Lolly came flying into my room just a little while before eight that
evening, with her cheeks red and her eyes sparkling. She had dined down
town with Marshall Chambers, and they had come back to get me to go to
the theater with them.
"Hurry up, Nora!" she cried. "Get dressed! Marshall has seats for
Sothern and Harned in 'The Sunken Bell.'"
Up to this time I had never been inside a theater. I had come to
America in late May. It was now the beginning of September, and the
theaters were just opening. Of course I had never been to a play of any
sort at home, except some little church affairs. So, unhappy as I was,
I dressed in Lolly's pretty chiffon dress, and we went down to join Mr.
Chambers, who was waiting for us in the parlor. On the way down in the
elevator, Lolly had handed me a number of advertisements of rooms and
flats that she had cut from the papers, and while she was drawing on
her gloves in the lower hall and I was glancing through these, a page
called my name, and said a gentleman was waiting for me inside.
As I went into the parlor, Marshall Chambers stood up, held out his
hand, and said something to me; but I scarcely saw him, and I know I
did not answer him. I saw, in fact, nothing in the world save Roger
Hamilton, who had come across the room to me, and, with an odd air
almost of proprietorship, had taken me quietly from Chambers.
Without saying a word to each other, we sat for some time in the Y.
W. C. A., with girls coming and going. I glanced only once at his
face, and then I looked away, for I could not bear his expression.
It was like that of the previous night. It was as if he examined me
critically, cruelly, not only my face, but even my clothes and my
gloved hands. Presently he said in a low voice:
"There are too many people here. We shall have to go out somewhere."
I found myself walking with him down Michigan Avenue. We said nothing
as we walked, but presently we came to a little park, and found a bench
facing the lake, and there we sat, I staring out at the water, and he
looking at me. After a while he said:
"Who was your friend of last night?"