Naomi made no pretense of trying to sleep. She did not even resort to
the bromide she was in the habit of taking when rest refused to come.
She merely lay, with blinds drawn to shut out the early morning,
trying to see light where she knew there was none. At ten she sprang
up, hand to the throat that was full, lids covering the eyes that
pained. Ever since Marshy Kent’s visit, those eyes had been straining
toward the future, the result, inevitable almost, of his revelation to
Bill Dixon. In the endless, wakeful hours of the night she had
rehearsed, as women do, everything that had probably transpired.
Yet even in her misery she did not overlook the careful mask of
make-up, as mechanical a part of her daily toilet as the brushing of
her hair, or polishing of her glistening nails. She had grown to avoid
facing her mirror without it.
She flung on a negligée of orchid chiffon that clung round her with
the afterglow of sunset. But like the orchid, she sought the damp
darkness of her living-room and sat with head resting against her
locked hands for a long time before she made a move to raise the
blinds and let in a shaft of sunlight.
She had just lifted one of them when the sharp summons of the bell
came from downstairs. She pushed the electric button and waited
without curiosity for the apartment bell to ring. Then she opened the
door and peered into the shadowy hall.
A girl stood there. The girl with her hair like a black cloud and eyes
young and gray and tense.
They traveled hungrily over the other woman as if to get in that
moment the viewpoint of another pair of eyes that no longer sought
hers.
“May I come in, Miss Stokes? You don’t know me but my name is Nan
Crawford,” she explained as Naomi said nothing.
Naomi nodded. “I know.”
The girl looked up quickly.
“Has he—has he talked to you—about me?”
“I’ve seen you with him,” was the non-committal answer.
“It—it’s about Bill I want to see you,” she brought out the words with
the same halting pause which had marked her hesitation in the doorway.
Naomi motioned her to a chair. The girl’s pale face went a tinge
whiter. Her lips quivered. She looked down.
“I’ve been wanting to come to see you and hadn’t the courage.
Yesterday I followed you here in a cab from the theater. But you were
with Mr. Kent. I didn’t come up.” She fidgeted with the slightly
frayed silk of her chair.
“Miss Stokes, I—I’ve known Bill Dixon all my life. I’ve loved him all
my life—and I thought he loved me. He used to tell me so. We—we’ve
always loved the same things and done the same things—together—in the
same way. We’ve ridden hours on horseback up into the mountains and
gone shooting in the woods—and tramped to places other people didn’t
know about. When I went away to school and he to college, we used to
write each other about our woods and the longing to get back to
them—together. We never planned anything—separately. We sort of
always—belonged to each other.”
She halted once more. It was because she couldn’t go on. The eyes
lifted to meet Naomi’s were filmed. It was only too clear that she was
putting herself through the ordeal of tearing open new wounds for some
purpose. Naomi looked away. To play on her own sympathy, of course!
She wouldn’t listen. It would do no good anyway.
“I’m trying to tell you, Miss Stokes, how I love Bill Dixon—how much I
want his happiness. And now he loves you. Oh, I don’t blame him!
You’re very beautiful—more beautiful than I could ever dream of being.
You’re like some gorgeous flower in a conservatory. I’ve never seen
any one like you. At first I thought I could—perhaps—win him back—but
I couldn’t. Not from you. I—I wouldn’t know how. I’ve thought about it
a lot. And I—at first I thought I couldn’t live through it. But I’ve
got to now. Bill can’t help loving you. I don’t blame him for that.”
She got up suddenly and brushed a hand across her eyes. In the poise
of her body, head thrown back, lip caught between her teeth, was
life’s first big endurance test and her brave attempt to meet it.
“But you’ve got to love him, Miss Stokes! You’ve got to make him
happy. I’d give my life for him. That’s the way you’ve got to love
him, too. If you don’t—if you fail him—ever—I’ll kill you!”
Waves of astonishment swept over Naomi. Those eyes that burned behind
the film of tears! Surely this was not their message! To demand
happiness for the man of whom she was being robbed—surely that was not
what the girl had come for.
“My dear child—” Naomi began, instinctively speaking as if to one
years younger.
“I mean it! You think I wouldn’t but I’m not afraid. I have nothing to
lose any more.”
She stumbled toward the door, one hand reached out gropingly. There
she turned and once more her eyes traveled over the other woman. Naomi
felt that from their clear gray gaze she could not shield herself. A
girl so near her own age—the girl she might have been! And in that
moment she knew that Nan Crawford’s words had not been bravado, not
foolish threat. She was battling in her own way for the thing she
loved.
She opened the door as if, now that her message was given, she could
not make her escape quickly enough.
“Make him happy,” came strangled. “You must! That’s what I came to
tell you.”