Chapter III: Part 3

I was glad of that. Also I was interested in something else, and I mentioned it to Mr. Farrell. I told him I had felt sure my story was spoiled because I had left so much out of it. The city editor looked at me, and then jerked his head toward the story on the wall.

"It's what you left out of it," he said, "that makes that a model story."

IV

IN GAY BOHEMIA

The office door opened with a rush and shut with a bang. In the little whirlwind caused by the draught it made, the papers on our desks rose, swirled in the air, and played tag upon the floor. Everybody but me stopped work and glanced up to nod or frown at the woman who had come in. I did not stop. I knew too well who it was. There was only one person on the _Searchlight_ whose entrance caused that sort of commotion. Besides, I had heard the whisper of silk petticoats, and smelled the strong odor of _peau d'Espagne_ which always preceded Miss Mollie Merk to her desk.

Mollie Merk was Mr. Hurd's most sensational woman reporter--the one who went up in air-ships and described her sensations, or purposely fell in front of trolley-cars to prove that the fenders would not work. She was what she herself called a "breezy writer," but her breeziness did not exhaust itself in her literature. She was a breezy person generally--small and thin and dark, and so full of vitality that she always arrived anywhere as if she had been projected by some violent mechanical force. She spoke very rapidly, in short explosive sentences. She openly despised the young and made epigrams about them to show her scorn. Before I had been on the _Searchlight_ a week she announced that I would be endurable if I had a redeeming vice; and our fellow-reporters went around quoting that remark and grinning over it. After I had written a few "big stories" her manner changed to one of open wonder, and she began to call me "the convent kid" and give me advice, addressing me as if I were an infant class. When she was in the same room with me I felt that she was mentally patting my head. I appreciated her kind heart and her value to the _Searchlight_; but I did not really like Mollie Merk.

Usually when she catapulted into the office she exchanged a few shouts of greeting with "the boys" and then went directly to her desk, where she dropped into her chair like a bag of ballast from a balloon, and began to write with a pen that scratched louder than any other. But to-night she followed the _peau d'Espagne_ across the room to me and clapped her hand on my shoulder.

"'Lo, Iverson," she said, in her loud and breathless way. "Still on the job? 'Can' it. I'm your vesper-bell."

I felt myself instinctively drop away from her hand. In her greeting she had done two things I particularly disliked. She had called me "Iverson"--it was a vulgar habit of hers to address other women by their last names--and she had spoken of something connected with my convent life, which was too sacred to be joked about. Still, I knew she meant well. I looked up at her and tried to smile, but all I could do was to drag one side of my mouth down to my chin in humble imitation of Mr. Hurd when he is talking to a member of the staff. Mollie Merk seemed to appreciate it. She roared, and her hand clapped my shoulder again.

"Cheer up, Iverson," she said. "Worst's yet to come." And she added, all in one breath, "I'm-going-to-give-a-party-for-you!"

I dropped my pen and turned in my chair to stare at her.

"Been meaning to do it right along," she jerked out. "Couldn't pull it off. To-night's my chance. Nothing to do. Fell down on my story. Hurrah! Give you a Bohemian dinner. Show you life outside the cloister. Purple pasts. Crimson presents. All the rest of it. Make your hair curl and your eyes stick out. Come on!"

Her words gave me a thrill, on which I immediately put down the stern brake of conscience. As a student of life I wanted to see and learn all I could--especially as I intended to be a nun in three years and would have no further chances. But was I justified in deliberately turning aside to seek such knowledge, when in the broad path of my daily duty I was already acquiring more than one person could understand? Also, would it be right to accept Mollie Merk's hospitality when I did not approve of her? I decided that it would not; and I tried to think of some polite and gracious way of declining her invitation, but the right words did not come. I had no social engagements, for I was still a stranger in New York, and Mollie Merk knew it; and I had not learned to tell lies with unstudied ease.

Finally an inspiration came to me. I could make an engagement and then keep it. I thanked Miss Merk and told her I intended to dine with my classmates Maudie Joyce and Kittie James. They had come to New York the day before with Kittie's sister, Mrs. George Morgan; and as they were only to stay a week, I felt that I must see all I could of them. As a matter of fact, I had dined with them the previous night, but that did not matter. I knew they would be glad to see me, even two nights in succession.

Mollie Merk was interested as soon as I spoke of them. "Classmates?" she yelped. "Two more convent kids?"

I admitted coldly that Maudie and Kittie had been graduated with me from St. Catharine's the month before.

"All right," said Mollie Merk. "Have 'em with us. Great. More convent kids the merrier. Invite their chaperon, too. I'll get Mrs. Hoppen. Hen-party of six."

I hesitated. Mrs. George Morgan would hardly approve of Mollie Merk, but she would find her a new type. Mrs. Morgan liked new types and strange experiences, and had seen many of them, for her husband was a wealthy Chicago man who wrote plays. Moreover, Mrs. Hoppen would be with us, and Mrs. Morgan would surely like her. Mrs. Hoppen was the city editor's star woman reporter, and very old--older even than Mollie Merk, who was at least twenty-five. Mrs. Hoppen, I had heard, was over thirty. She was rather bitter and blasé at times, but usually she had charming manners. I told Miss Merk I would get Mrs. Morgan on the telephone and ask if she and the girls could come, and within five minutes I was in the _Searchlight's_ telephone-booth calling up her hotel.

It was Maudie Joyce who answered, and she uttered a cry of joy when I told her of Mollie Merk's invitation. She said Mrs. Morgan had gone to bed with a sick-headache, and that she and Kittie James had been just about sick, too, over the prospect of a whole evening shut up alone in hotel rooms when so much Life was going to waste in the outer world. Then she turned from the telephone and repeated Mollie's message. I observed that she did not say anything about the dinner being Bohemian and making our eyes stick out, though I had faithfully repeated our hostess's words. Almost immediately her voice, breathless with joy, came over the wire again, telling me that she and Kittie could dine with us, and that Mrs. Morgan was very grateful to Miss Merk for saving her young friends from a lonely evening.

The girls were waiting when we three reached the hotel, and my heart swelled with pride as I introduced them. Mrs. Hoppen and Mollie Merk and I were, of course, in our office clothes, as we had not gone home to dress; but Kittie and Maudie were beautifully gowned for the evening. They were both as charming as Helleu drawings, and in the same exquisitely finished way; and their manners were so perfect that I could almost hear Mollie Merk trying to climb up to them. By the time the five of us had crowded into the taxi-cab, with the little bustle and confusion the effort caused, everybody liked everybody else. Maudie and Kittie were very proud of being with three newspaper women, and showed it; and they were so fascinated by Mollie Merk that they could not keep their eyes off her.

Of course, too, they were quivering with delight over the throngs, the noise, the brilliant electric signs, the excitement on every side, and the feeling that they were in the midst of it. Even I, though I had been in New York for a whole month and was a reporter at that, felt an occasional thrill. But as I leaned back and watched the faces of my two friends, I realized that, though we three were about the same age, in experience I was already a thousand years in advance of them. So many things had happened in the past month--things we girls at St. Catharine's had never heard of--things I could not even mention to Kittie and Maudie. I felt that I had lost a great deal which they still retained, and I expected a deep sadness to settle upon my soul. But someway it did not.

The cab stopped at a restaurant ornamented by a huge electric sign, and we got out and walked into a marble-lined vestibule. Mollie Merk and Mrs. Hoppen led the way, and I followed them with an easy, accustomed step. To dine at a great New York restaurant was just as novel to me as it was to Maudie and Kittie, but they did not know this, and I sincerely hoped they would not find it out.

A maid took our wraps in the anteroom, and sent us in single file along a narrow hall to enter a huge room at the end of it, ablaze with electric light, and full of smoke and music and little tables with people sitting at them. All the tables were clustered close together around the four sides of the room, leaving a big square space in the center, roped off by a heavy red cord. It was empty, and I wondered what it was for. Above there was a balcony with more tables and people at them. There was laughter everywhere, some of it quite loud, and many voices were speaking in many tongues. Above it all the band at the head of the room poured forth gay music. I could hear Maudie and Kittie draw quick breaths of delight, and my own feet hardly touched the ground as we followed the head waiter to the table reserved for us.

There were bottles and glasses on most of the tables, and even the women were helping to empty them. But I knew that many good people drink wine in moderation, so I was not greatly shocked. After all, this was New York--Bohemia, a new world. We were in it, and I at least was of it. The reflection sent a thrill down my spine--the kind that goes all the way. I felt almost wicked, and strangely happy.

When we were seated at our table Mollie Merk asked if we would have cocktails. She spoke with a very casual air, and we tried to decline in the same manner, though I am sure that Maudie and Kittie felt their hair rise then and there. Even my own scalp prickled. I explained in an offhand way that we never drank anything but water, so Mollie Merk ordered some Apollinaris for us, and two cocktails "with a dash of absinthe in them" for Mrs. Hoppen and herself. For five minutes afterward Kittie and Maudie and I did not speak. We were stunned by the mere sound of that fatal word.

Mollie Merk seemed to understand our emotions, for she began to tell us about her first experience with absinthe, years ago, in Paris, when she drank a large gobletful as if it had been a glass of lemonade. She said it was the amount a Frenchman would spend an entire afternoon over, sipping it a few drops at a time at a little sidewalk table in front of some cafe; but that she gulped it down in a few swallows, and then had just enough intelligence left to get into a cab and tell the _cocher_ to drive her around for three hours. She said she had ordered the man to keep to the Boulevards, but that he had taken her through the Milky Way and to the places where the morning stars sang together, and that she had distinctly heard them sing. Afterward, she added, she had traveled for centuries through space, visiting the most important objects in the universe and admiring color effects, for everything was pulsing with purple and gold and amethyst lights.

As a student of Life I admired the unerring instinct with which Mollie Merk had chosen her subject when she started in to make our eyes stick out. But if this was the beginning, what would be the end? At last Maudie Joyce, who had always had the manner of a woman of the world, even when she was a school-girl, pulled herself together and asked smilingly if Miss Merk's cocktail had swept her into space this time. Mollie Merk sighed and said, alas, no; those were the joys of yesteryear, and that the most a cocktail could do for her at present was to make her forget her depression after she had received a letter from home. Then a calcium light blazed from above, making a brilliant circle on the floor inside the red ropes. The musicians struck into wild Oriental music, and two mulattoes came into the limelight and began to dance.

They were a man and a woman, very young, and in evening dress. They padded into the ring like two black panthers, the woman first, circling slowly around in time to the music, which was soft and rather monotonous, and the man revolving slowly after her. At first she seemed not to see him, but to be dancing by herself, for the love of it, and there was beauty in every movement she made. I forgot all about the dinner, the people, my friends and my hostess, and leaned forward, watching.

Suddenly she looked over her shoulder and discovered the man. She quickened her steps a little, and the musicians played faster, while she circled in and out, as if through the tangled growths of some dense jungle. I could almost see it springing up around her and hear the sound of animals moving near her--wild things like herself. She was very sure of herself as she writhed and twisted, and she had reason to be; for, however fast the man came toward her, she was always a little in advance of him. The music swelled into a sudden crash of sound as he gave a leap and caught her. But she dipped and slipped out of his hands and whirled away again, sometimes crouching close to the ground, sometimes revolving around him with a mocking smile. Once, as he leaped, she bent and let him go over her; again he caught her, but a second time she slipped away.

At last the violins sent forth only a queer, muted, barbaric hum, broken by a crash of cymbals as the man made his final spring and captured the woman, this time holding her fast. There was a delirious whirl of sound and motion while he held her up and performed a kind of jungle _pas seule_ before he carried her away. The music grew slower and slower and finally stopped; but for an instant or two after the dancers had disappeared it seemed to me that I could still see the man bearing his burden steadily through strange tropical growths and under trees whose poisonous branches caught at him as he passed.

I turned and looked at Maudie and Kittie. They were sitting very still, with their eyes fixed on the spot where the dancers had been. I knew what they were thinking, and they knew I knew; but when they caught my glance they both began to speak at once, and eagerly, as if to reassure me. Maudie said the woman's clothes were in excellent taste, and Kittie murmured that such violent exercise must be very reducing. Kittie is extremely plump, and she loves good food so much that she is growing plumper all the time. In her interest in the dance she had forgotten her dinner, and now the waiter was taking away a portion of salmon with a delicious green sauce before she had eaten even a mouthful of it. That agonizing sight immediately diverted Kittie's mind, and I was glad.

Mollie Merk met my startled eyes and grinned. "Cheer up, Iverson!" she exclaimed. "Worst's yet to come, you know."

I managed to smile back at her. This was Life, and we were seeing it, but I began to feel that we had seen enough for an evening. I tried to remind myself again that we were in Bohemia, but under the look in Maudie's eyes I felt my face grow hot. It was I who had brought her and Kittie here--I and my new friends. What would Sister Irmingarde think of me if she knew?

I had little time for such mournful reflections. There was a stir on the musicians' platform as all the players but one laid aside their instruments and filed out through a side door. This one, the first violin, came down on the floor and walked about among the diners, stopping at different tables. Every time he stopped, I discovered, it was to play to some particular woman who had caught his eye. He was tall and good-looking in his gipsy costume, with a wide red sash around his waist, a white-silk shirt open at the neck, short velvet trousers, and a black-velvet coat. Under his dark mustache his teeth looked very white as he smiled, and he smiled often, or sighed and made eyes at the women as he played to them.

I glanced at Kittie and Maudie. They were watching the gipsy with absorbed interest.

He must have caught Maudie's eye, for suddenly he crossed to our table and began to play to her--turning occasionally to Kittie and me for a second only, while his violin shrieked and moaned and sighed and sang in a way that made our hearts turn over. I could see by their faces, which were pink with excitement, and by their shining eyes, what emotions the moment held for my young friends, and certainly it was thrilling enough for three girls just out of school to have a genius playing to them alone in one of the gayest restaurants in New York.

For a few moments I was delighted with the gipsy and his music. Then I began to notice the way he looked at us, alternately half-closing and slowly opening his eyes as he put his soul into his music. He seemed to be immensely interested in Maudie, and played to her much longer than he did to any one else. Several times he came so close to her that I was afraid he would touch her.

The other musicians had returned by this time, and were playing an accompaniment to the violinist, who had swung into a Brahms waltz. When he had finished the first movement he stopped playing, tucked his violin under his arm, and held out his hand to Maudie, with his most brilliant smile. She turned first red, then white, and shrank away from him in her chair, while instinctively I, too, threw out my hands to ward him off. He turned to me and took them at once, holding them tight and trying to pull me to my feet. My heart stopped beating as I resisted his drag on my wrists, and I looked at Mollie Merk and Mrs. Hoppen, expecting them to spring up and interfere. But for a moment they both sat regarding the scene as indifferently as if they were at a play.

At last Mrs. Hoppen shook her head at the musician with her bored little smile, and he bowed and shrugged his shoulders and went off to a table some distance away, where he began to play to another woman.

Mollie Merk leaned toward me. "Say, Iverson," she exclaimed, in a tone that must have reached the diners in the balcony, "what's up? You're as white as your copy-paper. Which is it--indigestion or cold feet?"

Her words pulled me together. It was natural that I should look pale, for by this time I was frightened--not for myself, but for Kittie and Maudie. They, I could see, though embarrassed and ill at ease, were not yet frightened. I knew why. _I_ was there, and they trusted me. They were sure that nothing could harm them while I was with them. I set my teeth in the determination that nothing should.

More entertainers came into the space shut off by the red cords. Every moment the room grew closer and hotter, the smoke around us became thicker, the atmosphere of excitement increased. The faces of Kittie and Maudie began to float before me in a kind of mist. I decided that if I ever got them out into a clean world again I would have nothing left to pray for. But I knew I could not wipe the evening and its incidents from their memories, and that knowledge was the hardest thing I had to bear.

In desperation I turned from the dancers and began to watch the diners. The way these accepted the dancing and the actions of the gipsy had shown me at once what they were, and now they were becoming gayer every minute and more noisy. Some of them got up occasionally and whirled about together on the dancing-floor. Many sang accompaniments to the violins. These men and women were moths, I reflected, whirling about a lurid flame of life. There were dozens of young girls in the room--many without chaperons.

Directly opposite me two persons--a man, and a girl in a white dress--sat at a table alone, absorbed in each other. At first I glanced at them only occasionally and idly, then with growing interest and at last with horror, for I began to understand. The girl had a sweet, good face, but a brief study of the man showed me what he was. He was short and stout, with a bald head and a round, pleasure-loving face. It was not so much his appearance, however, as the way he watched the girl which betrayed him to me. He hardly took his eyes from her face. Whatever was going on in the dancing-place, he looked at her; and she, leaning a little forward in her chair, listened to him as he talked, and swayed toward him. I saw him tap her hand, which lay on the table, with his fat forefinger. The sight revolted me, but she did not draw her hand away.

As I watched her I thought of all the dreadful things I had heard and read and seen since I had been in New York, and wondered if the time would ever come when I would be old enough and wise enough to rise and go to a girl in such a situation and ask her if she needed help. It seemed impossible that women experienced enough to do this with dignity and courage should sit around to-night, all unheeding, and let such things go on. Then looking at them again, table by table, I read the answer. They were themselves the lost and strayed--callous, indifferent, with faces and hearts hardened by the lives they had led. I began to feel sick and faint, and for a moment I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, coming toward us slowly through the crowd was Godfrey Morris, the assistant of Nestor Hurd, my chief on the _Searchlight_. It was plain that he had just entered, for he was looking around in search of a table. I shall never forget the feeling that came over me when I recognized him. Now that he was there, I felt absolutely safe. I had almost a vision of him picking up Maudie and Kittie and me and taking us bodily away, and the relief and gratitude I felt showed me how great my inward panic had been. I kept my eyes on him, hoping he would turn and see me, but he was looking in another direction. Still, he was drawing nearer, and I sat tight and waited in silence, though I wanted to call out to him above the uproar around us.

It did not surprise me to see the girl in white put out her hand as he passed her table and touch him on the arm. He stopped at once, looking a little surprised, and then stood for a moment beside her and the stout man, talking quietly to them both. I waited breathlessly. Now he was speaking to the man alone, probably urging him to leave the place. And then--I heard a sound as unexpected in that place as an altar-bell. Mr. Morris had thrown back his head and laughed, and as he laughed he smote the stout man heavily on the shoulder and dropped into a chair beside him. The stout man filled a glass. I saw Mr. Morris lift it, bow to the girl in white, and drink its contents.

I lived a long, long time during the next minute. I cannot describe my emotions. I only knew that in that instant life seemed unbearable and New York became a city I could not remain in any longer. Surely nothing could be right in a place where even Godfrey Morris came to resorts like this, not as a knight to the rescue of helplessness, but as a familiar patron, who was there because he enjoyed it and found congenial friends.

It was impossible to take my eyes from the horrible group at that table. I kept on staring, and, as if he felt my gaze, Mr. Morris turned around and saw me. The next instant he was on his feet, and a second after that he was shaking hands with Mrs. Hoppen and Mollie Merk and me. Evidently, he was neither surprised to find us there nor ashamed to be found there himself. When he was presented to Kittie and Maudie his manner was exactly as it might have been if he were meeting them at an afternoon tea, and he settled down comfortably into the sixth place at our table, which Mrs. Morgan had been invited to fill, and chatted as if he had known the girls all his life.

I have no idea what he said. It did not matter. After the first few moments Maudie and Kittie were able to talk to him. I heard their voices, but not their words. I sat with my eyes on the table-cloth and my cheeks burning. I wanted to get away that minute. I wanted to go to my home, out West. Most of all, I wanted to return to the convent and never, never leave it.

The gipsy was playing among the tables again, and now he was quite near us. But I had reached the point where I was not even interested when he turned, caught sight of our new companion, and crossed quickly to our table, his hand outstretched to Mr. Morris, his face shining like an electric globe when the light has been turned on inside of it.

Mr. Morris greeted him like a long-lost brother. "Hello, Fritz!" he exclaimed, taking his hand in a most friendly grasp. "Business good? How are the kids?"

The gipsy revealed the widest smile of the evening as he answered. "_Ach_, Herr Morris," he cried, in a guttural German voice that simply dripped affection, "you remember dose kids? T'ree we had--_aber_ now, _now_ we got anoder one--since Tuesday!"

"Good!" cried Mr. Morris, looking around as if he expected us all to share his joy over the glad tidings. "Girl or boy?"

"Girl," the gipsy player told him. "T'ree boys we had. Now we haf girl for change. We t'ink, my wife and I, we make her noospaper woman. Goot idea, _nicht wahr_?"

He laughed, and Mr. Morris laughed with him. "Fine," he declared. "Send her down to the _Searchlight_ office in a week or two. We'll give her Miss Merk's job."

Everybody laughed again, Mollie Merk, of course, loudest of all. The musician bade us good night, beginning to play again at the tables. I had forgotten about Kittie and Maudie, but now I knew they had been listening, too, for I heard Kittie speak.

"Why, that gipsy isn't a gipsy at all, is he?" she gasped.

"No more than I am," Mollie Merk told her. "Wears the rig because it pays--pleases romantic girls." She grinned at us, while Mrs. Hoppen leaned forward.

"I'm afraid you hurt his feelings," she told Maudie and me, "by refusing his invitation to dance a little while ago. That was the greatest compliment he could pay you, you know."

Mr. Morris looked amused. "Did he invite them to dance?" he inquired, with interest. "Good old Fritz. He doesn't often do that, this season."

Maudie and I exchanged a long glance. "I thought--" Maudie began, and then stopped. I was glad she said no more. I looked again at the gipsy, and, as if something had been stripped from my eyes, I saw him as he was--no reckless and desperate adventurer, but a matter-of-fact German, his silk shirt rather grimy, his black hair oily, his absurd red sash and shabby velvet coat rebukes to the imagination that had pictured a wild gipsy heart beating under them.

Mr. Morris was smiling at the girl in white. Now he turned to me and nodded toward her. "That's Miss Hastings and George Brook," he said. "Have you met them yet?" I was able to shake my head. "Well, it's high time you did," were his next words. "I'll bring them over."

He rose, but I caught his arm and gasped out something that stopped him. I don't remember what I said, but I succeeded in making him understand that I did not want that particular man to meet my friends. Mr. Morris stared at me hard for a moment. Then he sat down again and looked me straight in the eyes.

"Miss Iverson," he said, quietly, "what have you against Brook? He's the foreign editor of the _Searchlight_, and one of the best fellows alive."

I could not speak. I was too much surprised.

"The girl he's with," Morris went on, "is Marion Hastings--Mrs. Cartwell's social secretary. She and Brook are going to be married next week."

He waited for me to reply. I muttered something about not wanting my friends to meet any one in this place. That was all I said. My self-control, my poise, had deserted me, but perhaps my burning face was more eloquent than my tongue. Mr. Morris looked from me to Maudie, and then at Kittie, and finally back at me.

"I see," he said at last, very slowly. "You three actually think you are in a den of iniquity!"

He turned to Mollie Merk and addressed her as crisply and with as much authority as if they were in the _Searchlight_ office.

"How did you come to give Miss Iverson that impression?" he demanded.

Mollie Merk looked guilty. "Didn't realize she had it till within the last half-hour," she muttered.

"I see," said Morris again, in the same tone. "And then it was such fun for you that you let it go on!"

For a moment Miss Merk seemed inclined to sulk. Then she threw herself back in her chair and laughed. "Oh, well," she admitted, "'twas fun. Know what started her. Said something about showing her Life--making her eyes stick out. Adding her friends to the party changed the program. Brought 'em here instead. Seeing us drink cocktails started her panic. Harlem tango did the rest. Her imagination got busy."

I listened to her as one listens to a strange tongue in which one hears an occasional familiar word. She turned to me. "What that dance represents," she said, "is a suburbanite catching a cook. Least, that's what the inventor says."

"It's very graceful. My nieces dance it charmingly," Mrs. Hoppen added, mildly.

Mr. Morris smiled, but not as if he really wanted to. Then he turned to me. There was a beautiful, understanding look in his gray eyes.

"Do you realize what has happened, Miss Iverson?" he asked. "You've been having a bad dream. You expected something lurid, so you have seen something lurid in everything you have looked at to-night. In reality you are in one of the most eminently correct restaurants in New York. Of course it has its _cabaret_--most of them have, this season--but it's an extremely well-conducted and conservative one, with no objectionable features whatever. Now look around you and try to see things as they are."

He made a gesture with his hand, and I followed it slowly around the room. At most of the tables ordinary-looking couples sat contentedly munching food. A German woman near us was telling a friend how she cooked _Wiener Schnitzel_. A tired-looking girl was doing an acrobatic dance in the ring, but it was not vulgar. It was merely foolish and dull. Three men on our left were arguing over some business question and adding up penciled columns on the table-cloth. Our wild-hearted gipsy, Fritz, was having a glass of beer with some friends off in a corner. The musicians were playing "The Rosary," and several fat women were lost in mournful memories. Not far away a waiter dropped a tray and broke some glasses, and the head waiter hastened to him and swore under his breath. That was the only lurid thing in the room, and it was mild indeed to ears familiar with the daily conversation of Mr. Hurd and Colonel Cartwell. Everything else suddenly, unmistakably, was simple, cheerful, entirely proper, and rather commonplace.

"So much for the restaurant," remarked Mr. Morris, smiling as if he had observed my change of expression. "Now for the people. That's the editor of the _Argus_ over there"--he pointed to a thin, blond man--"with his daughters. At the table next to them is Miss Blinn, the artist. The stout old lady who is eating too much is her mother. The chap with the white hair is the leading editorial-writer of the _Modern Review_, and the lady opposite is his sister. Almost every one prominent in New York drops into this place at one time or another. Many worthy citizens come regularly. It's quite the thing, though dull!"

"I know," I stammered. "I know." I did know, but I was humiliated to the soul. "Please don't say any more."

It is true that I form impressions quickly. It is also true that I can change them just as quickly when I am shown that I am wrong. Mr. Morris looked at my face, from which the blood now seemed to be bursting, and took pity on me.

"All I want," he ended, "is to make you realize that you're visiting a legitimate place of amusement and that the performers are honest, hard-working people, though I think myself they're going a bit stale."

"Been doing the same thing too long," corroborated Mollie Merk. "Garroti ought to change his program. Just the same," she added, cheerfully, as she called the waiter and paid the bill, "they give you the best _table d'hôte_ dinner in town. If you hadn't been too scared to eat, Iverson, you'd have realized that much, anyway!"

At this, Kittie James broke into the conversation. Here was something Kittie understood, though, like myself, she had been somewhat mixed as to the place and the performers. Kittie told Mollie Merk with impassioned earnestness that the dinner was one of the best she had ever eaten, and that she would never forget the flavor of the artichoke hearts with the mushrooms on them. Mollie Merk seemed pleased and patted Kittie's hand.

"You see," she went on, addressing the others as if I were not there, "Iverson's had a pretty hard time since she struck this town. It's jolted her sense of values. Thought everything was white. Had some unpleasant experiences. Decided everything was black. Been seeing black to-night. Take another month or two," she added, kindly, turning to me, "to discover most things are merely gray."

Those were her words. It was a moment of agony for me. I had now gone down into the abyss of humiliation and struck the bottom hard. Mr. Morris spoke to me, though at first I did not hear him.

"Don't forget one thing, Miss Iverson," he said, gently. "An imagination like yours is the greatest asset a writer can have. You'll appreciate it when you begin work on your novels and plays in a year or two."

I felt a little better. I could see that Maudie and Kittie were impressed.

We drifted out into the street, toward a row of waiting taxi-cabs. There Mrs. Hoppen and Mollie Merk bade us good night, and Mr. Morris put Maudie and Kittie and me into a taxi-cab and got in after us. His manner was beautiful--serious, sympathetic, and deeply respectful. On the way to the hotel he told them what good work I was doing, and about the "model story" I had written two weeks before. I was glad he spoke of those things. I was afraid they had discovered that, after all, there were still many lessons in life I had not learned.

After I had gone up to my room I went to one of the windows facing Madison Square and looked out. It was not late--hardly eleven o'clock, and the big city below was wide awake and hard at play. Many sad and terrible things were happening in it, but I knew that many kind and beautiful things were happening, too. I felt sure that hereafter I would always be able to tell them apart.

Later, when I closed my eyes, all sorts of pictures crowded upon me. I saw the mulatto dancer pursuing the Harlem cook. I heard again Fritz's wild gipsy music and saw him wandering among the tables. I saw the stout man and the girl in white, and felt my face burn as I recalled what I had thought of them. But the thing I saw most clearly, the thing that followed me into the land of dreams and drifted about there till morning, was the face of Godfrey Morris, with a look of sympathy and understanding in his gray eyes.

V

THE CASE OF HELEN BRANDOW

"'S Iverson," barked Nestor Hurd, over the low partition which divided his office from that of his staff, "c'm' here!"

I responded to his call with sympathetic haste. It had been a hard day for Mr. Hurd. Everything had gone wrong. Every reporter he had sent out seemed to be "falling down" on his assignment and telephoning in to explain why. Next to failures, our chief disliked explanations. "A dead man doesn't care a hang what killed him," was his terse summing up of their futility.

He was shouting an impassioned monologue into the telephone when I reached his side, and as a final exclamation-point he hurled the receiver down on his desk, upsetting a bottle of ink. I waited in silence while he exhausted the richest treasures of his vocabulary and soaked up the ink with blotters. It was a moment for feminine tact, and I exercised it, though I was no longer in awe of Mr. Hurd. I had been on the _Searchlight_ a year, and the temperamental storms of my editors now disturbed me no more than the whirling and buzzing of mechanical tops. Even Mollie Merk had ceased to call me the "convent kid." I had made many friends, learned many lessons, suffered many disappointments, lost many illusions, and taken on some new ones. I had slowly developed a sense of humor--to my own abysmal surprise. The memory of my convent had become as the sound of a vesper-bell, heard occasionally above the bugle-calls of a strenuous life. Also, I had learned to avoid "fine writing," which is why my pen faltered just now over the "bugle-calls." I knew my men associates very well, and admired most of them, though they often filled me with a maternal desire to stand them in a corner with their faces to the wall. I frequently explained to them what their wives or sweethearts really meant by certain things they had said. I was the recognized office authority on good form, Catholicism, and feminine psychology. Therefore I presented to Mr. Hurd's embittered glance the serene brow of an equal--even on occasions such as this, when the peace of the office lay in fragments around us.

At last he ceased to address space, threw the blotters into his waste-paper basket, and turned resentful eyes on me.

"Gibson's fallen down on the Brandow case," he snapped.

I uttered a coo of sympathy.

"The woman won't talk," continued Hurd, gloomily. "Don't believe she'll talk to any one if she won't to Gibson. But we'll give her 'nother chance. Go 'n' see her."

I remained silent.

"You've followed the trial, haven't you?" Mr. Hurd demanded. "What d'you think of the case?"

I murmured apologetically that I thought Mrs. Brandow was innocent, and the remark produced exactly the effect I had expected. My chief gave me one look of unutterable scorn and settled back in his chair.

"Great Scott!" he groaned. "So you've joined the sobbing sisterhood at last! I wouldn't have believed it. 'S Iverson"--his voice changed, he brought his hand down on the desk with a force that made the ink-bottle rock--"that woman's as guilty as--as--"

I reminded him that the evidence against Mrs. Brandow was purely circumstantial.

"Circumstantial? 'Course it's circumstantial!" yelped Hurd. "She's too clever to let it be anything else. She has hidden every track. She's the slickest proposition we've had up for murder in this state, and she's young, pretty, of good family--so she'll probably get off. But she killed her husband as surely as you stand there, and the fact that he was a brute and deserved what he got doesn't make her any less guilty of his murder."

It was a long speech for Mr. Hurd. He seemed surprised by it himself, and stopped to glare at me as if I were to blame for the effort it had caused him.

"You know Davies, her lawyer, don't you?" he asked, more quietly.

I did.

"Think he'll give you a letter to her?"

I thought he would.

"'L right," snapped Mr. Hurd. "Go 'n' see her. If she'll talk, get an interview. If she won't, describe her and her cell. Tell how she looks and what she wears--from the amount of hair over her ears to the kind of polish on her shoes. Leave mawkish sympathy out of it. See her as she is--a murderess whose trial is going to make American justice look like a hole in a doughnut."

I went back to my desk thinking of his words. While I was pinning on my hat the door of Mr. Hurd's room opened and shut, and his assistant, Godfrey Morris, came and stood beside me.

"I don't want to butt in," he began, "but--I hope you're going on this assignment with an open mind, Miss Iverson."

That hurt me. For some reason it always hurt me surprisingly to have Godfrey Morris show any lack of faith in me in any way.

"I told Mr. Hurd," I answered, with dignity, "that I think Mrs. Brandow is innocent. But my opinion won't--"

"I know." Mr. Morris's ability to interrupt a speaker without seeming rude was one of his special gifts. "Hurd thinks she's guilty," he went on. "I think she's innocent. What I hope you'll do is to forget what any one thinks. Go to the woman without prejudice one way or the other. Write of her as you find her."

"That," I said, "is precisely what I intend to do."

"Good!" exclaimed Morris. "I was afraid that what Hurd said might send you out with the wrong notion."

He strolled with me toward the elevator. "I never knew a case where the evidence for and against a prisoner was so evenly balanced," he mused. "I'm for her simply because I can't believe that a woman with her brains and courage would commit such a crime. She's too good a sport! By Jove, the way she went through that seven-hour session on the witness-stand the other day ..." He checked himself. "Oh, well," he ended, easily, "I'm not her advocate. She may be fooling us all. Good-by. Get a good story."

"I'll make her confess to me," I remarked, cheerfully, at the elevator door. "Then we'll suppress the confession!"

"We'll give her a square deal, anyway," he called, as the elevator began to descend.

It was easy to run out to Fairview, the scene of the trial, easy to get the letter from Mr. Davies, and easiest of all to interview the friendly warden of the big prison and send the note to Mrs. Brandow in her cell when she had returned from court. After that the broad highway of duty was no longer oiled. Very courteously, but very firmly, too, Mrs. Brandow declined to see me. Many messages passed between us before I was admitted to her presence on the distinct understanding that I was not to ask her questions, that I was not to quote anything she might say; that, in short, I was to confine the drippings of my gifted pen to a description of her environment and of herself. This was not a heartening task. Yet when the iron door of Number 46 on the women's tier of the prison had swung back to admit me my first glance at the prisoner and her background showed me that Mr. Hurd would have at least one "feature" for the _Searchlight_ the next morning.

On either side of Number 46 were typical white-painted and carbolic-scented cells--one occupied by an intoxicated woman who snored raucously on her narrow cot, the other by a wretched hag who clung to the bars of her door with filthy fingers and leered at me as I passed. Between the two was a spot as out of place in those surroundings as a flower-bed would seem on the stern brow of an Alpine glacier.

Mrs. Brandow, the newspapers had told the world, was not only a beautiful woman, but a woman who loved beauty. She had spent six months in Fairview awaiting her trial. All the members of the "good family" Mr. Hurd had mentioned had died young--probably as a reward of their excellence. She had no intimate friends--her husband, it was said, had made friendships impossible for her. Nevertheless, first with one trifle, then with another, brought to her by the devoted maid who had been with her for years, she had made herself a home in her prison.

Tacked on the wall, facing her small, white-painted iron bed, was a large piece of old Java print, its colors dimmed by time to dull browns and blues. On the bed itself was a cover of blue linen, and the cement floor was partly concealed by a Chinese rug whose rich tones harmonized with those of the print. Over the bed hung a fine copy of a Hobbema, in which two lines of trees stretched on and on toward a vague, far-distant horizon. Near this a large framed print showed a great stretch of Scotch moors and wide, empty skies. A few silver-backed toilet articles lay on a small glass-covered hospital table. Against this unlooked-for background the suspected murderess, immaculate in white linen tailor-made garments, sat on a white-enameled stool, peacefully sewing a button on a canvas shoe.

The whole effect was so unprecedented, even to me after a year of the varied experiences which come to a New York reporter, that my sense of the woman's situation was wiped out by the tableau she made. Without intending to smile at all, I smiled widely as I entered and held out my hand; and Mrs. Brandow, who had risen to receive me, sent back an answering smile, cool, worldly, and understanding.

"It _is_ a cozy domestic scene, isn't it?" she asked, lightly, reading my thoughts, "but on too small a scale. We're a trifle cramped. Take the stool. I will sit on the bed."

She moved the stool an inch, with a hospitable gesture which almost created an effect of space, and sat down opposite me, taking me in from head to foot with one straight look from black eyes in whose depths lurked an odd sparkle.

"You won't mind if I finish this?" she asked, as she picked up her needle. "I have only two more buttons."

I reassured her, and she bit off a piece of cotton and rethreaded her needle expertly.

"They won't let me have a pair of scissors," she explained, as she began to sew. "It's a wonder they lend me a needle. They tell me it's a special privilege. Once a week the guard brings it to me at this hour, and the same evening he retrieves it with a long sigh of relief. He is afraid I will swallow it and cheat the electric chair. He needn't be. It isn't the method I should choose."

Her voice was a soft and warm contralto, whose vibrations seemed to linger in the air when she had ceased to speak. Her manner was indescribably matter-of-fact. She gave a vigorous pull to the button she had sewed on and satisfied herself of its strength. Then she bit the thread again and began to secure the last button, incidentally chatting on, as she might have chatted to a friend over a cup of tea.

Very simply and easily, because it was my cue, but even more because I was immensely interested, I fell into her mood. We talked a long time and of many things. She asked about my work, and I gave her some details of its amusing side. She spoke of the books she had read and was reading, of places she had visited, and, in much the same tone, of her nights in prison, made hideous by her neighbors in near-by cells. As she talked, two dominating impressions strengthened in me momentarily: she was the most immaculate human being I had ever seen, and the most perfectly poised.

When she had sewed on the last button, fastening the thread with workman-like deftness, she opened a box of pipe-clay and whitened both shoes with a moist sponge.

"I don't quite know why I do all this," she murmured, casually. "I suppose it's the force of habit. It's surprising how some habits last and others fall away. The only wish I have now is that I and my surroundings may remain decently clean."

"May I quote that?" I asked, tentatively--"that, and what you have told me about the books you are reading?"

Her expression of indifferent tolerance changed. She regarded me with narrowed eyes under drawn, black brows. "No," she said, curtly. "You'll be good enough to keep to your bond. You agreed not to repeat a word I said."

I rose to go. "And I won't," I told her, "naturally. But I hoped you had changed your mind."

She rose also, the slight, ironic smile again playing about her lips. "No," she answered, in a gentler tone, "the agreement holds. But I don't wonder I misled you! I've prattled like a school-girl, and"--the smile subtly changed its character--"do you know, I've rather enjoyed it. I haven't talked to any one for months but my maid and my lawyer. Mary's chat is punctuated by sobs. I'm like a freshly watered garden when she ends her weekly visits. And the charms of Mr. Davies's conversation leave me cold. So this has been"--she hesitated--"a pleasure," she ended.

We shook hands again. "Thank you," I said, "and good-by. I hope"--In my turn I hesitated an instant, seeking the right words. The odd sparkle deepened in her eyes.

"Yes?" she murmured. "You hope--?"

"I hope you will soon be free," I ended simply.

Her eyes held mine for an instant. Then, "Thank you," she said, and turned away. The guard, who had waited outside with something of the effect of a clock about to strike, opened the iron door, and I passed through.

Late that night, after I had turned in my copy and received in acknowledgment the grunt which was Mr. Hurd's highest tribute to satisfactory work, I sat at my desk still thinking of the Brandow case. Suddenly the chair beside me creaked as Godfrey Morris dropped into it.

"Just been reading your Brandow story. Good work," he said, kindly. "Without bias, too. What do you think of the woman now, after meeting her?"

"She's innocent," I repeated, tersely.

"Then she didn't confess?" laughed Morris.

"No," I smiled, "she didn't confess. But if she had been guilty she might have confessed. She talked a great deal."

Morris's eyes widened with interest. The day's work was over, and he was in a mood to be entertained. "Did she?" he asked. "What did she say?"