Chapter II

Because Corinna’s parents were poor, when she finished high school at eighteen, she knew she had to do something to support herself until such time as marriage should relieve her of the necessity of buying her own clothes and helping at home. She felt that school-teaching required too much training—would be tiresome—and, besides, most teachers became old maids in the end. She didn’t want to go into a store. She had no special talent or ambition. So she went to a business college and, after eight months—she was not very clever or quick in learning word-signs—she was able to take a business letter with fair rapidity and transcribe it with some degree of accuracy on the typewriter.

She liked the profession of stenographer. It was decent, dressy. She even looked ahead to becoming some one’s private secretary, wearing good clothes and sweeping in, half an hour later than the other stenographers, to an office marked “private,” being consulted on numerous business problems—saving the firm money by her wisdom—and maybe marrying the boss in the end.

Her first position lasted two months, her next three. Then she got with a wholesale hardware concern and took dictation a bit more rapidly from the stove buyer, a married man who had four children and who was always worrying about catching cold. She settled down, fairly comfortably, making enough money to wear nice clothes, arriving at the office always a bit late in the morning, always anxious to leave a little before five at night, wasting too much time at noon or in the cloak-room gossiping with the other girls, but, on the whole, as good as the firm expected of her.

Corinna’s evenings were spent at dances or the theatre or going to bed at seven to make up for lost sleep. She accepted invitations from any one who asked her—men she met at the office or through girls, old school acquaintances. She didn’t care particularly for any of them, but wanted to be with men, especially those who wore good clothes and knew how to treat a girl. She was lively and vivacious, rather a pretty girl in a light, indistinct way, with a nice mouth and a pretty little nose.

This smoothness of days at the office, and of evenings having a good time, continued until Corinna was twenty. Then she fell in love.

She had been waiting, poised, to fall in love for a long time. She had been eagerly looking for love, watching every man she met with a kind of painful eagerness, ready to yield affection at the first opportunity. She met the fellow at a semi-public dance, where she was taken by a boy she had met at business college. The man she fell in love with was named Rodney Cantwell and her escort had known him and had introduced them.

All night, after that first meeting, the name “Rodney, Rodney,” went through her mind. Rodney Cantwell! He was quite wonderful, all that a man one loved ought to be. He was tall, with light, rather rough hair, which he brushed back from his forehead in an uneven sweep. His eyes seemed a mysterious blue-grey. He held them half-closed, squinting when he laughed. He danced better than any one Corinna had ever danced with. He asked her to go to a dance with him the following week.

All week Corinna lived in a sort of delirium. She borrowed money from her mother and bought a new evening dress of flimsy pink silk, with no wearing qualities—Corinna usually was rather careful to get durable things. She thought of nothing but Rodney, to the detriment of her dictation and the stove-buyer’s temper.

On Saturday night, when Rodney called, she met him with a delicious lump of expectancy in her throat. She learned, suddenly, without experience, a new coquetry. Before this, she had been, with the boys and young men she knew, more or less natural, as natural, that is, as girls ever are with men. There had been a sort of decent companionship. Suddenly, this was changed.

On the way to the dance she found herself talking with a new piquancy, hinting at adventures she had never had, admirers she had never known, a life that was non-existent. She tried to make herself valuable, desirable. She became playful, indifferent. At the dance the music seemed especially fascinating. She hardly spoke to the few people she knew there, preferring to dance every dance with Rodney, letting herself lie, hardly conscious, in his arms as she danced.

At the door of her apartment, as he took her home, he put his arms around her and kissed her. Other men had kissed her, but only after much playful fencing, long acquaintanceship. Now, she yielded to Rodney’s kisses in a way she had never done. After he had left her, she lay awake most of the night and spent the rest of it and all of Sunday morning, dreaming of him.