SPENSER had time and thought for his play only. He no longer
tormented himself with jealousy of the abilities and income
and fame of Brent and the other successful writers for the
stage; was not he about to equal them, probably to surpass
them? As a rule, none of the mean emotions is able to
thrive--unless it has the noxious vapors from disappointment
and failure to feed upon. Spenser, in spirits and in hope
again, was content with himself. Jealousy of Brent about
Susan had been born of dissatisfaction with himself as a
failure and envy of Brent as a success; it died with that
dissatisfaction and that envy. His vanity assured him that
while there might be possibly--ways in which he was not
without rivals, certainly where women were concerned he simply
could not be equaled; the woman he wanted he could have--and he
could hold her as long as he wished. The idea that Susan
would give a sentimental thought to a man "old enough to be
her father"--Brent was forty-one--was too preposterous to
present itself to his mind. She loved the handsome,
fascinating, youthful Roderick Spenser; she would soon be
crazy about him.
Rarely does it occur to a man to wonder what a woman is
thinking. During courtship very young men attribute intellect
and qualities of mystery and awe to the woman they love. But
after men get an insight into the mind of woman and discover
how trivial are the matters that of necessity usually engage
it, they become skeptical about feminine mentality; they would
as soon think of speculating on what profundities fill the
brain of the kitten playing with a ball as of seeking a
solution of the mystery behind a woman's fits of abstraction.
However, there was in Susan's face, especially in her eyes, an
expression so unusual, so arresting that Spenser,
self-centered and convinced of woman's intellectual deficiency
though he was, did sometimes inquire what she was thinking
about. He asked this question at breakfast the morning after
that second visit to Brent.
"Was I thinking?" she countered.
"You certainly were not listening. You haven't a notion what
I was talking about."
"About your play."
"Of course. You know I talk nothing else," laughed he. "I
must bore you horribly."
"No, indeed," protested she.
"No, I suppose not. You're not bored because you don't listen."
He was cheerful about it. He talked merely to arrange his
thoughts, not because he expected Susan to understand matters
far above one whom nature had fashioned and experience had
trained to minister satisfyingly to the physical and
sentimental needs of man. He assumed that she was as
worshipful before his intellect as in the old days. He would
have been even more amazed than enraged had he known that she
regarded his play as mediocre claptrap, false to life, fit
only for the unthinking, sloppily sentimental crowd that could
not see the truth about even their own lives, their own
thoughts and actions.
"There you go again!" cried he, a few minutes later. "What
_are_ you thinking about? I forgot to ask how you got on with
Brent. Poor chap--he's had several failures in the past year.
He must be horribly cut up. They say he's written out. What
does he think he's trying to get at with you?"
"Acting, as I told you," replied Susan. She felt ashamed for
him, making this pitiable exhibition of patronizing a great man.
"Sperry tells me he has had that twist in his brain for a long
time--that he has tried out a dozen girls or more--drops them
after a few weeks or months. He has a regular system about
it--runs away abroad, stops the pay after a month or so."
"Well, the forty a week's clear gain while it lasts," said
Susan. She tried to speak lightly. But she felt hurt and
uncomfortable. There had crept into her mind one of those
disagreeable ideas that skurry into some dusky corner to hide,
and reappear from time to time making every fit of the blues
so much the sadder and aggravating despondency toward despair.
"Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that _you_ wouldn't succeed,"
Spenser hastened to apologize with more or less real
kindliness. "Sperry says Brent has some good ideas about
acting. So, you'll learn something--maybe enough to enable me
to put you in a good position--if Brent gets tired and if you
still want to be independent, as you call it."
"I hope so," said Susan absently.
Spenser was no more absorbed in his career than she in hers;
only, she realized how useless it would be to try to talk it
to him--that he would not give her so much as ears in an
attitude of polite attention. If he could have looked into
her head that morning and seen what thoughts were distracting
her from hearing about the great play, he would have been more
amused and disgusted than ever with feminine frivolity of mind
and incapacity in serious matters. For, it so happened that
at the moment Susan was concentrating on a new dress. He
would have laughed in the face of anyone saying to him that
this new dress was for Susan in the pursuit of her scheme of
life quite as weighty a matter, quite as worthy of the most
careful attention, as was his play for him. Yet that would
have been the literal truth. Primarily man's appeal is to the
ear, woman's to the eye--the reason, by the way, why the
theater--preeminently the place to _see_--tends to be dominated
by woman.
Susan had made up her mind not only that she would rapidly
improve herself in every way, but also how she would go about
the improving. She saw that, for a woman at least, dress is
as much the prime essential as an arresting show window for a
dealer in articles that display well. She knew she was far
from the goal of which she dreamed--the position where she
would no longer be a woman primarily but a personage. Dress
would not merely increase her physical attractiveness; it
would achieve the far more important end of gaining her a
large measure of consideration. She felt that Brent, even
Brent, dealer in actualities and not to be fooled by
pretenses, would in spite of himself change his opinion of her
if she went to him dressed less like a middle class working
girl, more like the woman of the upper classes. At best,
using all the advantages she had, she felt there was small
enough chance of her holding his interest; for she could not
make herself believe that he was not deceiving himself about
her. However, to strengthen herself in every way with him was
obviously the wisest effort she could make. So, she must have
a new dress for the next meeting, one which would make him
better pleased to take her out to dinner. True, if she came
in rags, he would not be disturbed--for he had nothing of the
snob in him. But at the same time, if she came dressed like
a woman of his own class, he would be impressed. "He's a
man, if he is a genius," reasoned she.
Vital though the matter was, she calculated that she did not
dare spend more than twenty-five dollars on this toilet. She
must put by some of her forty a week; Brent might give her up
at any time, and she must not be in the position of having to
choose immediately between submitting to the slavery of the
kept woman as Spenser's dependent and submitting to the costly
and dangerous and repulsive freedom of the woman of the
streets. Thus, to lay out twenty-five dollars on a single
costume was a wild extravagance. She thought it over from
every point of view; she decided that she must take the risk.
Late in the afternoon she walked for an hour in Fifth Avenue.
After some hesitation she ventured into the waiting- and
dressing-rooms of several fashionable hotels. She was in
search of ideas for the dress, which must be in the prevailing
fashion. She had far too good sense and good taste to attempt
to be wholly original in dress; she knew that the woman who
understands her business does not try to create a fashion but
uses the changing and capricious fashion as the means to
express a constant and consistent style of her own. She
appreciated her limitations in such matters--how far she as
yet was from the knowledge necessary to forming a permanent
and self-expressive style. She was prepared to be most
cautious in giving play to an individual taste so imperfectly
educated as hers had necessarily been.
She felt that she had the natural instinct for the best and
could recognize it on sight--an instinct without which no one
can go a step forward in any of the arts. She had long since
learned to discriminate among the vast masses of offering,
most of them tasteless or commonplace, to select the rare and
few things that have merit. Thus, she had always stood out in
the tawdrily or drearily or fussily dressed throngs, had been
a pleasure to the eyes even of those who did not know why they
were pleased. On that momentous day, she finally saw a woman
dressed in admirable taste who was wearing a costume simple
enough for her to venture to think of copying the main points.
She walked several blocks a few yards behind this woman, then
hurried ahead of her, turned and walked toward her to inspect
the front of the dress. She repeated this several times
between the St. Regis and Sherry's. The woman soon realized,
as women always do, what the girl in the shirtwaist and short
skirt was about. But she happened to be a good-natured
person, and smiled pleasantly at Susan, and got in return a
smile she probably did not soon forget.
The next morning Susan went shopping. She had it in mind to
get the materials for a costume of a certain delicate shade of
violet. A dress of that shade, and a big hat trimmed in tulle
to match or to harmonize, with a bunch of silk violets
fastened in the tulle in a certain way.
Susan knew she had good looks, knew what was becoming to her
darkly and softly fringed violet eyes, pallid skin, to her
rather tall figure, slender, not voluptuous yet suggesting
voluptuousness. She could see herself in that violet costume.
But when she began to look at materials she hesitated. The
violet would be beautiful; but it was not a wise investment
for a girl with few clothes, with but one best dress. She did
not give it up definitely, however, until she came upon a
sixteen-yard remnant of soft gray China crêpe. Gray was a
really serviceable color for the best dress of a girl of small
means. And this remnant, certainly enough for a dress, could
be had for ten dollars, where violet China crêpe of the shade
she wanted would cost her a dollar a yard. She took the remnant.
She went to the millinery department and bought a large hat
frame. It was of a good shape and she saw how it could be
bent to suit her face. She paid fifty cents for this, and two
dollars and seventy cents for four yards of gray tulle. She
found that silk flowers were beyond her means; so she took a
bunch of presentable looking violets of the cheaper kind at
two dollars and a half. She happened to pass a counter
whereon were displayed bargains in big buckles and similar
odds and ends of steel and enamel. She fairly pounced upon a
handsome gray buckle with violet enamel, which cost but
eighty-nine cents. For a pair of gray suede ties she paid two
dollars; for a pair of gray silk stockings, ninety cents.
These matters, with some gray silk net for the collar, gray
silk for a belt, linings and the like, made her total bill
twenty-three dollars and sixty-seven cents. She returned home
content and studied "Cavalleria" until her purchases arrived.
Spenser was out now, was working all day and in the evenings
at Sperry's office high up in the Times Building. So, Susan
had freedom for her dressmaking operations. To get them off
her mind that she might work uninterruptedly at learning
_Lola's_ part in "Cavalleria," she toiled all Saturday, far into
Sunday morning, was astir before Spenser waked, finished the
dress soon after breakfast and the hat by the middle of the
afternoon. When Spenser returned from Sperry's office to take
her to dinner, she was arrayed. For the first time he saw her
in fashionable attire and it was really fashionable, for
despite all her disadvantages she, who had real and rare
capacity for learning, had educated herself well in the chief
business of woman the man-catcher in her years in New York.
He stood rooted to the threshold. It would have justified a
vanity less vigorous than Susan or any other normal human
being possessed, to excite such a look as was in his eyes. He
drew a long breath by way of breaking the spell over speech.
"You are _beautiful!_" he exclaimed.
And his eyes traveled from the bewitching hat, set upon her
head coquettishly yet without audacity, to the soft crêpe
dress, its round collar showing her perfect throat, its
graceful lines subtly revealing her alluring figure, to the
feet that men always admired, whatever else of beauty or charm
they might fail to realize.
"How you have grown!" he ejaculated. Then, "How did you do it?"
"By all but breaking myself."
"It's worth whatever it cost. If I had a dress suit, we'd go
to Sherry's or the Waldorf. I'm willing to go, without the
dress suit."
"No. I've got everything ready for dinner at home."
"Then, why on earth did you dress? To give me a treat?"
"Oh, I hate to go out in a dress I've never worn. And a woman
has to wear a hat a good many times before she knows how."
"What a lot of fuss you women do make about clothes."
"You seem to like it, all the same."
"Of course. But it's a trifle."
"It has got many women a good provider for life. And not
paying attention to dress or not knowing how has made most of
the old maids. Are those things trifles?"
Spenser laughed and shifted his ground without any sense of
having been pressed to do so. "Men are fools where women
are concerned."
"Or women are wise where men are concerned."
"I guess they do know their business--some of them," he
confessed. "Still, it's a silly business, you must admit."
"Nothing is silly that's successful," said Susan.
"Depends on what you mean by success," argued he.
"Success is getting what you want."
"Provided one wants what's worth while," said he.
"And what's worth while?" rejoined she. "Why, whatever one
happens to want."
To avoid any possible mischance to the _grande toilette_
he served the dinner and did the dangerous part of the
clearing up. They went to the theater, Rod enjoying even more
than she the very considerable admiration she got. When she
was putting the dress away carefully that night, Rod inquired
when he was to be treated again.
"Oh--I don't know," replied she. "Not soon."
She was too wise to tell him that the dress would not be worn
again until Brent was to see it. The hat she took out of the
closet from time to time and experimented with it, reshaping
the brim, studying the different effects of different angles.
It delighted Spenser to catch her at this "foolishness"; he
felt so superior, and with his incurable delusion of the
shallow that dress is an end, not merely a means, he felt more
confident than ever of being able to hold her when he should
have the money to buy her what her frivolous and feminine
nature evidently craved beyond all else in the world. But----
When he bought a ready-to-wear evening suit, he made more stir
about it than had Susan about her costume--this, when dress to
him was altogether an end in itself and not a shrewd and
useful means. He spent more time in admiring himself in it
before the mirror, and looked at it, and at himself in it,
with far more admiration and no criticism at all. Susan noted
this--and after the manner of women who are wise or
indifferent--or both--she made no comment.
At the studio floor of Brent's house the door of the elevator
was opened for Susan by a small young man with a notably large
head, bald and bulging. His big smooth face had the
expression of extreme amiability that usually goes with
weakness and timidity. "I am Mr. Brent's secretary, Mr.
Garvey," he explained. And Susan--made as accurate as quick
in her judgments of character by the opportunities and the
necessities of her experience--saw that she had before her one
of those nice feeble folk who either get the shelter of some
strong personality as a bird hides from the storm in the thick
branches of a great tree or are tossed and torn and ruined by
life and exist miserably until rescued by death. She knew the
type well; it had been the dominant type in her surroundings
ever since she left Sutherland. Indeed, is it not the
dominant type in the whole ill-equipped, sore-tried human
race? And does it not usually fail of recognition because so
many of us who are in fact weak, look--and feel--strong
because we are sheltered by inherited money or by powerful
friends or relatives or by chance lodgment in a nook unvisited
of the high winds of life in the open? Susan liked Garvey at
once; they exchanged smiles and were friends.
She glanced round the room. At the huge open window Brent,
his back to her, was talking earnestly to a big hatchet-faced
man with a black beard. Even as Susan glanced Brent closed
the interview; with an emphatic gesture of fist into palm he
exclaimed, "And that's final. Good-by." The two men came
toward her, both bowed, the hatchet-faced man entered the
elevator and was gone. Brent extended his hand with a smile.
"You evidently didn't come to work today," said he with a
careless, fleeting glance at the _grande toilette_. "But we
are prepared against such tricks. Garvey, take her down to
the rear dressing-room and have the maid lay her out a simple
costume." To Susan, "Be as quick as you can." And he seated
himself at his desk and was reading and signing letters.
Susan, crestfallen, followed Garvey down the stairway. She
had confidently expected that he would show some appreciation
of her toilette. She knew she had never in her life looked so
well. In the long glass in the dressing-room, while Garvey
was gone to send the maid, she inspected herself again.
Yes--never anything like so well. And Brent had noted her
appearance only to condemn it. She was always telling herself
that she wished him to regard her as a working woman, a pupil
in stagecraft. But now that she had proof that he did so
regard her, she was depressed, resentful. However, this did
not last long. While she was changing to linen skirt and
shirtwaist, she began to laugh at herself. How absurd she had
been, thinking to impress this man who had known so many
beautiful women, who must have been satiated long ago with
beauty--she thinking to create a sensation in such a man, with
a simple little costume of her own crude devising. She
reappeared in the studio, laughter in her eyes and upon her
lips. Brent apparently did not glance at her; yet he said,
"What's amusing you?"
She confessed all, on one of her frequent impulses to
candor--those impulses characteristic both of weak natures
unable to exercise self-restraint and of strong natures,
indifferent to petty criticism and misunderstanding, and
absent from vain mediocrity, which always has itself--that is,
appearances--on its mind. She described in amusing detail how
she had planned and got together the costume how foolish his
reception of it had made her feel. "I've no doubt you guessed
what was in my head," concluded she. "You see everything."
"I did notice that you were looking unusually well, and that
you felt considerably set up over it," said he. "But why not?
Vanity's an excellent thing. Like everything else it's got to
be used, not misused. It can help us to learn instead of
preventing."
"I had an excuse for dressing up," she reminded him. "You
said we were to dine together. I thought you wouldn't want
there to be too much contrast between us. Next time I'll be
more sensible."
"Dress as you like for the present," said he. "You can always
change here. Later on dress will be one of the main things,
of course. But not now. Have you learned the part?"
And they began. She saw at the far end of the room a platform
about the height of a stage. He explained that Garvey, with
the book of the play, would take the other parts in _Lola's_
scenes, and sent them both to the stage. "Don't be nervous,"
Garvey said to her in an undertone. "He doesn't expect
anything of you. This is simply to get started." But she
could not suppress the trembling in her legs and arms, the
hysterical contractions of her throat. However, she did
contrive to go through the part--Garvey prompting. She knew
she was ridiculous; she could not carry out a single one of
the ideas of "business" which had come to her as she studied;
she was awkward, inarticulate, panic-stricken.
"Rotten!" exclaimed Brent, when she had finished. "Couldn't
be worse therefore, couldn't be better."
She dropped to a chair and sobbed hysterically.
"That's right--cry it out," said Brent. "Leave us alone, Garvey."
Brent walked up and down smoking until she lifted her head and
glanced at him with a pathetic smile. "Take a cigarette," he
suggested. "We'll talk it over. Now, we've got something to
talk about."
She found relief from her embarrassment in the cigarette.
"You can laugh at me now," she said. "I shan't mind. In
fact, I didn't mind, though I thought I did. If I had, I'd
not have let you see me cry."
"Don't think I'm discouraged," said Brent. "The reverse. You
showed that you have nerve a very different matter from
impudence. Impudence fails when it's most needed. Nerve
makes one hang on, regardless. In such a panic as yours was,
the average girl would have funked absolutely. You stuck it
out. Now, you and I will try _Lola's_ first entrance. No,
don't throw away your cigarette. _Lola_ might well come in
smoking a cigarette." She did better. What Burlingham had
once thoroughly drilled into her now stood her in good stead,
and Brent's sympathy and enthusiasm gave her the stimulating
sense that he and she were working together. They spent the
afternoon on the one thing--_Lola_ coming on, singing her gay
song, her halt at sight of _Santuzza_ and _Turiddu_, her look at
_Santuzza_, at _Turiddu_, her greeting for each. They tried it
twenty different ways. They discussed what would have been in
the minds of all three. They built up "business" for _Lola_, and
for the two others to increase the significance of _Lola's_ actions.
"As I've already told you," said he, "anyone with a voice and
a movable body can learn to act. There's no question about
your becoming a good actress. But it'll be some time before
I can tell whether you can be what I hope--an actress who
shows no sign that she's acting."
Susan showed the alarm she felt. "I'm afraid you'll find at
the end that you've been wasting your time," said she.
"Put it straight out of your head," replied he. "I never
waste time. To live is to learn. Already you've given me a
new play--don't forget that. In a month I'll have it ready for
us to use. Besides, in teaching you I teach myself. Hungry?"
"No--that is, yes. I hadn't thought of it, but I'm starved."
"This sort of thing gives one an appetite like a field hand."
He accompanied her to the door of the rear dressing-room on
the floor below. "Go down to the reception room when you're
ready," said he, as he left her to go on to his own suite to
change his clothes. "I'll be there."
The maid came immediately, drew a bath for her, afterward
helped her to dress. It was Susan's first experience with a
maid, her first realization how much time and trouble one
saves oneself if free from the routine, menial things. And
then and there a maid was set down upon her secret list of the
luxurious comforts to which she would treat herself--_when?_
The craving for luxury is always a part, usually a powerful
part, of an ambitious temperament. Ambition is simply a
variously manifested and variously directed impulse toward
improvement--a discomfort so keen that it compels effort to
change to a position less uncomfortable. There had never been
a time when luxury had not attracted her. At the slightest
opportunity she had always pushed out for luxuries--for better
food, better clothing, more agreeable surroundings. Even in
her worst hours of discouragement she had not really relaxed
in the struggle against rags and dirt. And when moral horror
had been blunted by custom and drink, physical horror had
remained acute. For, human nature being a development upward
through the physical to the spiritual, when a process of
degeneration sets in, the topmost layers, the spiritual, wear
away first--then those in which the spiritual is a larger
ingredient than the material--then those in which the material
is the larger--and last of all those that are purely material.
As life educated her, as her intelligence and her knowledge
grew, her appreciation of luxury had grown apace and her
desire for it. With most human beings, the imagination is a
heavy bird of feeble wing; it flies low, seeing only the
things of the earth. When they describe heaven, it has houses
of marble and streets of gold. Their pretense to sight of
higher things is either sheer pretense or sight at second
hand. Susan was of the few whose fancy can soar. She saw the
earthy things; she saw the things of the upper regions also.
And she saw the lower region from the altitudes of the
higher--and in their perspective.
As she and Brent stood together on the sidewalk before his
house, about to enter his big limousine, his smile told her
that he had read her thought--her desire for such an
automobile as her very own. "I can't help it," said she.
"It's my nature to want these things."
"And to want them intelligently," said he. "Everybody wants,
but only the few want intelligently--and they get. The three
worst things in the world are sickness, poverty and obscurity.
Your splendid health safeguards you against sickness. Your
looks and your brains can carry you far away from the other
two. Your one danger is of yielding to the temptation to
become the wife or the mistress of some rich man. The
prospect of several years of heart-breaking hard work isn't
wildly attractive at twenty-two."
"You don't know me," said Susan--but the boast was uttered
under her breath.
The auto rushed up to Delmonico's entrance, came to a halt
abruptly yet gently. The attentiveness of the personnel, the
staring and whispering of the people in the palm room showed
how well known Brent was. There were several women--handsome
women of what is called the New York type, though it certainly
does not represent the average New York woman, who is poorly
dressed in flimsy ready-made clothes and has the mottled skin
that indicates bad food and too little sleep. These handsome
women were dressed beautifully as well as expensively, in
models got in--not from--Paris. One of them smiled sweetly at
Brent, who responded, so Susan thought, rather formally. She
felt dowdy in her home-made dress. All her pride in it
vanished; she saw only its defects. And the gracefully
careless manner of these women--the manners of those who feel
sure of themselves--made her feel "green" and out of place.
She was disgusted with the folly that had caused her to thrill
with pleasure when his order to his chauffeur at his door told
her she was actually to be taken to one of the restaurants in
which she had wished to exhibit herself with him. She
heartily wished she had insisted on going where she would have
been as well dressed and as much at home as anyone there.
She lifted her eyes, to distract her mind from these
depressing sensations. Brent was looking at her with that
amused, mocking yet sympathetic expression which was most
characteristic of him. She blushed furiously.
He laughed. "No, I'm not ashamed of your homemade dress,"
said he. "I don't care what is thought of me by people who
don't give me any money. And, anyhow, you are easily the most
unusual looking and the most tastefully dressed woman here.
The rest of these women are doomed for life to commonplace
obscurity. You----
"We'll see your name in letters of fire on the Broadway
temples of fame."
"I know you're half laughing at me," said Susan. "But I feel
a little better."
"Then I'm accomplishing my object. Let's not think about
ourselves. That makes life narrow. Let's keep the thoughts
on our work--on the big splendid dreams that come to us and
invite us to labor and to dare."
And as they lingered over the satisfactory dinner he had
ordered, they talked of acting--of the different roles of
"Cavalleria" as types of fundamental instincts and actions--of
how best to express those meanings--how to fill out the
skeletons of the dramatist into personalities actual and
vivid. Susan forgot where she was, forgot to be reserved with
him. In her and Rod's happiest days she had never been free
from the constraint of his and her own sense of his great
superiority. With Brent, such trifles of the petty personal
disappeared. And she talked more naturally than she had since
a girl at her uncle's at Sutherland. She was amazed by the
fountain that had suddenly gushed forth in her mind at the
conjuring of Brent's sympathy. She did not recognize herself
in this person so open to ideas, so eager to learn, so clear
in the expression of her thoughts. Not since the Burlingham
days had she spent so long a time with a man in absolute
unconsciousness of sex.
They were interrupted by the intrusion of a fashionable young
man with the expression of assurance which comes from the
possession of wealth and the knowledge that money will buy
practically everything and everybody. Brent received him so
coldly that, after a smooth sentence or two, he took himself
off stammering and in confusion. "I suppose," said Brent when
he was gone, "that young ass hoped I would introduce him to
you and invite him to sit. But you'll be tempted often enough
in the next few years by rich men without my helping to put
temptation in your way,"
"I've never been troubled thus far," laughed Susan.
"But you will, now. You have developed to the point where
everyone will soon be seeing what it took expert eyes to see
heretofore."
"If I am tempted," said Susan, "do you think I'll be able
to resist?"
"I don't know," confessed Brent. "You have a strong sense of
honesty, and that'll keep you at work with me for a while.
Then----
"If you have it in you to be great, you'll go on. If you're
merely the ordinary woman, a little more intelligent, you'll
probably--sell out. All the advice I have to offer is, don't
sell cheap. As you're not hampered by respectability or by
inexperience, you needn't." He reflected a moment, then
added, "And if you ever do decide that you don't care to go on
with a career, tell me frankly. I may be able to help you in
the other direction."
"Thank you," said Susan, her strange eyes fixed upon him.
"Why do you put so much gratitude in your tone and in your
eyes?" asked he.
"I didn't put it there," she answered. "It--just came. And
I was grateful because--well, I'm human, you know, and it was
good to feel--that--that----"
"Go on," said he, as she hesitated.
"I'm afraid you'll misunderstand."
"What does it matter, if I do?"
"Well--you've acted toward me as if I were a mere machine that
you were experimenting with."
"And so you are."
"I understand that. But when you offered to help me, if I
happened to want to do something different from what you want
me to do, it made me feel that you thought of me as a human
being, too."
The expression of his unseeing eyes puzzled her. She became
much embarrassed when he said, "Are you dissatisfied with
Spenser? Do you want to change lovers? Are you revolving me
as a possibility?"
"I haven't forgotten what you said," she protested.
"But a few words from me wouldn't change you from a woman into
a sexless ambition."
An expression of wistful sadness crept into the violet-gray eyes,
in contrast to the bravely smiling lips. She was thinking of
her birth that had condemned her to that farmer Ferguson, full
as much as of the life of the streets, when she said:
"I know that a man like you wouldn't care for a woman of my sort."
"If I were you," said he gently, "I'd not say those things
about myself. Saying them encourages you to think them. And
thinking them gives you a false point of view. You must learn
to appreciate that you're not a sheltered woman, with
reputation for virtue as your one asset, the thing that'll
enable you to get some man to undertake your support. You are
dealing with the world as a man deals with it. You must
demand and insist that the world deal with you on that
basis." There came a wonderful look of courage and hope into
the eyes of Lorella's daughter.
"And the world will," he went on. "At least, the only part of
it that's important to you--or really important in any way.
The matter of your virtue or lack of it is of no more
importance than is my virtue or lack of it."
"Do you _really_ believe that way?" asked Susan, earnestly.
"It doesn't in the least matter whether I do or not," laughed
he. "Don't bother about what I think--what anyone thinks--of
you. The point here, as always, is that you believe it,
yourself. There's no reason why a woman who is making a
career should not be virtuous. She will probably not get far
if she isn't more or less so. Dissipation doesn't help man or
woman, especially the ruinous dissipation of license in
passion. On the other hand, no woman can ever hope to make a
career who persists in narrowing and cheapening herself with
the notion that her virtue is her all. She'll not amount to
much as a worker in the fields of action."
Susan reflected, sighed. "It's very, very hard to get rid of
one's sex."
"It's impossible," declared he. "Don't try. But don't let it
worry you, either."
"Everyone can't be as strong as you are--so absorbed in a
career that they care for nothing else."
This amused him. With forearms on the edge of the table he
turned his cigarette slowly round between his fingers,
watching the smoke curl up from it. She observed that there
was more than a light sprinkle of gray in his thick, carefully
brushed hair. She was filled with curiosity as to the
thoughts just then in that marvelous brain of his; nor did it
lessen her curiosity to know that never would those thoughts
be revealed to her. What women had he loved? What women had
loved him? What follies had he committed? From how many
sources he must have gathered his knowledge of human nature
of--woman nature! And no doubt he was still gathering.
What woman was it now?
When he lifted his glance from the cigarette, it was to call
the waiter and get the bill. "I've a supper engagement," he
said, "and it's nearly eleven o'clock."
"Eleven o'clock!" she exclaimed.
"Times does fly--doesn't it?--when a man and a woman, each an
unexplored mystery to the other, are dining alone and talking
about themselves."
"It was my fault," said Susan.
His quizzical eyes looked into hers--uncomfortably far.
She flushed. "You make me feel guiltier than I am," she
protested, under cover of laughing glance and tone of raillery.
"Guilty? Of what?"
"You think I've been trying to--to 'encourage' you," replied
she frankly.
"And why shouldn't you, if you feel so inclined?" laughed he.
"That doesn't compel me to be--encouraged."
"Honestly I haven't," said she, the contents of seriousness
still in the gay wrapper of raillery. "At least not any more
than----"
"You know, a woman feels bound to 'encourage' a man who piques
her by seeming--difficult."
"Naturally, you'd not have objected to baptizing the new hat
and dress with my heart's blood." She could not have helped
laughing with him. "Unfortunately for you--or rather for the
new toilette--my poor heart was bled dry long, long ago. I'm
a busy man, too--busy and a little tired."
"I deserve it all," said she. "I've brought it on myself.
And I'm not a bit sorry I started the subject. I've found out
you're quite human--and that'll help me to work better."
They separated with the smiling faces of those who have added
an evening altogether pleasant to memory's store of the past's
happy hours--that roomy storehouse which is all too empty even
where the life has been what is counted happy. He insisted on
sending her home in his auto, himself taking a taxi to the
Players' where the supper was given. The moment she was alone
for the short ride home, her gayety evaporated like a
delicious but unstable perfume.
Why? Perhaps it was the sight of the girls on the stroll.
Had she really been one of them?--and only a few days ago?
Impossible! Not she not the real self . . . and perhaps she
would be back there with them before long. No--never, never,
in any circumstances!. . . She had said, "Never!" the first
time she escaped from the tenements, yet she had gone back. . .
were any of those girls strolling along--were, again, any of
them Freddie Palmer's? At the thought she shivered and
quailed. She had not thought of him, except casually, in many
months. What if he should see her, should still feel
vengeful--he who never forgot or forgave--who would dare
anything! And she would be defenseless against him. . . . She
remembered what she had last read about him in the newspaper.
He had risen in the world, was no longer in the criminal class
apparently, had moved to the class of semi-criminal wholly
respectable contractor-politician. No, he had long since
forgotten her, vindictive Italian though he was.
The auto set her down at home. Her tremors about Freddie
departed; but the depression remained. She felt physically as
if she had been sitting all evening in a stuffy room with a
dull company after a heavy, badly selected dinner. She fell
easy prey to one of those fits of the blues to which all
imaginative young people are at least occasional victims, and
by which those cursed and hampered with the optimistic
temperament are haunted and harassed and all but or quite
undone. She had a sense of failure, of having made a bad
impression. She feared he, recalling and reinspecting what
she had said, would get the idea that she was not in earnest,
was merely looking for a lover--for a chance to lead a life of
luxurious irresponsibility. Would it not be natural for him,
who knew women well, to assume from her mistakenly candid
remarks, that she was like the rest of the women, both the
respectable and the free? Why should he believe in her, when
she did not altogether believe in herself but suspected
herself of a secret hankering after something more immediate,
more easy and more secure than the stage career? The longer
she thought of it the clearer it seemed to her to be that she
had once more fallen victim to too much hope, too much
optimism, too much and too ready belief in her
fellow-beings--she who had suffered so much from these
follies, and had tried so hard to school herself against them.
She fought this mood of depression--fought alone, for Spenser
did not notice and she would not annoy him. She slept little
that night; she felt that she could not hope for peace until
she had seen Brent again.