It did her good, that soup. It was strong and very hot. It put heart
into her. When she had finished, he laughed gleefully.
"It's all very well to talk about rice-powder, and cucumber-cream, and
beauty-sleeps, but all you needed to make you look perfectly lovely was
a cup of soup. That scarf's becoming to you, too."
She blushed happily. She had lost all fear of him.
"What are you pinching yourself for?" he asked.
"To see if I'm awake."
"You are," he said, "wide awake. Take my word for it, and I hope you're
having a good time."
The Chinaman poured something light and sparkling into her glass from a
bottle dressed in a napkin. Misgivings returned to her. She had heard of
girls being drugged.
"You don't have to drink it," said the young man. "I had some served
because dinner doesn't look like dinner without champagne. Still, after
the thoroughly unhappy day you've put in, I think a mouthful or two
would do you good."
She lifted the glass of champagne, smiled, drank, and choked. He laughed
at her merrily.
All through dinner he kept lighting cigarettes and throwing them away.
Between times he ate with great relish and heartiness.
Lila was in heaven. All her doubts and fears had vanished. She felt
thoroughly at home, as if she had always been used to service and linen
and silver and courtesy.
They had coffee, and then they strolled about in the moonlight, while
the young man smoked a very long cigar.
He looked at his watch, and sighed. "Well, Miss," he said, "if we're to
get you safe home to your mother!"
"I won't be a minute," she said.
"You know the way?"
She ran upstairs, and, having put on her hat, decided that it looked
cheap and vulgar, and took it off again.
He wrapped her in a soft white polo-coat for the long run to New York.
She looked back at the lights of his house. Would she ever see them
again, or smell the salt and the box and the roses?
By the time they had reached the Zoological Gardens at Fordham she had
fallen blissfully asleep. He ran the car with considerate slowness, and
looked at her very often. She waked as they crossed the river. Her eyes
shrank from the piled serried buildings of Manhattan. The air was no
longer clean and delicious to the lungs.
"Have I been asleep?"
"Yes."
"Oh," she cried, "how could I! How could I! I've missed some of it. And
it never happened before, and it will never happen again."
"Not in the same way, perhaps," he said gravely. "But how do you know? I
think you are one girl in ten million, and to you all things are
possible."
"How many men in ten million are like you?" she asked.
"Men are all pretty much alike," he said. "They have good impulses and
bad."
In the stark darkness between the outer and the inner door of the
tenement in which she lived, there was an awkward, troubled silence. He
wished very much to kiss her, but had made up his mind that he would
not. She thought that he might, and had made up her mind that if he
attempted to she would resist. She was not in the least afraid of him
any more, but of herself.
He kissed her, and she did not resist.
"Good-night," he said, and then with a half-laugh, "Which is your
bell?"
She found it and rang it. Presently there was a rusty click, and the
inner door opened an inch or so. Neither of them spoke for a full
minute. Then she, her face aflame in the darkness:
"When you came I was only a little fool who'd bought a pair of shoes
that were too tight for her. I didn't _know_ anything. I'm wise now. I
know that I'm dreaming, and that if I wake up before the dream is ended
I shall die."
She tried to laugh gayly and could not.
"I've made things harder for you instead of easier," he said. "I'm
terribly sorry. I meant well."
"Oh, it isn't that," she said. "Thank you a thousand thousand times. And
good-night."
"Wait," he said. "Will you play with me again some time? How about
Saturday?"
"No," she said. "It wouldn't be fair--to me. Good-night."
She passed through the inner door and up the narrow creaking stair to
the dark tenement in which she lived; she could hear the restless
breathing of her sleeping family.
"Oh, my God!" she thought, "if it weren't for _them_!"
As for the young man, having lighted a long cigar, he entered his car
and drove off, muttering to himself:
"Damnation! Why does a girl like that _have_ a family!"
He never saw her again, nor was he ever haunted by the thought that he
had perhaps spoiled her whole life as thoroughly as if he had taken
advantage of her ignorance and her innocence.