"But I'm not so old."
She looked at him critically. "No--you're not. It always puzzled me. You
aren't old--you look like a boy lots of the time. But you always _seem_
old to me."
"I'll try to do better. To-night?"
"Not to-night," laughed she. "Let's see--to-morrow's Sunday. Come
to-morrow--about half past two."
"Thank you," he said so gratefully that he cursed himself for his folly
as he heard his voice--the idiotic folly of so plainly betraying his
feelings. No wonder she despised him! Beginning again--and beginning;
wrong.
"Good-by." Her eyes, her smile flashed and he was alone, watching her
slender grace glide through the throngs of lower Broadway.
At his office again at three, he found a note from Tetlow inclosing
another of Dorothy's cards and also the promised check. Into his face
came the look that always comes into the faces of the prisoners of
despair when the bolts slide back and the heavy door swings and hope
stands on the threshold instead of the familiar grim figure of the
jailer. "This looks like the turn of the road," he muttered. Yes, a turn
it certainly was--but was it _the_ turn? "I'll know more as to that," said
he with a glance at the clock, "about this time to-morrow."
* * * * *
It was a boarding house on the west side. And when the slovenly, smelly
maid said, "Go right up to her room," he knew it was--probably
respectable, but not rigidly respectable. However, working girls must
receive, and they cannot afford parlors and chaperons. Still--It was no
place for a lovely young girl, full of charm and of love of life--and
not brought up in the class where the women are trained from babyhood to
protect themselves.
He ascended two flights, knocked at the door to the rear. "Come!" called
a voice, and he entered. It was a small neat room, arranged comfortably
and with some taste. He recognized at first glance many little things
from her room in the Jersey City house--things he had provided for her.
On the chimney piece was a large photograph of her father--Norman's eyes
hastily shifted from that. The bed was folded away into a couch--for
space and for respectability. At first he did not see her. But when he
advanced a step farther, she was disclosed in the doorway of a deep
closet that contained a stationary washstand.
He had never seen her when she was not fully dressed. He was now seeing
her in a kind of wrapper--of pale blue, clean but not fresh. It was
open at the throat; its sleeves fell away from her arms. And, to cap the
climax of his agitation, her hair, her wonderful hair, was flowing
loosely about her face and shoulders.
"What's the matter with you?" she cried laughingly. Her eyes sparkled
and danced; the waves of her hair, each hair standing out as if it were
alive, sparkled and danced. It was a smile never to be forgotten. "Why
are you so embarrassed?"
He was embarrassed. He was thrilled. He was enraged--enraged because, if
she would thus receive him whom she did not like, she would certainly
thus receive any man.
"I don't mind you," she went on, mockingly. "I'd have to be careful if
it was one of the boys."
"Do you receive the--boys--here?" demanded he glumly, his voice arrogant
with the possessive rights a man feels when he cares for a woman,
whether she cares for him or not.
"Why not?" scoffed she. "Where else would I see them? I don't make
street corner dates, thank you. You're as bad as fat, foolish Mr.
Tetlow."
"I beg your pardon," said he humbly.
She straightway relented, saying: "Of course I'd not let one of the boys
come up when I was dressed like this. But I didn't mind _you_." He winced
at this amiable, unconscious reminder of her always exasperating and
tantalizing and humiliating indifference to him--"And as I'm going to a
grand dance to-night I simply had to wash my hair. Does that satisfy
you, Mr. Primmey?"
He hid the torment of his reopened wound and seated himself at the
center table. She returned to a chair in the window where the full force
of the afternoon sun would concentrate upon her hair. And he gazed spell
bound. He had always known that her hair was fine. He had never dreamed
it was like this. It was thick, it was fine and soft. In color, as the
sunbeams streamed upon it, it was all the shades of gold and all the
other beautiful shades between brown and red. It fell about her face,
about her neck, about her shoulders in a gorgeous veil. And her pure
white skin--It was an even more wonderful white below the line of her
collar--where he had never seen it before. Such exquisitely modeled
ears--such a delicate nose--and the curve of her cheeks--and the glory
of her eyes! He clinched his teeth and his hands, sat dumb with his gaze
down.
"How do you like my room?" she chattered on. "It's not so bad--really
quite comfortable--though I'm afraid I'll be cold when the weather
changes. But it's the best I can do. As it is, I don't see how I'm going
to make ends meet. I pay twelve of my fifteen for this room and two
meals. The rest goes for lunch and car fare. As soon as I have to get
clothes--" She broke off, laughing.
"Well," he said, "what then?"
"I'm sure I don't know," replied she carelessly. "Perhaps old Mr.
Branscombe'll give me a raise. Still, eighteen or twenty is the most I
could hope for--and that wouldn't mean enough for clothes."
She shook her head vigorously and her hair stood out yet more vividly
and the sunbeams seemed to go mad with joy as they danced over and under
and through it. He had ventured to glance up; again he hastily looked
down.
"You spoiled me," she went on. "Those few months over there in Jersey
City. It made _such_ a change in me, though I didn't realize it at the
time. You see, I hadn't known since I was a tiny little girl what it was
to live really decently, and so I was able to get along quite
contentedly. I didn't know any better." She made a wry face. "How I
loathe the canned and cold storage stuff I have to eat nowadays. And how
I do miss the beautiful room I had in that big house over there! and how
I miss Molly and Pat--and the garden--and doing as I pleased--and the
clothes I had: I thought I was being careful and not spoiling myself.
You may not believe it, but I was really conscientious about spending
money." She laughed in a queer, absent way. "I had such a funny idea of
what I had a right to do and what I hadn't. And I didn't spend so very
much on out-and-out luxury. But--enough to spoil me for this life."
As Norman listened, as he noted--in her appearance, manner, way of
talking--the many meaning signs of the girl hesitating at the fork of
the roads--he felt within him the twinges of fear, of jealousy--and
through fear and jealousy, the twinges of conscience. She was telling
the truth. He had undermined her ability to live in purity the life to
which her earning power assigned her. . . . _Why_ had she been so friendly
to him? Why had she received him in this informal, almost if not quite
inviting fashion?
"So you think I've changed?" she was saying. "Well--I have. Gracious,
what a little fool I was!"
His eyes lifted with an agonized question in them.
She flushed, glanced away, glanced at him again with the old, sweet
expression of childlike innocence which had so often made him wonder
whether it was merely a mannerism, or was a trick, or was indeed a beam
from a pure soul. "I'm foolish still--in certain ways," she said
significantly.
"And you always intend to be?" suggested he with a forced smile.
"Oh--yes," replied she--positively enough, yet it somehow had not the
full force of her simple short statements in the former days.
He believed her. Perhaps because he wished to believe, must believe,
would have been driven quite mad by disbelief. Still, he believed. As
yet she was good. But it would not last much longer. With him--or with
some other. If with him, then certainly afterward with another--with
others. No matter how jealously he might guard her, she would go that
road, if once she entered it. If he would have her for his very own he
must strengthen her, not weaken her, must keep her "foolish still--in
certain ways."