Book I THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE (continued 2)

He snorted at the very thought. "Do you understand?" Again she nodded. "And if they want anything—a little—" he made a wide open motion of his hand—"just ask the waiter. They can't have the whole cellar, y'understand—but there's plenty of it." He gave her a brisk, charming smile, a smile of approval, and went away.

The next to arrive were Letty and Harold Moses. Grace had begged them to hurry. They were not newspaper people, of course, but whenever Grace could find a loophole to drag Letty in, to share anything with her, she did so.

Letty was giggling.

"Gee, we're the acrobats, we're opening the show. Harold almost died when he saw the empty tables. I couldn't get him in, almost. Where's Blake?"

"He wouldn't come so early."

"He's right," grumbled Harold. He was a man of thirty, dark, clean-shaven, well dressed. He looked steady. The idea of making himself conspicuous in any way, even as the first to arrive at a night club, bothered him.

Letty caught the eye of the orchestra leader and would have signaled. Harold put down her hand.

"I know he'd play for us if we asked him," said Letty, tapping a small, light foot. "Oh, Gee! Harold, the old spoil-sport. Is Blake really coming?"

"Yes. We—arranged that," said Grace. Letty always gave her composure and a feeling of maturity.

"Wife hasn't gone yet?"

"Not till next week."

Harold smoked and looked away. This business of running around with a married man. He disapproved of both Blake and Grace, but of Grace most. Letty never considered Blake's wife at all, but Harold, strangely enough, did. He felt sorry for her and in accord with her, as if, though he had never seen the woman, he realized that they shared a mutual trouble, that they were both on the side of the easily overlooked.

"Blake'll dance with me anyhow—if Harold won't."

Harold couldn't help looking alarmed.

"Who do you think called me up the other day? Paul! Yop. And I can't even see him, Harold's so mean about it."

Harold's lips shut in an unhappy line. He was determined at any rate not to be on the side of the deceived.

"He did! Can't keep away, can he?" said Grace, who knew very well that Letty would manage to see Paul. Probably her aid would be enlisted in the arrangement. At the same time, she sympathized with Harold and changed the subject. "My Gawd! Isn't anyone ever coming to this night club?"

People were straggling in, though very slowly. The orchestra played once or twice, the sad, calling notes of orchestras on empty dance floors. Without a human response, dance music was the loneliest music on earth, Grace thought.

After theater time, after eleven, the club began to seem appreciably warmer and warmer, gayer and gayer; there was talk now and the waiters flew, and the orchestra became cheerful with appreciation. Lovely dresses and lovely faces bloomed about them. Letty and Grace envied the corsages of orchids. Their table was rather silent. A newspaperman had appeared with a large wife, pathetically pleasant. The newspaperman drank. There was the photographer, Al's friend, with a girl from the Telegraph.

At midnight Blake walked in, very pale under the lights, and sat mutely by Letty, dancing only when she asked him. Grace knew that he disliked this environment. It made him feel poorer and shabbier than ever. He did not smoke and turned the water glass with his highball round and round in his hand. But Grace could not give him any attention. Two newspapermen, acquaintances of hers, had also come. She danced with one, then the other, then brought them to Letty. Letty rose to dance and Grace slipped into her chair. She had no time to talk to Blake, however; the wife of the newspaperman leaned over the table and preëmpted her. With her eyes, Grace beseeched Blake to dance with this woman, knowing it would be useless. He was comfortable, sitting there silent, and would be oblivious to all else.

At the same time, she had a glimpse of Miss Vestry with a quite presentable man in tow. They were weaving their way between tables and among dancers going and coming. Miss Vestry looked better than Grace had expected. She had pretty, short hair, reddish brown. Grace introduced her to Blake. She had to rise then to dance and, watching from the floor, she saw, over and under heads, that Miss Vestry was actually talking to Blake, very brightly. She brushed by Letty.

"Who is that girl?" said Letty.

"Go over and see if Blake needs rescuing," said Grace over her shoulder.

"He doesn't look it," said Letty swiftly, and tripped away in her partner's arms.

When Grace returned to the table Miss Vestry was on the opposite side, at the other end. Grace made a moment to lean over Blake and whisper, "Was it terrible? I'm sorry."

"Oh, she was telling me a funny story about a taxi driver," said Blake with a smile.

So Grace contemplated Miss Vestry across the table with a new curiosity. What was there to her? Blake was usually annoyed by strangers.

The fusion of the group no longer depended on Grace. The separate elements had been welded for the moment, in some way, into one note of enjoyment. Even the talk was unrecognizable by individual voices. The party had a voice of its own, confused and gay. Harry Strauss walked over from his table, his shock of hair more vigorously silver than ever, and patted her arm. "Everything all right? All the liquor you want?" Then Al burst upon them, holding tight by the elbow a lady in an orchid gown, expansive so that there seemed to be dozens of Als, whacking all the men on their backs and bending close to the bare shoulders of all the girls. He didn't know Blake but he slapped him on the back too. Blake flushed and sat up straighter.

"That fella on a paper?" said Al to Grace. "No? Gee, I thought I knew him. Oh, he came with you, huh?" he said with a knowing intonation. Grace had to remind herself that that tone of voice was habit. Al knew nothing, could know nothing whatever. "So only three showed up. Well, that don't mean a thing. All the fellas say they'll come and then nobody shows up. We—we're all right," he cried, putting his arm about the back of her chair in the excess of his spirits. "We'll make it. This is a good party." He spread the palm of his hand emphatically before her nose. "Wait till you see Annabella. Say, that baby's got something up her sleeve. She'll be a knockout."

"Where did you see her?" said Grace.

"I saw her. I saw her," shouted Al, and frisked away. Blake and Letty moved across several vacant chairs to her side. Everyone else was dancing. Directly opposite, Anita Vestry and Harold were in close conversation.

"I don't want to pry, but may I know what you and Harold can find to discuss so earnestly for half an hour?" called Letty above the noise of the orchestra.

Harold looked up and Miss Vestry reddened a little.

"We're talking about Trenton," she said. "I come from Trenton."

"Oh, my Gosh!" said Letty. "He's telling you about lace mills, then. I never knew anyone who talked more about lace mills."

Miss Vestry laughed. "No. We're talking about potteries."

"Potteries! Do I get potteries for breakfasts and dinners now?" It was a comic wail of despair.

Everybody laughed. And then, as she was talking, Miss Vestry noticed that everyone had been eliminated, everyone but Grace and Blake. Strange how, as she chatted with Letty Moses, she had also to be aware of what those two said. Perhaps it was the penetrating character of Grace's voice, the pause between phrases, which kept the ear subconsciously waiting, watching for the continuing phrase. Perhaps it was a curious tenseness of atmosphere. The pair seemed to gather the air around them and raise and hold it to some higher point where they alone sat. Or perhaps it was only because they seemed so utterly unaware of other people, looked and spoke and acted at and for each other. Anita Vestry could feel the three-cornered conversation waning, dying of its unimportance, as if the ears and attention of the others were also fixed elsewhere upon something more dominant. Yet Grace and Blake were saying little.

"When—must you leave?" Grace was asking.

"Two. I'm supposed to be working at Bill's house."

"Does Bill know it?"

"Mmm."

"Is she really going next week then?"

There was no answer. Grace desisted. She always knew just the moment to stop, had learned it patiently and profited by her experience. She said, "Anyhow, you'll have time to see our Annabella perform."

All the dancers were returning to their tables. The floor was cleared. A woman sang. Al had moved a chair between tables, regardless of the frowns of Mr. Larchmont and of the waiters, and sat at ease with his feet spread in front of him. When he caught Grace's eye ne winked and made violent, jovial signals.

Annabella appeared in a white, downy dress, with her partner, sliding like a large swan through the motions of a formal waltz. This was a tribute to Gene Arden, who had been a ballroom dancer. A few people pattered their hands. The next number belonged to Annabella alone; then she met her partner and the two performed some pretty, jigging steps. Alone again, she was better but not very exciting. There was light applause—and intermission.

Al rushed over.

"This is just the beginning. Wait, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

Grace glanced toward Harry Strauss's table and felt depressed. Mr. Strauss was looking down his long nose, tapping a glass with his fingernail.

"He doesn't seem pleased," she said. "If she's no better than this——"

"Say, don't you worry!" cried Al. "That kid has the stuff. This is just a starter. She's a little scared, see? But she's got something up her sleeve you don't know nothin' about." The music began. "Watch this now. You'll see." He scurried away.

"He always knows so much," she murmured to Blake.

"Mmm. That's the Broadway act," said Blake.

Suddenly the circle of dance floor was flooded with a light that made it waver in long lines as if it were not wood but water. Annabella entered. Was it Annabella? Everyone sat up. The baby face was gone. This woman had no face—her face couldn't be noticed or recollected. She wore a short skirt of green grass apparently, and a band of grass lightly confined her breasts. The middle of her torso was bare, gracious, wide, and white. It was flat but not thin; the softness of the flesh was evident. She took a few steps directly within the light. She turned and sang, kicked out, danced. All at once she stood still. Her hips swayed. The audience breathed heavily. She was no longer Annabella Arden or anybody. She had completely, unconsciously visualized herself into a symbol. She was a woman—the woman. Holding herself still, the woman moved her body from the hips. The woman's white flesh rippled as a ray of white light ripples on a clear stream, and she threw up one white arm like a call. As she pranced, she sang, and it was as if she whinnied. "Well," cried Al, hollering above the thud of feet and hands, the applause, the calls, and mopping his brow. "Wha'd I tell you? Look at Harry now."

Harry Strauss was clapping and nodding his head slowly and definitely. Variations of the shimmy were still novel that year.

"She's a knockout! I bet Harry's glad now he tied her up."

"Do you mean to say Mr. Strauss didn't know about—this?"

"Oh, he knew. But he didn't know how this belly-dancing, what-you-call-it, would go in a ritzy club like the Miraflore. Larchmont didn't want to try it."

"It would go anywhere, from a honky-tonk up," said Blake. He had to raise his voice. There was still applause.

"You in show business?" cried Al.

Blake rose and spoke to Grace. "I'd better run along now before the encore."

"Don't—mind about me. I'm staying with Let to-night anyhow."

It hadn't occurred to Blake to mind about her, she saw. Once this would have hurt her, now she was resigned. That was just Blake's way. He was sorry and took her hand gently, in front of Al, to make up for his remissness.

"Hey, ain't he taking you home?" cried Al. "Say, there's a chance for me now!"

Blake went at once.

After the encore Grace dragged Letty off the dance floor to go home. Miss Vestry was just leaving, too. Letty said to her with enthusiasm, "Come and see us sometime, call me up, won't you?"

Harold yawned widely in the taxi and Letty, animated as ever, gave him a push and a kiss. "The tired old business man. Well, your evening wasn't lost, was it? Just think of all the great big potteries you discussed with Miss—Miss—what was that girl's name?"

"Vestry. She seems to be all right. Blake liked her," said Grace.

"And so do I," declared Letty. "I asked her to call me up. Why don't you bring her along, Gracie, some Sunday maybe? I mean it. That's a nice girl, intelligent."

"Sunday? Oh. That—reminds me. What are—your plans—Sunday after next? I—was going to borrow your apartment."

"Uh-huh." By a direct look Letty signified that they had best discuss this when they were alone. Harold had turned away his face, twisted with irritation and embarrassment.

CHAPTER EIGHT

On the Sunday which Grace had reserved, the Moseses came home in ill humor from a vaudeville show and a walk. It was a cold November afternoon, blanketed in the lethargy of the day of rest, with a wind which swept along the closed shop windows on Fifth Avenue and between the people on Broadway and left both streets naked—naked and dull. Harold wished to return home as quickly as possible, but Letty said the walk would do them good. He suspected that she had promised not to come back before a certain hour.

Nor did their house seem much more cheerful to him than the street. It consisted of a tiny entrance, one square room, and behind that a doorless alcove through whose looped, glossy curtains twin beds could be seen. There was also a bit of tiled kitchenette near the entrance. Everything was in order. Everything shone with the chill, dustless luster of the apartment house itself, its mirrored elevator and its hall boys. And over everything lay a special Sunday atmosphere, like a heavy gray enamel.

Blake and Grace were sitting on the couch, rolling private jokes between them. They were happy enough. To Harold their good cheer was the final straw. One couldn't even be alone in one's own house with one's own troubles without the mood of those two interfering. He went into the bathroom, the only unoccupied room in the house, and banged the door.

Grace lifted her brows in sincere surprise. "What is it now?"

"Oh-h," said Letty with a long, a gusty sigh, "don't ask me! It started with his insurance and then went on and on and on."

She threw off her coat and sat down beside Blake. He put an arm around her and they kissed each other while Grace regarded them with an encouraging, a mock-coy amusement. She often spoke of the attachment between Blake and Letty. She even urged them to flirt a bit, serving up Letty's kisses as an extra fillip to Blake and feeling secure with the knowledge that these were passed out always through a window in the solid barrier of Letty's loyalty to her, a window which had been opened by her permission and would be sealed at her behest. It was not so much that she trusted Letty—only Letty was that kind of a girl; her friends' preserves were so enclosed in her mind that they were practically invisible. Of course, if their friendship no longer existed—"If I should die for instance," Grace often said meditatively, "you two might—start something."

Harold understood the situation, too, but this did not mean that he enjoyed it. He went to the armchair by the window. Grace and Blake were now rolling their special jokes on to Letty, but Harold was left to smile out in the cold; not intentionally, more as if the circle of three had too close a harmony to need or permit of additions. From experience, he knew that it would not be possible for him to start a new conversation. If he tried, if even Letty tried, Blake's voice, which was a little hoarse, as if with weariness, and Grace's contralto and Grace's characteristic laugh would separate the words, brush them aside, distract the attention. Neither Harold nor Letty could attach as much importance to what each said as Blake and Grace apparently could to what they said. Grace made of each laugh a particular tribute to Blake as king, to herself as queen. It was too deep and too prolonged for a snigger, but she laughed, drawing the laughter inside of herself, arching her shoulders, curling her lips, lifting her head, making a distinct point of each gesture, as if her amusement had a distinct significance, an appreciation peculiar to herself and necessarily transcending all other appreciation.

"Tell us about Harry Strauss and his nickel," said Blake to her.

"Oh, yes. The other day I was telephoning and Harry, as usual, was listening. Before I got through he called, 'Don't hang up; I want to talk to him.' Well, you know how it is when you're—busy and you're telephoning. When I was through I—instinctively hung up, just as Harry made a move to grab the phone. He shook his head, went 'Teh. Teh,' and I said, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I'll get him right back,' and I started to—call the number again. And Harry said, shaking his finger at me, 'Listen, my dear, you ought to be more careful. Every time you do that it costs a nickel!'"

Letty trilled laughter. "Oh, my Gosh! Why'n't you tell him you'd give him the nickel?"

"Oh, I couldn't do that, Letty," said Grace reprovingly. "But Blake and I—" she began to curl her lips and arch her shoulders, looking from person to person—"Blake and I—have decided to call him It-costs-a-nickel-Harry!" And she began her deep, prolonged, continuous snigger.

Then Blake told them about another publicity man who had the habit of adding, at the top of each news note, an impassioned plea for its publication, concluding with the bribe of eternal gratitude from him and his employer. His first name was Mike, so, as he and the employer were both notorious for their piety, some of the dramatic editors had nicknamed him For-Christ's-sake-print-this-Mike.

When he was done he looked solely at Grace and she rewarded him. They were, or considered themselves to be, too unsentimental to use endearments in front of other people, but they began a sort of wrestling match which was a form of endearment. It was a sophisticated wrestling match; merely a pulling and bending of arms with a vast deal of deliberate mirth on Grace's part. There was none of the apparent indelicacy of a pair cooing before others, yet they were so self-sufficient, they erased everyone else so completely, that even Letty sought to detach their interest from each other. As for Harold, he looked out of the window and smoked, first cigarettes, then a pipe. Harold would have liked Blake by himself; with Grace he frequently found him insufferable.

Finally Letty attracted Blake's attention by some question about what he would like to eat.

He paused in the wrestling match and said with complete naturalness, "I can't stay."

"You can't stay to-night?" cried Letty. "But——"

Grace was slowly disengaging herself. It was understood that Blake had to filch these Sunday afternoons from his wife; he was always supposed to be working on his play at a friend's house and he usually had to be back for supper. But—the same thought was in the minds of both girls—this was the first Sunday of his wife's absence, the first day in months which he and Grace had had absolutely to themselves.

She said, "Don't you want any supper?" It was a carefully surprised question, not a demand.

"Bill asked me over there for supper."

Something of Grace's rigidity penetrated even to him.

He glanced at her and muttered, as if against his will, "We were going to work to-night anyway."

For a second she could not answer. She had planned this Sunday to be so perfect, unmarred by that shade of prior claim, unjarred by the necessity for departure at a set hour. Sudden sensations of revolt swarmed within her like a disturbed hornet's nest. She felt her voice freezing with the effort to keep it tearless and unexacting.

Presently, she said, "Oh. I wish—you'd tell me those things in time—so I could—make—my own plans."

"Well, you can stay here now, can't you?" said Blake through tighter lips.

"So I can—now," she said quietly, "but I might have made—other arrangements."

She did not mean to let Blake depart in sullenness, however. It was one of her axioms never to permit even the slightest breach to remain unadjusted overnight, "never to sleep on a quarrel." No telling what depths it might borrow from the thoughtful spaciousness of the night! She followed him to the entrance, from which could be heard her special laughter accompanying their lingering embrace.

Then Grace, Harold, and Letty were left alone.

"You might go down and get something to eat," suggested Letty, speaking to Harold for the first time. "Everything's a lot cheaper at that little delicatessen on Broadway and they won't deliver. I've argued and argued with them and they won't."

"Of course they won't," grumbled Harold. "That's how they can afford to sell cheaper. Can't you get it through your head that when production costs are higher, prices must rise? You're like all consumers——"

"Oh, you and your old production costs!" cried Letty. "Very well. I'm a consumer and I don't care who knows it! I don't give a rap about producers. I'm a consumer. I consume." She flounced over to the telephone in the alcove.

Grace began to talk amicably to Harold, trying to "smooth him over."

"Speaking of production costs," she said, "do you know—you have an admirer? Remember that Miss Vestry who held forth on potteries? She was all het up—when I told her you were a manager in an underwear factory. Said she'd like to know one person in New York who didn't have some job connected with words."

"That's a funny idea," said Harold unwillingly.

And, "What was that?" demanded Letty as she flung herself back on the couch. "Have you been seeing her?"

"Yes. I had dinner with her last week. She's a funny girl but—sort of interesting. She's all alone here, lives in a weird rooming house. I asked her why she didn't try for a job in the Fashion Department and she said she hated the Dress Daily and hated all the jobs that had sprung up around words. She said when Mr. Milford started to dictate she felt like—a fly caught in a spider's web! She told me she wished she could find something to do in a place where they made—things. No wonder she knew so much about potteries. It seems her father is a potter or something like that."

"I always hated stenography, too," declared Letty. "All that stew and fuss to write a lot of bunk!"

"You wouldn't know anything about it," put in Harold. "You were a bum stenog."

"That's right. Take it out on me!"

The food, when it finally arrived, also had a veneer, the enameled sheen of the delicatessen. They served themselves dabs of many things, one plate to a person, put the plates on paper napkins in their laps, and ate, mostly in silence till Harold remarked that, considering the young fortune Letty spent on food, it was remarkable how rotten this supper could taste.

"Yes," said Letty bitterly, "and you heard what I got, Grace, when I tried to save some money. And I was bawled out for extravagance all through a vaudeville show just because I asked him to raise my clothes allowance!"

Harold gave Letty a look which said, "How dare you bring that girl into our affairs?" All the same, he could not help defending himself. "I told you why I couldn't raise your clothes allowance. I'm taking out more insurance. Letty doesn't understand that that's more for her benefit than extra clothes."

"I'd rather have the clothes," said Letty. "You're always worrying about what would become of me if anything happened to you. I never worry. It's not as if we had a family. I could go back to work."

"Mm. What would you do? You were just saying how you hated stenography."

Letty tossed her head. "Oh, well, I wouldn't work forever. It sounds vain—but I know I could always marry somebody or get kept or something." She shrugged.

Grace began the preliminary motions to her deep snigger.

"I dare say—Paul—would be glad to step into Harold's shoes," she suggested, emphasizing the joke with a coy lift of her brows.

Harold went over to the phonograph and put on a record, and Letty behind his back made a warning "oh" of her mouth. She started to pile the dishes and carry them into the kitchenette, calling to Harold for assistance, but on her return trip she stopped by Grace and said something to her and giggled. Grace whispered, "You did see him?" Then she put her hand hastily over her mouth. Harold had also stepped out of the kitchenette. She didn't believe he had heard, but the expression of his face was so enraged that she grew pale for a moment and thought that really Letty tantalized him too much.

Neither Harold nor Letty spoke for some time. Although Grace realized that the former was angry and the latter uneasy, it would not occur to her that she could be involved. After an evening visit to Letty she nearly always stayed the night, so, with the assurance of precedent, she got up, said she was sleepy, and went into the alcove.

Even more than the clandestine use to which she put the apartment, this habit of hers irritated Harold. He had had many a quarrel with Letty over the requisitioning of their place Sunday afternoons and only an idea of the futility of the procedure restrained him from forbidding it. Letty was quite capable of lending the key anyhow and Grace of arranging matters so that he need never know. Whenever Grace made ready to spend the night, the same fear of what Letty would do, plus a sense of middle-class manners, never let him go beyond the muttered comment: "Hasn't she got a home?" But to-night was different. To-night he was incensed beyond fear and beyond courtesy. Not only could he and Letty never seem to be mentally alone in their house; but often they couldn't even be physically alone! He said to Letty, "Go in there and tell her to go home."

"I will not," replied Letty at once.

"If you won't, I will. I expect to have my home to myself once in a while."

Unconsciously, Letty raised her voice. "As far as I'm concerned, you can have your old home to yourself—all to yourself—for ever and ever."

Grace now appeared between the curtains of the alcove. She had put on Letty's dressing gown and looked from one to the other, pale, with large, disturbed eyes. She had caught Letty's last words; still she never thought that the quarrel could include her. Only, she was sorry for both of them.

"We think you'd better go home to-night," said Harold.

She was so taken aback that her cheeks grew quite white and haggard, her eyes turned toward him with a dark, welling pathos. Harold moved his own eyes quickly.

"Don't mind a thing he says," cried Letty. "Don't go home. I want you to stay."

"No. I'd better go."

She walked, white-faced, into the alcove, followed by Letty. Her shadow had been pulled up short and she was, for the moment, stunned by the comprehension of what this might mean to her.

CHAPTER NINE

When Grace had not seen Letty for a fortnight, her mind began to weave in and about various stratagems. She knew she would make her way back to their house—she had to—but her life, especially of late, had been so based on substrata of manipulation that it never occurred to her to do this directly. At last she hit on a plan which included Anita Vestry. The latter was not so much associated with her as to draw Harold's instant suspicion; besides, Letty, in Harold's hearing, had asked the girl to come and see her.

One noon she made a special trip downtown to have lunch with Anita, to confide in her and to broach to her the idea of calling up Letty and inviting her to the theater. Grace would get them free tickets and would meet them.

"I really want to see her ever so much," Grace pleaded. "Of course, I call her up, but it's not the same. Harold plays bridge to-morrow so, if he knows she's going with you, it'll be all right."

Anita couldn't understand. "Why don't you just call her up and meet her downtown yourself?"

"No," said Grace, "I want her to have a perfect alibi. If you call up at dinner time Harold will answer the phone and he'll know you are making the arrangements, and he'll be satisfied. They fight so much about everything, I don't want them to fight over me. Besides, I'd like to have you along."

This was not an afterthought. There was an uncommon stability, a fresh sturdiness about Anita, which was new to Grace and which attracted her. All her other relations—at home, with Blake, at the office; even, now, with Letty—seemed so precarious that she was nearly always in a state of inner fear—an apprehensive shivering of her very soul. She longed for solid, utterly smooth ground, and Anita gave promise of this.

By some maneuver Grace had managed to get two pairs of seats, so Letty and Grace sat together, and Anita sat behind them by herself. She enjoyed it that way. She luxuriated in the vacant seat.

"If I am ever rich," she thought, "I will always buy three seats to the theater; one for me and a vacant one on either side."

A fig for talk of selfishness when, for the price of selfishness, one could buy some freedom from too enveloping human contacts! But probably she would never be rich. The play was poor, even Anita, who merely liked to watch the lights and the faces, was forced to recognize. But the featured actress had a voice. What a voice! It made the cheapest commonplaces sound like mottoes on glorious tombs. The audience was aquiver with her voice.

During the first intermission Anita remarked on it to Grace.

"Yes," said Grace with a grave note of opinion, "I think so, too. I think they're—silly not to star her."

"Imagine her as Juliet!" suggested Letty.

"N-no. She's not helpless enough. I don't feel that a Juliet—would have so much poise. But Candida! Blake and I are mad about Shaw and we decided that she'd make the perfect Candida. I told Dexter I wanted to meet her, and if he can arrange it I'd like to tell her that."

Somehow, Anita had never realized that actresses could be met. The idea struck her very suddenly and she looked at Grace, in spite of herself, with wonder that had a tinge of awe in it. Anita would not quite have dared to cry as Letty did, "Oh, will you take me along, Grace?"

"If it's—possible," said Grace with dignity.

During the second intermission Grace and Letty held a long, vigorous consultation on clothes. Anita, listening, could not understand why they had troubled to trick and to arrange this evening for such talk. She could not feel the warm alliance between them from which each drew comfort and composure, no matter what they said. From each other they got that sense of the burden of troubles, emotions, and thoughts being eased, shared; of some other helping to live their lives which men may hope to freely get from women, but which wise women never even attempt to expect from men. To be sure, men can have their easy, unexacting, open friendships, and laugh at the intricate intimacies between women, for it is upon the shoulders of women that they unload the subtler moods and cares. But this lack in their lives women must look to other women to fill, unless they can bear to be, too often, entirely alone.

After the theater the three girls walked up Broadway, past the first rush and chatter of the crowds, the first battle of lights and electric signs, past the kitten made of light naïvely chasing a spool made of light, to a slightly quieter section before another turn of that twisting, glinting street, opening and shutting accordion-like. They went into Bouton's and sat down at a blackly shining, glassy table.

"Three frŏsted chŏcolates," ordered Grace.

"Three frawsted chawc'lets?" inquired the waiter politely.

They began to giggle behind his back.

"It's always that way," said Grace. "I've tried every combination but I never hit on the right one. If I say 'frawsted chŏcolate,' the waiter rebukes me with 'frŏsted chawc'let.' And if I reverse the pronunciation, he reverses it, too, so we never meet."

They were merry, but both Grace and Letty glanced at the clock from time to time. Letty said in a low aside under cover of the general hubbub, "Are you going up with me?"

"No, to Brooklyn," murmured Grace. She gave the faintest nod in Anita's direction. Anita was not meant to catch the nod.

Grace looked up at her swiftly across the table.

"How is your job going now?" asked Anita.

"Oh, so-so. Al has a movie. I've been working all day with a vaudeville act. Midgets. I had an awfully bright idea—if I say so myself. Eight of them—piled into a cab and then refused to pay extra fare, claiming they were so small that eight of them made only four legal persons. So the driver—haled them to court. He was marvelous—we had to let him in on it, of course—fell right into the spirit of the thing and was very—indignant, and postured and declaimed like anything. I love taxi drivers. They always catch the spirit of things. But we had to let the judge in, too, so he would dismiss the case before the afternoon show and that—was difficult. Harry fixed that up. We've got a tremendous spread in the Evening World to-night—it's just their meat—and stuff in all the other papers. Very funny.

"But none of it's—easy," she explained with more emphatic pauses and doubly serious eyes. "It's not like doing publicity for an established theatrical firm. They're—entitled to a certain amount of space in the dramatic columns. They have standing and they advertise. Harry Strauss places advertising for his clients, too, but not everywhere and not enough and not—consistently. Besides, the papers are wary of him into the bargain. So it's a process of grab as grab can. And he certainly expects you to grab. He wants all the news space and all the front pages!"

"I have a singer, too," she added with a snigger. "Baritone. I think I've—acquired him, Letty. Two lunches and one dinner so far, and he wants to teach me how to speak Italian and eat spaghetti. Pretty good—what? We're also going to have a show soon—called Mamie—and I think perhaps Mr. Strauss'll let me handle it alone. If I do well perhaps I'll even get—a raise. Do you know, Annabella told me she paid Strauss $200 a week, and I don't know what the night club paid him. It's unbelievable, isn't it? He gets the highest prices in the business."

"I'll bet Blake minds the baritone," put in Letty.

"Minds? I guess he doesn't," said Grace firmly. She seemed altogether less flexible than Anita had ever seen her. Her eyes were merely large eyes, very calm. "I guess—he has no right to mind. I must find some way to spend my evenings."

There was one thing more that Letty wished to know, and as they were leaving, single file, she murmured to Grace, "Then when is she coming back?"

"Not till December," said Grace, low. "She changed her mind and wanted to come home for Thanksgiving but—she was told to stay. If Ma should call..."

"I know. Don't worry."

Some time later, when Anita was preparing for bed, the two asides, the conversation she had overheard at the night club, the slight warning nod began to arrange themselves idly in her mind. And, not of her volition, but like the final link of a puzzle slipping into place without effort when all the other parts have been set in order, there came back to her a remark Grace had made at their one dinner together. Blake lived in Brooklyn.

With a certain gallantry, she at once shook off this unexpected meaning, a meaning that seemed too discordant in the atmosphere of the tragic which she had sensed about Grace; a meaning which left a wryness in her mouth and opened before her mind a shocking vista of sad, small, endless, and tasteless adaptations ever at their task of leveling and making endurable. After all, what did she know of tragedy? It suddenly struck her that perhaps the very souls in hell found obscure dingy ways of habituating themselves to hell fire and thereafter survived in the midst of it with an unseemly equanimity.

CHAPTER TEN

During the last two years of school Grace had taken her classes at the Washington Square College. Between classes, which came in the late afternoon and evening, she would cross Washington Square Park and explore the raggedy-taggedy streets of the Italian and artistic colonies. Sometimes she went to the tea-room cafés that brought together art and tourists. When she met Blake Andrews in one of these (very formally, they were introduced) she met an even-featured young man with sandy hair, a solid chin, and thin cheeks. He slouched with determination, did not trouble to be polite, and did not trouble to be neat. The acidity of failure she mistook and he mistook for the irony of sophistication. He talked about books, plays, and the stage. So did she. He was married, which was too bad, but not definitely against him in our times, and his wife remained in St. Louis, which was better. He led a curious life.

This life seemed strange even to Blake, though he acted as if he had been born to it. His people were decent, semi-substantial folks in St. Louis. He had married, as Grace said, the "little girl next door," a pretty girl, whose porch and lawn adjoined, who had gone to the same college, who was gentle and dutiful and knew how to cook. No one had forced him to marry her. No one had forced him to enter a relative's bank. There he had done his work equably and capably and was in line for a vice-presidency, at least. He and Edith, his wife, had an apartment, not a house like their parents', with all sorts of novel appliances. They were a modern young couple. When the war began Blake enlisted at once, and after his discharge he stayed in New York. He said that he wished to write plays.

Blake came not too unnaturally by an interest in the theater. An uncle was on the stage—on the road, rather, but with headquarters in New York; the aunt, too, was of the profession. They lived in a two-room apartment over a restaurant on West Forty-seventh Street. There Blake took up his abode. At one end of the street burlesque chorus girls with fat legs stood about the stage door of the Columbia; opposite, agents and vaudeville actors greeted each other warmly around the Palace. In the center of the block Spaniards leaned against the portals of the Hotel America, contemplating with dumb, warm eyes and chewing toothpicks. The porter constantly moved trunks with vivid placards. Actors and fight managers were shaved by the window of the Hotel Somerset. Highly painted, ardently respectable women, with wedding rings, divorces, fur coats, and diamonds of various grades, walked in and out of the delicatessen shops, lingerie shops, restaurants, lobbies, and the few remaining brownstone houses. Lap dogs were aired before shabby apartment hotels and trucks of scenery unloaded before the climbing iron staircase back of the Palace.

At first Blake hunted for work. As he disliked the only sort of work he knew and was not familiar with any other, he found no work. He looked up various people from St. Louis, made acquaintance with Broadway, and for a time he drifted toward the Village. His struggles had served no purpose, so he made up his mind with a vigor none the less effective for being inert, to struggle no more. He would not go home. He did no work. He even stopped shaving and paid no further attention to his clothes. His parents sent him a little money and not too many remonstrances; he was their only child and they swore by him—perhaps they remembered his firm chin and unwavering gait. His wife stayed with her people and wrote him bewildered, pleading letters. His uncle provided food and shelter. Blake went about, unshaven, thin-cheeked, morose, not confiding in anyone.

He was, as one Village girl defined it, in the "sitting business." Whenever she entered a Village café and saw him there, sitting sourly in a corner, she called, "Ah, there! Still in the sitting business, what?" Blake was outsitting his parents, his job, his duty, his class, and St. Louis, Missouri. He even had a faint hope that he might outsit his wife, a faint hope since Blake came of a social stratum in which it is one of the virtues of wives to stick like a wet hair to the hand. To prove, however, that he had at least outsat this virtue in himself, he made some careless love to girls who painted or wrote and thereby, necessarily to Blake, flaunted their lack of cohesion. For several months he and Grace met thus, very casually, enjoying the novelty of each other's "lines."

One day they were walking up Sixth Avenue when a shabby man approached Blake and asked him for money to buy a meal. Blake had a quarter in his pocket. The sight of pain, trouble of any sort, was hateful to him, for, affected by it though he was, he found himself averse with every fiber of his lethargic, self-contained nature to any effort at alleviation. He thought he had decided that such effort was futile. He could not help other people's troubles; therefore he wished to be unconscious of them. They made him feel too powerless. He put his hand into his pocket, because of Grace, and at once thought better of it. He didn't mean to be confused by gallantry. The man added, "I been in vaudeville for years, mister, and now I can't get work." Blake walked by with an awkward laugh. "Oh, in vaudeville?" he said. "Then you're not worth even a quarter. Apply to the N.V.A." He flushed, as he said this, at his own brutality.

Grace hurried past him, caught up with the man, and searched for some change. She was white-lipped and had difficulty to keep back the tears. She did not think she could even bear Blake by her side.

Blake had a stroke of luck that year. He wrote a playlet with another man who knew an agent who sold it as a vaudeville act. Toward the end of the year Edith managed to get the money to come to New York, their furniture was brought from St. Louis, and Blake found himself in the midst of his lares and penates in Brooklyn, with a vague income, a tender if puzzled wife, and a love affair accelerated by its own speed, going now of its own volition.

At last neither Grace nor Blake could make any further attempts to fly before the fire with which they had been playing. They merely sought, with a muddled stubbornness on Blake's part, to keep the flames away from that parched island where Edith dwelt, bewildered, but not even imagining, utterly unknowing. Their hope, at least Blake's hope, was that some day the island would grow too parched for human endurance and Edith would cease to forgive and to submit and by herself, of her own free will, try to escape. To cast her out from even this poor refuge to which she clung so intently seemed impossible to Blake. He could not be so cruel to her. And Grace, resenting this division between his love and his kindness, this division which was so nicely defined for her, which Blake could not, would not, realize, saw no way but to yield. She wished for both the love and the kindness; she would not rest and could not feel serene till she had both. But for the present, for the sake of peace, she had made her choice. There was a rough justice in it, a painful justice. She would have the love and Edith might, undisturbed for the present, have the kindness.

Blake, walking up Broadway on a January afternoon, was full of a new, a dreaded necessity for kindness which he had had to swallow and which now Grace would have to swallow or reject. He had a reason which caused his memory to stumble back through the passage of the months, past various milestones which he had never considered before but which he found he recollected surprisingly well. He had a good memory which he kept to himself. The urging and the pleading were blurred because they had been so distasteful, but it was not so with a certain promise that he had made to Grace, all the circumstances of which appeared to him with a double distinctness. He understood why he had made the promise and why the promise had been called for. He understood also why he had broken the promise. And how was he to explain it? He could shift the blame and he could not shift the blame at all honorably. He had a defense and yet, before accusing eyes, it crumbled into no defense at all. He could not help remembering the dark glare of those eyes, whose suction was, more often than he cared to admit, a source of wonder to him, focused on him as Grace said, in all tense seriousness, "If that ever happened, I—I would kill you. I would."

And yet, what had he to blame himself for? Who had made the choice if not Grace, while he kept himself consciously aloof, while, unconsciously, how could he help that he had willed to aid the choice? He could not bear to see the tangle, wished with all his heart to turn his head and avoid it, as one avoids the ugly sight of some mangled animal by the wayside, but he found it, with loathing, with embarrassment and dismay, impossible, for he was within the snarl, he was part of the mangled animal.

Even when he did not wish to see Grace, when what he had to say would be much better said by letter, by written word, not face to face, those eyes were steadily drawing him through the traffic, up Broadway, around that special corner, and nearer, ever nearer, to her. He had never before quite guessed how many arid spaces there were in his life and how, from Grace's eyes, like deep, pliant pools, he drew their constant and necessary refreshment.

He found her already sitting at their table. She wore an almost springlike hat of pale silk, for it was one of those winter days which give promises of spring that cannot possibly be kept. This day had succeeded only in losing all its red corpuscles and was wan, languid, dampish.

The hat shaded her eyes. To gain time he commented on it.

"Have you got your raise, then?" he asked, and Grace seemed surprised. It was usually she who made the first allusions to her work. Seeing him so concerned, however, she described a hopeful interview with Harry Strauss and told him news of Mamie.

"Only, I thought he'd let me handle it myself, and now Al is in on it, too, which makes things—very annoying. I feel as if I have to be on my guard," she said disconsolately.

"Mm. He would cut throats all right."

"I don't understand that—sort of throat cutting," said Grace. "If I were in his way—but I'm not at all. I have a feeling he thinks Harry Strauss is grooming me, sort of, to take his place, at less money. But that's silly, if Al really has an interest in the business, as he says."

Blake thought, but had no advice to offer. The subject tired him on the whole. He did not see why Grace could not do her work on the surface, day by day, without peering and boring into underground channels, like a woman. Besides, he was too unhappy and could not bear his unhappiness alone and did not see how he could find the way to make her share it. Why didn't she see, of herself?

Grace watched him under her new hat with dark, unlighted eyes. Something was wrong between them to-day, and to-day she felt too weary herself to make the effort to set it right. She ventured one usual question, but without verve or hope.

"Everything—as usual?"

Now was the way opened. He glanced up with a sense of relief and saw by Grace's posture, her eyes drooping over the table, the answer she wished to-day. He nodded quickly. So that subject was closed. Their tea dragged on.

Then, putting on her gloves, Grace said, "I have to dash to the photographer's before he closes. Will I see you to-morrow?"

He nodded again, resigning himself with resentment to another day's sole confusion and apprehensive thought, and walked on to pay the check.

Grace could not, however, leave him yet. She stood by the door. "I thought you might—walk up with me," she said, and glued her eyes to him to see whether this was a mistake. He did not take her arm but they walked on together.

Suddenly he had such a longing to rid himself of his burden of suspense, even of anguish, that he wanted to halt in the middle of the street and cry, "Look here, don't walk with me. I—my wife and I—we're going to have a child," and have done with it and breathe while he waited to see what would follow. His feet even paused for a second, then he clutched her arm and pulled her on. Grace turned to him her questioning eyes, just beginning to fear, saying nothing.

"Do you remember what you said—that you'd kill me—if——?" he said swiftly. The memory rose at once to the surface of Grace's eyes. "Well, you can do it now," he said, with a sneer at his pain and her pain, and turned his face away.

She understood, but the understanding would not rise and surge within her as easily as the memory had. She nodded her head several times slowly, to make sure she knew, taking some slow breaths, making the first minor inward adjustments quickly, quickly, holding back terror, hugging hope fiercely, as people do who see the overwhelming flood on the horizon. When she spoke her voice was calm though strained, as if she called for news across a slight distance. She asked him how it had happened. This he told her shortly, for this at least he owed her. And when the baby was coming. This he hadn't asked and did not care to know himself. It was a long way off.

They went on.

"It'll be sort of hard on you—I mean financially," she remarked. He hardly dared to listen.

They went on.

"Babies are very expensive," she said in the same level voice.

After a while, something less than a sound, the feeling behind a sound, moved him to look at her again. They walked on a street of endless garages. Between the brim of the new hat and the collar of her coat she was weeping openly, without noise. When she noticed his eyes on her she bent her head completely away, almost back, and fumbled from far off in her purse for a handkerchief.

"Oh, I forgot," she said with bitterness. "I mustn't cry. You don't like that." This bitterness, this first and only bitterness, she would permit herself.

Without thinking how or why any longer, they stopped in the middle of the street and Blake found and clung to her hand. He looked so white, so thin-faced, so stern. He hated to use the words of tenderness and gazed at the pavement, clinging to her hand.

"When you don't cry any more, Grace, I'll know that you don't care any more."

Their fingers clutched at each other's, intertwined tightly. He, hugging his misery, could not think of her own. She, comforting him, let it go till she should be alone. It would keep, never fear, it would keep.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The photographer said that she would have to wait for the pictures.

He said, "Make yourself comfortable."

She heard him finally and sat down.

It was not the child itself that mattered—that there would be a child. It was not the betrayal that mattered, the infidelity with the other woman, the wife, the very woman against whom she had particularly to be on guard, the very woman against whom he had promised himself to be on guard. No. That was an entirely physical betrayal, the circumstances of which he had explained, and which, no matter how she might revolt against them, she could not help but understand. But such waves of outrage, of hatred, of envy, of misery, of she knew not what, stormed through her that she was bent double with them in her chair. She bit her lips tightly to contain them and buried her face in her coat collar. No part of it was visible but a white speck of cheek and huge, dark eyes.

Back of her mind there had been a vague feeling, a vague wish, scarcely credible and certainly not possible, for a child, one particular child, Blake's child. Why? She had no interest in and no sentiment about children, "the little brats!" And now through a trick (pleading, crying that he no longer loved her; being above all, so near, so close, so there), through a trap, planned and intended, no matter how desperately planned and how pitifully intended, the other woman would have the child.

With what passionate vanity Nature works first in some women in the matter of having a child! Many a woman's first thought is to bear a child by a man she loves not because, as the saying goes, she wants his child, not because she wants any child, but because ecstasy is so unimaginable when in the course of time it has fled; because it is so impossible to articulate, translate into words as a keepsake, that she wants the child as a not-to-be-belied, an actual, factual reminder. A "pledge of love"—no, not that—but a child is a pledge to remember, so that passion can never wholly be buried under mounds of time and two look at each other and wonder with their brains, their senses having entirely lost the responses, and try to recollect and not really believe. When the memory wavers and the body is quite oblivious, the child remains to certify the old emotion to the groping mind.

Thus her agony surged through Grace and her jealousy clamored within her. If she quarreled with Blake to-morrow and went years without seeing him, soon, in a short time, their love would be lost from their minds; they could meet and talk and wonder and try to recall and it would be like trying to remember yesterday's sunsets or dawns seen long ago. But Edith, she, this other woman and this unloved woman, she would have the child, the living proof, something which she and Blake could grasp through the miasmas of long afterward—the common memory, through whose body, formed by their bodies, they could reach back and forever after not wholly deny.

She had a long time to wait for the pictures. A twilight, faintly violet, just stroked the windows, like a gentle hand. Behind a screen the photographer and his assistants were busy, doing something, drying the prints, and they talked and joked. Now and then one of the men would come out and use the telephone. One boy called the same number twice. The last time he said softly, quickly, "I'm tied up here, baby. Be up soon." He was tall and had a smug, wooden face. Grace looked him over with cold eyes and decided that he was a dull young man. A very dull young man. She disliked him at sight, nay, she hated him and all these satisfied, foolish dolts of photographers. She was shivering in her chair, her hands shook so that she clasped them, her very teeth chattered.

The photographer came over and said with concern, "Are you cold?" and poured her a drink of Scotch. It was powerful, vivid stuff and now made her shiver with its heat instead of with her cold. What was it someone had said about telephones—was it Blake? Oh, yes. Something about its being love that kept the wires busy and the company prosperous, something about the long lines of booths in the late afternoons being forever filled with men calling their wives and lovers calling their sweethearts. Something about a soulless corporation hiring hordes of operators and engineers and line-men, keeping great experimental stations for the purpose of expediting the course of love over the wires, paying fat dividends because Tom and Mary were enabled to hear each other's voices and smile and quarrel within a few seconds. Funny idea.

If those pictures weren't ready soon she wouldn't be able to stand it; she would have to get out, do something, do anything. That last thought made a sort of shriek in her. She rose from her chair. If she could walk, now, up and down; but that was not possible here. She sat down again, stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth and bit it. She would like to tear it, to tear something! Limb from limb. Yes, that was a very satisfactory description of a rending. To tear limb from limb.

"Here you are," said the photographer. "Sorry to keep you waiting."

She took the folder. She almost wished to make a bow to him. She inclined her head, anyhow, and said sweetly out of her white face, "Thank you so much."

What had Harold once remarked in an unguarded moment of sympathy with her? "Go out and walk. That helps." Walk. This miserable sky on this miserable day would not even darken but grew weirdly lighter, faded against the upspringing lights, grew yearning, grew wan. As she walked, she shuddered horribly with cold and felt herself flushing, red-hot, with the liquor. When she put a hand to her face the heat of her cheek amazed her and the cold of her hand was deathly.

At that special point in her misery a bus appeared and made her look about. She was on Fifth Avenue. The bus passed and stopped and took its place in her sorrow, like a hearse. Always thereafter it kept its place there, like a hearse. Whenever she remembered, she looked about and found herself all at once on Fifth Avenue, she watched the bus pass, black with people, and halt.

She saw in a moment of saving reality that she was near the street where Anita Vestry lived. When the moment fled it merely left her wondering when she had seen Anita last. She couldn't think. Not at the opening of Mamie. No. Even Letty had not come to the opening. And then she had a flash of acute brilliance, like a stroke of lightning. The whole world grew electrically light with it. Why, she could run to see Letty! No. Harold would be there. Harold would learn, but to-night she really could not have him know, to-night she could not have him see her white and trembling. He would think—she would see it in his face—that it was too bad but what did Grace expect? She had only reached what her road would lead her to. She paused before a shop window, pinning her eyes to coats and hats, trying to pin her mind to some object with the same intentness. Then, as fast as she could, almost running, running away from the solitary prison of misery, battling to escape it, she sped in the direction of Anita's room.

Fortunately, Anita had not yet gone to dinner. She was lying on the bed in a tiny room which held, besides, a small dressing table, an old rocker, and a bit of matting. She was resting, feeling bored, and she greeted Grace with pleasure. Since the opening of Mamie she and Grace had met just once at the office. Anita noticed that Grace hugged her coat about her and looked very white, that Grace clasped her hands tightly, and she asked in surprise, "Is it very cold out, now?"

Grace made no reply. In fact, now that she was here, she didn't know what she wanted to do or what to say, yet she did not want to go away either. She glanced around the room. She had seen it once before; it told her the same story. It was very bare. At last she roused herself and remembered a dim duty.

"Will you do something for me?" she said to Anita hurriedly. "Will you call up my mother and tell her I won't be home for dinner? I have to look in on Mamie."

After a few moments Anita replied in some astonishment that she would. She saw now that Grace was in trouble, what or how she could not imagine, and remained silent. Grace went over to the dressing table and took off her hat. But she did nothing, merely looked at herself in the mirror with vague eyes and turned away. She rearranged her hat.

"Have you had your dinner?" said Anita gently.

Grace made a gesture of distaste. "I'm not hungry." Then she seemed to try with determination for composure and added, "I'll go with you if you like."

"There's a tea room downstairs," said Anita. She felt that Grace would not, could not, walk outside.

Grace ordered coffee and sat, turned a little sideways from Anita, pulling her coat collar up about her face. The sight of Anita eating made her almost sick. Once Anita asked, because it seemed that she should, "Aren't you feeling well?" Grace shook her head.

Then Anita decided that she had better not notice. They were alone in the tea room, but the service was slow and they sat there a long time, a painful time. Anita sighed with relief when it was over, thinking that now she would be allowed to go back to the room which had seemed too empty before, which seemed overwhelmingly serene now. But Grace took her arm as they went out and begged, "Will you walk over to Mamie with me? You may have to stand, they're selling out, but you won't mind, will you? Really, it's an awfully good show."

In Grace's apparent state it would have been brutal to refuse. They walked across town to Mamie. Here Grace began to regain her poise. Though still white, she was businesslike, and Anita admired the calm, pleasant way in which she talked to the house manager, exchanged a few words with the box-office man, nodded to the ticket taker, and arranged for Anita to have one vacant seat in the back row. Grace stood behind her and viewed the theater with the professional interest of an habitué. She remarked to Anita that she was learning to "count up" the house. Throughout the first act Grace remained in the rear, and whenever Anita glanced around she was quiet and cool, with her eyes on the stage.

The show was pretty, the dancing good, the music gay and sweet, and Anita felt how comfortable it was to sit at ease and watch the enactment of passions lightly, certain of happy fulfillment, on a stage. She thought musical comedies very jolly and liked the lack of strain with which they translated easy emotions to the audience, easy sentiment—too sentimental because it was so easy. But what a lot of trouble that saved the audience! All it had to do was to watch the dancers and be gay; to hum one of the popular love songs and to be in love.

During the intermission Grace asked her whether she wanted to go back stage. "I must have a few words with the handsome hero, and see if I can get a Sunday story out of him," she said, haggard under the yellow lights, but quite self-possessed. Anita, however, felt too awkward to meet a hero as handsome as this one. She refused.

The house grew dark again. Some players appeared and pulled together strands of a cloying plot. When they danced they were graceful, when they sang they were soothing, but as soon as they opened their mouths in the spoken word they became vulgar. And what spoken words they uttered! Anita could not help writhing. She watched the people around her with wonder that they should remain unaffected.

Then a man half-sang, half-declaimed a mammy song. He bent over the footlights, he stretched out his arms, he made acrobatic sallies almost into the audience, all with a hideous vigor and a violent, an infuriatingly forceful, banality. Anita felt that she could not bear it any longer. It did not relieve her to grit her teeth, to grimace, or to glare at the concentrated faces about her. The whole theater stank for her with this cheap sentiment, like cheap perfume. She got up and disturbed half a row, stumbling over legs, braving angry looks and impatient mumbles, beating her way out. Grace now stood by one of the exits, in shadow.

Anita said, "Whew! I'm sorry, but I must get out, I can't stand this."

With unexpected sympathy, Grace whispered, "Yes, it is pretty awful. Yes, let's go."

The outside air was damp and heavy but at least odorless. They wavered on a street corner. Then Anita saw that Grace was shuddering, that she was no longer cool, that the skin under her eyes and on her cheeks was drawn and yellow, and she asked again, "Are you sick?"

"I don't feel well at all," said Grace with difficulty. "Will you ride home with me—please do. I'll take a taxi."

Grace huddled into one corner and Anita sat in the other. A black length of seat separated them. From time to time a light shone full on Grace and Anita saw her clasping her hands with a handkerchief between, her eyes huge and fixed on nothing. Anita held the silence. Soon Grace rapped on the window and told the driver to take them through the park. Anita did not know enough about New York to understand that Grace was postponing her arrival home as long as possible.

Sadly the park wove and unwove before them; the poor bare trees in the wistful air, the bulky clouds overhead, the big mists of houses around the farthest edges, the cheer of the electric baubles of lights subdued. In the midst of it, Anita, sighing, glanced at Grace again and saw a tear rolling evenly down one long cheek. She was frightened and lowered her eyes quickly so that she would not see, but she could not help murmuring, making one last attempt, "Can I do anything for you?"

Grace was so long with her answer that Anita decided she would not reply and settled back into the silence. She breathed heavily rather than sighed, and suddenly Grace replied in a cool voice that did not match the tear, "No. Blake's wife is having a baby. She thought—it would bring them together."

So that was it. But Anita was far from full realization. She was merely bewildered—and embarrassed. She moved closer to her side of the taxi and frowned, careful to stare out of the window.

In a very small voice, she said at last, "Oh."

Now they were reaching the end of the park. The lights already anticipated the beginning of great apartment houses and curtained, glowing windows. And, as if she were taking advantage of the last moment of confidential sadness and darkness, Grace turned to Anita, raised her head as if in challenge, and said, "I'm living with him. I suppose you know." Her lips curled in a sneer, a hard, grim sneer like a blow, as she peered into Anita's face.

But in Anita's face she saw neither sympathy nor comprehension nor blame, only the stupid, startled expression of a person stepping off into water almost beyond one's depth. Anita's mouth was actually open a little way. So she had guessed correctly that night! But she did not want to know; she would not know; she was frantic with an awed embarrassment. After a time she said again, in a very scared voice, "Oh."

This seemed so inane even to her that she hunted about wretchedly for some more suitable comment. Finally she breathed, "I'm sorry," without looking at Grace, and felt more scared than ever. She wasn't sorry, not at the moment; she wasn't not sorry. She wasn't anything. She wanted to open the taxi door and fly. Grace said nothing further.

Once in a while Anita stole a glance at her and saw her sitting there, huddled, with big eyes in a thin face, twisting her handkerchief tight enough to tear it, twisting and tearing with fingers like teeth. She herself kept very quiet, hardly taking breath so as not to disturb the dim compassion that rose like a mist between them and embraced them and held them both, wordless, in her shadowy arms.