illustration of Rossetti; and he can talk, too, I promise you. He's
an experimental chemist in some great manufacturing company, which at
this age--"
In the next letter it appeared that he wasn't really years
younger--hardly a year; in fact, nothing to speak of. Letitia began to
write a good deal about the scientific point of view--its stimulating
quality--its powers of observation--its justice--"almost as just as you
are, Nan."
Nan waited for each letter as if it were the next installment of a
serial. She had seen Letitia through a good many such affairs, and
she knew that before long her friend would stage a quarrel. It was a
good way, Letty said, of finding out how much he cared; although, as
a matter of fact, Nan noticed that she never precipitated it until
she was sure the unfortunate man in question cared enough to be at a
disadvantage.
But in Roger's case, when she had said sadly, "I'm afraid, Mr.
Rossiter, that this means our friendship is ended," he had answered
without a word of pleading, "Yes, I'm quite sure it does."