Chapter II

She had hoped for a little life-insurance; her father’s wail had been, whenever she wanted a new hat: “I can’t, my dear. I’ve got to pay the life-insurance--twenty dollars.” She had never questioned him; it had seemed unkind, but she knew that there was some sort of a policy. She went through his papers, vaguely excited. There were a few letters from some one who signed herself “Darling,” written in a spidery hand on blue paper. Lilah threw the package into the waste basket, unread.... His knife. His precious letter of recommendation from Hadley.... A note, long overdue, forgotten, outlawed, hardly decipherable.... A long envelope containing snap-shots of his dog, Nellie, the old setter. Lilah felt a penetrating pity--her father, laughing, in a corduroy coat, with Nellie tugging at a leash. Her father, on a jig-saw veranda, with his pipe, and Nellie scratching fleas behind him.... Nellie.... Nellie....

The policy was not there. She emptied the drawers of an accumulation of cherished trash, all faded, incomprehensible.

She was interrupted by a caller, a thin, waspish man who tried to be amiable, as if he expected, before the interview was over, to be thoroughly disagreeable.

“Miss Norris? I represent Bilton and Chiswick, agents for this apartment. We have heard of your misfortune. We would like to know whether you intend to occupy the premises now that you are--alone--or whether you prefer to sub-lease.”

Lilah said impatiently: “I’ll let you know.”

He consulted a black book, very much thumbed. “Your lease expires in twenty days. Shall I prepare a new lease for the coming year? The rent, in all these apartments, has been raised. We are asking sixty-five a month for three rooms and bath.”

“How on earth does he know,” Lilah wondered, “that I’m broke?”

To shock him, she lighted a cigarette.

He jumped up. “We expect an answer in the morning. There’s a great demand for these apartments.”

“Is there?”

Lilah went with him to the door and shut him out with a bang. These agents had a mysterious money instinct--they could smell out poverty. Beasts!

She went back to the library, suddenly conscious of the inestimable blessing of a roof. She had sixty dollars. The doctor could be put off. Doctors never expected to be paid at once.... The nurse, no. Then, where would she be? Why hadn’t her father taught her to do something.... She had forgotten the grocer’s bill, the milk, ice, gas, newspaper....

She would have to borrow. From whom? Not Aunt Jo. Nor her father’s cronies, the book clerks. Nor from any of the professors and assistants. Every one she knew was poor, struggling, limited.

She signed a new lease. The waspish man was suspicious. He made a sucking sound with his tongue and snatched his fountain-pen back before Lilah had added the line and the two dots which usually ornamented her large, flourishing signature. She had no idea how she was going to thwart his obvious intention; he meant to evict her, bag and baggage, at the first opportunity. When he had gone, sucking his teeth all the way down stairs, Lilah telephoned David Brenner. He, at least, would know that coupons don’t grow in geranium pots.

He came, smiling in that way he had of cherishing a secret.

“David, I’m frightened.”

“Broke?”

She emptied her purse on the table. “Forty-one, seventy-seven.”

He shook his head. “I’m not sorry for you, Lilah. You’re looking into a mirror at what you think is life. And the mirror is a trick mirror--it enlarges, distorts everything. You see your poverty--colossal! You see your limitations--gigantic! You see your fear--enormous! And look here--look! The Truth! You’re a pretty little humbug. You can earn your living, only you’re afraid to.”

“David, I thought you loved me.”

“I do.”

The young Jew had eyes that went around her. “I do. Only--between the sublime and the ridiculous there is the breadth of a hair.”

“Am I ridiculous?”

“You are a little humbug,” he said stubbornly.

“What can I do? I won’t cook. I won’t take care of babies. I won’t be a chorus girl.”

“You’re too old.”

“Old?”

“Certainly. What else can you do?”

“I can make hats.”

Suddenly she raised her voice. “I hate poverty! It’s positively immoral.”

“What a pretty speech! Wait until you know real poverty, as I have known it! Did I ever tell you--I escaped from Russia when I was sixteen? I stowed away from Vladivostok to San Francisco and lived like a rat for three years. Only then my name wasn’t Brenner--it was a mouthful! I don’t hate poverty. I hate the system which permits poverty....”

Lilah interrupted. “I shan’t fail! I can get four with one and one-half. I’m quick. But I don’t like having to be quick. I prefer to wear chiffon and to walk in a garden....”

His eyes softened “Poor Lilah.”

“What shall I do?”

“Work.”

“_You_ don’t,” she said sharply.

But he would not part with his secret. Spreading out his hands, he shrugged, and let her believe anything. Suspected of having dodged the draft, David Brenner kept strange company, maintained an enigmatic silence and, like all morose and discontented intellectuals, appeared to be more important than he was. He wore a cloak of vague disapproval. It was more an atmosphere than a militant conviction. He was not a fighter. There was something adolescent in his moody distraction, his hauteur, his indifference.

“Lilah, I am an alley cat, pawing over garbage. I have come upon a glittering little fish, a fresh sardine--and that’s Lilah! I shall never be the same cat again.... I shall always be looking for sardines.... Will you lunch with me?”

She would.

They went to a Greenwich Village restaurant. In certain moods, Lilah enjoyed such places. She liked to sit aloof and peep between her fingers at these pathological bohemians. She smoked, veiled her eyes, and let David Brenner hold her hand. The table was a patch-work of initials and dates, egoistic trademarks. Lilah thought of Dante’s Tomb and the names scratched on the face of the Sphinx--little names, here and there, seen, gone ... nothing....

David Brenner was no better than Robert Peabody. Men only wanted to kiss her.

* * * * *

She left him and walked uptown, seeking the sacred pavements of upper Fifth Avenue with a deep breath of relief. Here, she could be herself. She drifted from one shop-window to another, absorbed, with something in her expression of the devotee. She might have been a woman of elegance, whereas she happened to be a little nobody with forty-one dollars and seventy-seven cents in the world.

Characteristically, she postponed thinking about the future. She enjoyed the great symphony of the streets. The crowds gave her a feeling of security.

She studied the hats. One, in particular, delighted her. It was _chinoiserie_, a poem in colored silks with a funny, pointed crown--no one but Lilah could wear such a hat.

She went on; came back to stare.... Delightful.... Her father had not wanted her to wear mourning. And this little hat would give her some sort of glow....

She went into the shop.

It was a gray, padded, mirrored place. And a woman in a black dress, too short, with long, square sleeves, came forward.

“The little hat in the window,” Lilah said in her best manner. “The Chinese one.” She made a gesture.

“Ah, yes.”

The hat was produced, twirled, tipped, turned upside down.

“Let me see.”

“Certainly.”

Lilah sat down before a mirror and removed the black hat and veil. She ran her fingers through her hair and gave a downward and upward thrust of her head to receive this crown of bright, twisted silks.

“Lanvin,” the saleswoman remarked.

“Really?”

“A copy.”

“I thought so.”

“But, Madam, it is exact. In everything. The silk; the ornament--you won’t see another.”

Lilah studied her profile. She was indeed a quaint and delightful little person....

“Do you like it?”

“Very becoming, Madam.”

Lilah felt a rush of excitement and pleasure.

“How much is it?”

“Thirty-five, Madam.”

“That seems--”

She broke off. It was really not expensive.

“You look very well indeed, Madam. You wear that type of hat wonderfully. So few can!”

“I’ll take it.”

The woman’s manner changed. “May I show you others? We have a few models--it is rather early.... One very beautiful straw, from Molineux. This one ... a little more to one side.... You wear hats so well.”

Lilah wanted to say: “I make them, too.”

Instead, she wrinkled up her nose and became very contemptuous. “I don’t like it.”

“No?”

She went out of the shop wearing the little silk turban, and carrying the black hat in a striped box inscribed: _La Mode Chez Annette_.

* * * * *

Beneath a slate-blue sky the light stone palaces of trade were curiously luminous. The Avenue itself, in shadow, was a revolving chain of motors; the great procession of glittering vehicles moved forward, stopped, was pierced by cross-town traffic, moved forward again. The Towers built about the Plaza rose into sunlight and were gilded at the tip. Lilah found the city very suave, mellow--there was none of the brazen clamor of Chicago, the sullen roar of London.... A woman approaching with a dog on a leash and wearing a long black cape and a plush tricorn, was like a figure by Longhi....

Lilah was conscious of a keen esthetic pleasure. The hat had restored her self-confidence, the certainty of success.

She was always alive to this pageant; its deeper meanings, its trend, escaped her. But she saw every face that passed--she could label them, put them in their niche. Old people touched her heart, if they were brave and jaunty; she could be infinitely sorry for some suffering and haughty face glimpsed in passing. The audacious, bow-legged, and blatant girl of the people, aping fashion, irritated her; vulgarity excluded the picturesque; there was nothing wistful about gum and lop-sided French heels. Lilah was not pitiless, but her pity was aroused by things in themselves not tragic--she was sorry only for the strong who are defeated by time or disease. The weak and helpless annoyed her because they made demands on her sympathy. She preferred to give, unsolicited.

* * * * *

She turned aside at Fifty-seventh Street, eager to wear the hat into all the high-roads of fashion.

Then, superior to fatigue, borne along on the crest of that little personal success, she walked downtown again, with her quick, short steps and the imperious carriage of her head, threading the impersonal crowds, stimulated, eager, warming herself against that pressure of life.

* * * * *

She climbed the four flights of carpeted stairs slowly. All the zest was gone. If her father were only there--some one--

A woman, rather tall, with a curious, ugly face and a bang of lightish hair under a queer hat, was leaning against the wall in the half-shadow at the top of the stairs.

“Miss Norris? I’m Miss Fuller. I rang and you didn’t answer. But I came up anyway. Robert Peabody sent me.”

Lilah said, in a voice she kept for strangers: “I’m so glad. Won’t you come in?”

Miss Fuller followed and looked carefully at everything before she sat down.

“This isn’t my taste,” Lilah said instantly.

“It wouldn’t be. Robert raved about it and about you. He liked both the room and yourself. He has no discrimination, but he is a darling.”

“What, exactly, do you mean by that?”

“I mean that frills are wasted on him. He doesn’t see them. From what he told me, I did not expect--you.”

Lilah laughed. Her good humor returned. She glanced at herself in the mirror.... Reassuring, that hat....

“What did he tell you?”

“Oh.... Pretty.... Sweet.... You’re not sweet. I hate the word. Why do men use it? Men are so stupid. When they think they’re in love with you they call you ‘sweet’ and they always muss up your hair. I hate being made love to. They never do it right. They either choke you or they scratch you. It makes me irritable, and they never try it again.”

“Does Robert scratch you?” Lilah asked sweetly.

“No. He chokes.”

“He would,” Lilah said. “Do you let him?”

“I compromise. I insist on vacations. Then we are platonic and he is pathetic. He is a child. He cries for a lollypop. So I say: ‘Go ahead. Kiss me.’ And he does. And, afterwards, I use liniment to limber up my neck.”

“You look like a Vanderbilt,” Lilah remarked. “All that wooly hair. And that long neck. And those eyebrows.”

“I’m Middle West. My grandfather was a Carlsen, a farmer. But my mother took a trip to Chicago before I was born and saw some wealth and fashion and marked me. I love luxury. I can achieve it with cheese cloth, safety pins and a little rouge. But now I’m bored. I want a French maid.”

“Why don’t you marry Robert?”

“I’m going to. If you don’t.”

“I?”

“He has called you sweet.” Miss Fuller lighted a cigarette. She did it in a characteristic way, a methodical, unhurried movement of her cool, thin hands. “I won’t fight. I can’t. You have all the weapons. And I have none. I’d be kind to him and you’d ruin his life. But you would keep him dancing and I would see to it that he sat by the fire. I understand him. You never will.” She tossed the match away. “And he’ll take you.”

“Nonsense.” Lilah was pleased. She thought: “I’ll take _him_, rather. She’d better watch out.”

Aloud, she said: “Robert says you’re a nurse.”

“I met him six years ago, when I was the starchiest graduate you’ve ever seen--pink and white, with a cap pinned on a blonde pompadour. It used to be fashionable to fall in love with your nurse, and I had a bed-side technique. He asked me to marry him, but I wouldn’t, because that was always part of an appendix convalescence. Afterwards, he forgot. Of course! But later they sent me to the Point to nurse his Aunt Whiteside--”

“I know! The gallstones!”

“He told you?”

Miss Fuller quenched her cigarette with the same, deliberate, unhurried gesture. She had a strange smile, sensitive, in contrast to the clipped irony of her conversational style. Lilah saw that this woman had been grievously hurt, shockingly buffeted. There was something about her calm which suggested the heroic self-control of the victim of a hurricane or an earthquake. She was afraid, but she was hanging on.

“So I went. Starch, blonde bang, wrist-watch. Very cool.... That house.... The grandfather’s house. About Eighteen-Seventy. Carpets. Lots of silver. Walnut and ebony. Gongs for dinner. Velvet. You know the sort of thing.... I don’t like the grandfather.”

“Why?”

“He doesn’t like me. He likes pert women, who hiss like cats and scratch and then purr on his knee. My starch irritated him. But Robert liked it.”

“Did he kiss you, then?”

“No. Not for years.”

Lilah said gently: “You love him.”

“Yes. I do.”

“Well--”

“Something I see, that you get to see when you know him! A gentleness. He is kind to people and doesn’t make any fuss. There’s no mystery about him. I’m sick of mysteries.... Doctors.... You don’t know what those hospitals are! They make a cynic or a huntress out of you, unless you happen to be a Florence Nightingale. I’m not. I don’t believe in anything.”

She broke off and Lilah said: “Tell me about yourself. More! Aren’t you happy?”

“Sometimes. When I’m alone. And I’m never alone.”

Lilah laughed. “Robert said you might live with me.”

“I _could_ live with you! You’re not the sort of woman who talks, or fusses. You make me think of a feminine cat, licked, sitting on a cushion. Indifferent and mysterious, but cozy.”

Lilah enjoyed this admiration; she knew that she possessed in an unusual degree the qualities which Grace Fuller lacked; she could be seductive because she had no particular sense of humor. Grace Fuller was the sort of woman who keeps her emotions under lock and key because she knows that she is ridiculous, that all emotion is ridiculous. She waited for some one to smash in her defenses and rescue her hidden self. In the meantime, she leaned on the door, fearful. But Lilah was a naked heart behind a grill.

With a sudden impulse, Lilah said: “Come, then! There are two bedrooms.... I pay sixty-five a month.... I’ve got to do something ... make hats ... dance.... We’ll manage.”

They lighted cigarettes and sat, talking, watching each other, until midnight.

* * * * *

Grace Fuller moved in--her two trunks and a neat bag were put in the room which had been Mr. Norris’. At once, an array of toilet articles appeared on the bureau--cosmetics and perfumes of very good make in crystal bottles, small, opaque boxes of rouge and lip sticks in metal cases. Miss Fuller had a passion for cosmetics, but she did not look like a woman who painted; her skin was her only claim to seduction, and the faint odor of perfume was an indication of her restraint. She was virginal, and, in her exaggerated loneliness, abnormal. She shut the door of her room against Lilah, and only emerged, fully dressed and curled, for formal conversation.

She left the apartment early in the morning and returned, often, late at night, dog-tired, but unflinching.

Lilah made one attempt to get work to do. She had heard that one of the fashionable men dressmakers wanted a designer. His shop, an entire house in the East Fifties, was furnished in the exotic manner of Poiret’s establishment in Paris. His mannequins inevitably graduated to the stage, or to society. Diana, Kitty, Carmencita ... opulent, tall girls with the hands and arms of goddesses.... Something about this man’s manner had always attracted Lilah. He made the exploitation of feminine vanity an enormously profitable business. She went to see him, relying on the poetic little hat and her manner to carry her past the guardians of his privacy to the inner sanctum, his office, a room decorated by Chanler.

She found the approach unexpectedly easy. He was seated behind a desk. She was surprised, upset, by his youth and his concise greeting:

“Won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you.”

“You are interested in a wardrobe? It is not the season. But there are a few models....”

“No. I am a designer. Hats. I want a position with you.”

“There is no opening.”

“I thought....

“Your experience?”

“None. I have good taste....”

“I see! That hat?”

“Lanvin.”

“Ah.”

“But I am talented, myself.”

“You know Paris?”

“Very well.”

“You are hard up?”

With a flash of anger, Lilah said: “Yes. I am. I want a job.”

“You shouldn’t have come to me. I am a busy man. Why didn’t you see Mr. O’Connor or Mrs. Frazer, at the work-rooms?” He wrote something on a card and tossed it across the desk. “There! If there’s room in the shop, they’ll give you a chance.... First, you must learn to put hats together. Later, perhaps, you can design them.”

Lilah rose. She did not take the card. She felt his eyes, shrewd, appraising, absolutely without illusion, slide over her--it was a physical, a nauseating attachment.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Not at all.” He waved his hand. His expression changed. He dismissed her. “Good morning.”

* * * * *

She postponed reality. There seemed to be no incentive, no immediate need; she was strangely lulled. She had, for years, searched for something vital, something with which to satisfy her restless longing for perfection. She had failed. There was nothing ahead that she could not, now, recognize as dull, inevitable, beyond her capacity for patient endurance.

She was afraid of death, but she believed that, once dead, she would be thoroughly dead. As a child, she had had an overdose of religion; her mother had fed her all the gloomy details of the orthodox legend; on the other hand, she had been conscious that her father, secretly, knew better. It was the old tragedy of credulity, Santa Claus and the cotton beard.

Her dreams were deeper, more hidden than is usual with women. She wanted love but not what she called suburban love. She secretly desired a man who would be indifferent to her contempt and beyond the reach of her irony. She could imagine herself in love, but the co-protagonist was always featureless; she invariably built her romance about her own personality. She was forever clothing herself in the garments of romance and falling in love with herself.

* * * * *

Robert Peabody reëntered her life a week after the relation with Grace Fuller had been established.

He came one evening when the two women were together, Lilah sewing at some impractical square of brocade, Grace Fuller, her narrow feet elevated, smoking a cigarette in an amber holder. She had watched a man die that afternoon--an old man whose pet particular nurse and slave she had been for six months. Yet there was no sign of relaxation, of discouragement. Her pessimism was too deep, established, like some physical disease--slowly, she was hardening in the mold fate had made for her.

Robert Peabody was embarrassed and jovial. Lilah found him amusing because, for the first time, she saw that another woman really wanted him.

While he talked, as usual, about his dogs, Grace Fuller watched him. Her scrutiny, deep, unswerving, made Lilah conscious that he was, in a way, handsome. Always well-dressed, he had the deft outlines of a man accustomed to luxury; and his bland good humor was the result of an existence devoid of anxiety. His appendix had been the outstanding complication, so far. Something of his grandfather’s looks had passed to him; he had the high nose with flaring nostrils. But his eyes were his mother’s and hers the rather sensitive and melancholy mouth.

He liked these two women. They were outside his sphere. He “played about” with the women who lived near Peabody’s Point, women he had watched grow up from spoiled little girls into a casual maturity; he had flirted with all of them, had seen them married and had settled into the bantering familiarity of the cherished bachelor in a “young married” community.

Whatever he felt, inwardly, he was outwardly an inflexible optimist. Lilah wondered whether he saw Grace Fuller’s eyes, whether, if he saw, he could appreciate the extent, the danger, of that dedication. And she remembered, with an unexpected excitement, how he had kissed her arm.

She went on sewing, bending her head so that the light from the lamp would fall on her hair. Her soft abstraction, her air of modesty and domestic content, drew him away from Grace Fuller. He leaned forward to finger the stuff she was making into a useless and ornamental bag, and she explained that the brocade came from a shop in Florence where the copying of ancient materials was a specialty. This was the robe of Boticelli’s Primavera, a delicate scattering of small flowers on a background of cream silk.

Grace Fuller rose suddenly and went into her bedroom.

“Don’t flirt with me,” Lilah said. “Miss Fuller won’t like it.”

He flushed. “You’re quite mistaken.”

“You told me you were ‘sweet’ on her.”

“I am. But I can flirt with you all the same.”

Already, they had the manner of conspirators. Robert lowered his voice and said: “Will you dine with me? To-morrow? Say ‘yes.’ I’m going back to the Point on Friday. We’ll take a hansom to the Park and eat there. What do you say?”

Lilah whispered: “Yes. I’ll be ready at five. Not later.”

The door opened and Grace Fuller came in again. She caught the quick lifting of Robert’s head, his smile, at once embarrassed and triumphant. She knew him so well that her heart ached for this duplicity; she could even pity him for having had to hurt her. But she said nothing.

When he had gone, she spoke from the doorway to Lilah, who was winding rough, colored threads about cardboard spools.

“I wonder if you know what love is? Oh, you can imagine it! You think about it a lot! But do you know? The pain.... Exhausting.... Of trying to pour yourself into a man’s consciousness.... And then being stupid. Hurting him--pushing him off.... Pretending.... Because you’re ashamed of wanting.... Killing what you want. Not wanting what you want until you’ve lost it....”

“That’s a bit excessive,” Lilah said. “You’re morbid, aren’t you? I could make any man happy by learning to understand him. If he liked mystery, I’d be mysterious. If he wanted a pal, I’d pal. To the limit.”

“Could you be domestic?”

“Certainly.”

Miss Fuller laughed that short, dry and brittle laugh. “What we all say! Pretend to be clay for the molding. Other women nag. We wouldn’t! Other women suffer jealousy. We wouldn’t! Other women fail in the little illusions and go about in curl-papers and a mask of cold cream, without their mental corsets. We wouldn’t! But married.... Well, it’s positively thrilling to observe the similitude of women.... Marriage is a sort of antiphlogistine--it brings out all the lurking devils.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve observed ... remember, I am a nurse. The shades up and the light of day on the domestic drama....”

Lilah said suddenly: “I may take your Robert away from you.”

Miss Fuller seemed to consider. “I see what you mean. I’m jealous!” She shook her head. “Robert isn’t the man for you. He isn’t a snob. And you are. I mean, you care a great deal about things Robert never notices. At the Point he goes about like a hired man in a pair of corduroy trousers and an old green sweater. He’s lazy. And sometimes he says stupid things....”

“What?” Lilah asked sharply.

She felt a sharp pang of irritability slip into her consciousness, edged. Her eyes were lowered; her fingers flew around the cardboard spools.

“Oh, he’s full of platitudes. He collects stamps. He reads the wrong books, and he wants children.”

“Does he?” Lilah’s voice was cool. The inflection was iced.

The thought crossed her mind that perhaps Grace Fuller had lived with Robert. This was at once a revelation and a weapon. She glanced up. With a look both appraising and sympathetic, she studied that worn, disillusioned face, in which the charm of a blonde freshness had given way to a shadow, a premonition of old age. Vaguely distinguished, aloof, sharp and bitter, she had a tender mental surface. Lilah knew that she herself could control Grace Fuller’s opinions; she was not afraid of her tongue; the woman was quivering under the skin.

“I see what you’re thinking,” Grace Fuller said. “It isn’t true. I’ve loved, but not Robert--that way. You won’t believe me. He’s decent, as men have forgotten how to be decent.... Lilah, let me have him!”

She crossed the room suddenly and stood before Lilah with her hands clenched at her sides, her face strained. “I love him!” she cried.

Lilah tossed the silks upon the table. “Nonsense,” she said crisply. “I don’t want your Robert! He’s a fearful bore. He’s flat. He moves about on the face of the earth like a wet beetle. Grace, you’re biased. You’re lop-sided. You’re hypnotized by his morality--or his money! You’re making yourself ridiculous and Robert is flattered. He doesn’t intend to marry you. It’s too comfortable to know that he can make you suffer. Why not make him suffer? Men don’t appreciate martyrdom. You look like an old woman, at thirty. Am I unkind? I don’t mean to be. I’m awfully fond of you.... I tell you, I don’t want your Robert.... But I can’t help it if he should happen to fall in love with me.... Men do those things. They love the wrong woman.... If you didn’t care.... If you could....”

She broke off.

“Let’s go to bed. I’m tired. He tires me. I tell you he bores me. Let’s not talk about him.”

Without a word, Grace Fuller went into her room and shut the door.

In a few minutes she came out again. She had brushed her hair back from her forehead, and had a startled, innocent look. She kept rubbing cold cream into her face and neck with little upward, crawling motions of her finger-tips. She wore a corduroy wrapper and felt slippers. Lilah noticed that her feet were narrow and bony, like a priest’s. Her elbows were sharp. Her shoulders were too narrow.... Lilah felt round and cozy and soft. She felt warm; her flesh delighted her. She thought how delicious she must look, sitting there with her feet in high-heeled slippers tucked under her. She was sorry, in a comfortable sort of way, for Grace Fuller. She wanted, at that moment, to help her, to give her some of her own warmth and brilliance, to bring her into the circle of her inevitable success.... She saw herself making it very delightful for Grace Fuller at Peabody’s Point. “My dear Grace, Robert loves to have you.... He is so fond of you. You must stay as long as you can!” Perhaps giving her some decent clothes.... She would be quite smart in simple things, with eccentric hats and bizarre ornaments....

Grace Fuller rubbed the cream into her finger-nails with the absorption she put into doing all unimportant things, as if performing a rite. As Lilah had never seen her out of the formality of curled hair and rouge, she felt a vague embarrassment.

“I wanted to say,” Grace Fuller remarked presently, “that we mustn’t have a misunderstanding. You’re more important to me than Robert.”

“I tell you, I don’t want him,” Lilah repeated.

* * * * *

She dressed carefully for her meeting with Robert. The Chinese hat had lost some of its novelty, but she had added a French veil.... She was almost, literally, penniless.

At five o’clock Robert Peabody arrived. He was eager, flushed.

A shiny hansom-cab, deliciously out of balance, precarious, waited at the curb. A group of curious small boys gaped at this contrivance, and, as Lilah and Robert crossed the sidewalk, a window was thrown up and a burst of laughter floated down to them. Lilah was acutely conscious; Robert unaware. He had the fine indifference of the wealthy to other people’s little humiliations. She had a momentary feeling of defeat. He was infinitely removed. He intended, probably, to treat her as he had treated Grace Fuller....

Then, abruptly, her mood changed.

The cab turned uptown; the rhythmic clop of hoofs, the remote and cushioned cabin, like a sedan on wheels, her own youth.... Suddenly everything was desirable, delightful. This was what she wanted, deserved....

She began to sparkle. She was so intimate, so gay, that Robert Peabody’s rather stolid expression changed to one of amazed delight in her. He turned around; their eyes met. She noticed that his eyes were not blue, but hazel, very clear and wide open. She pressed her shoulder against him, and he became aware of a delicate odor of sandalwood. They laughed a good deal. Because she thought that he would not be interested in her European experiences, she talked about the rare summers she had spent in American resorts. She spoke of her “good tennis arm” and how an Indian had taught her to handle a paddle. As a matter of fact, she was an indifferent sport. But she could imagine herself doing all these things. She believed she had done them.

Robert Peabody discovered a new eloquence. He had an admirable passion for the out-of-doors. It kept him, he said, from drinkin’. In New York, he gave way in that point. Prohibition was a good thing--he’d be the last person to interfere with such a colossal experiment. But any one who could afford to drink, drank. He did. He supposed he wasn’t a good American. He never had been, in a literal sense. Politics didn’t exactly get under his skin; the country muddled through without him. He had his property, his dogs, his friendships, his conviction of an inalienable right to these possessions. If there should be social changes, upheavals, revolutions, he would accept whatever came. He believed in going with the times, never bucking the trend, whatever it was.

The war hadn’t interfered with this facile philosophy; he had accepted the fact that the world was fighting mad, stark crazy, gibbering. A phase. It had happened before; it would happen again. He couldn’t stop it by stating a preference for open fields and dogs. So, he had gone to the first officers’ camp, and had agreed cheerfully to whatever “authority” said. A knack for details, hitherto undiscovered, had landed him in the ordnance and he had worn silver chevrons in cheerful glory at Rochester, New York. Captain Peabody!

“Now it’s over, I am back where I want to be. The world hasn’t changed much. I don’t understand all this talk about a new consciousness. Men won’t change, either. We had our chance when Wilson went to Paris. But the recoil didn’t surprise me. We aren’t ready for practical idealism. You and I--people who see what might be--aren’t a drop in the bucket of public feeling. We’re swamped by millions of frightened ignoramuses. They’ll swing back to the doddering conservatives, bleating for normalcy. They’ll get it! We’re in for another Dark Age.”

“Don’t you care?”

“No. I never believed in the pet illusions we fought for, anyway. Civilization has always tickled my sense of humor. There are certain unchangeable, satisfactory things--well, dogs! And days when you can smell the sea, sweet, like flowers, blowing in over the fields. September days! I’d stack ’em up against every bloody war for supremacy, the confounded conceit of man--I’m talking like a poet. I’m not a poet. I’m lazy. I like peace, and plenty to eat.”

He laughed. “And you. I like you. You’re cute as the devil.”

Lilah turned to him again and let him see the curve of her lips. She had never been more vivacious. The city flowed by the cab windows with a dignity impossible in a motor, taking place, not as kaleidoscopic flashes in a cubistic ensemble, but as buildings, towers, parks and people. In the wide brilliance of Madison Square there was time to value the great campanile soaring out of the feathery green of the park into a bland sky.... Then, more slowly, up the long incline to the Library, where the lions seemed to gaze down their noses over invisible spectacles; they had, Lilah remarked, a sort of haughty senility--Grand Army of the Republic lions about to recite the “Battle of Gettysburg.” One of them had worn a rakish snow hat during a February blizzard, the other a white blanket about his middle, like a pet poodle in a wooly-wooly....

Lilah found the city astonishingly beautiful--but something held her from telling Robert Peabody so. He would not have shared her delight in the unfinished masterpiece. New York, to him, was simply New York; like so many New Yorkers, he suffered from a familiarity with marvels. Lilah found it both monstrous and audacious. She had always tasted cities as a connoisseur tastes wine. Now, in this slate-blue twilight, she shivered with pleasure. The lava-stream of motors filled the air with a sort of luxurious purring; it seemed to Lilah that the hidden springs of vitality within herself had begun to vibrate, to hum, like harp strings; she was vibrant. If some one would write a grand opera, not in the manner of “Louise,” not lyric, amorous, but metallic, about New York! The leit-motif, a theme of feverish, restless striving. The minor melodies, machines, riveters, steam jets, whistles, sirens, bells, six million human voices--unceasing, beating against the human heart like the tom-tom of African drums. The sets ... from a window, streets like Sienese back-alleys enormously exaggerated. Vast, tilting walls. A few lights on the face of the cañon. Weight of stone and steel and swaying towers. Or, a bloodless avenue of square monoliths, imposing, imponderable, significant....

The cab turned into the Plaza, so long an upheaval of derricks, mud, French Gothic and erratic statuary, now settled into a beauty of its own, and Robert Peabody said: “Shall we stop here? Or do you prefer the Park?”

Lilah preferred the Park.

They dined out-of-doors, their faces close together over a narrow table. She found him more attractive here. He had a genial yet vigorous manner of dealing with waiters and hat-boys, an almost aristocratic indifference to publicity and he did not, after calling her “cute as the devil,” come back to the attack. He let her see that he was aware of the privilege of her company. There were other women in the restaurant; a startlingly brunette girl in black satin which made her look, Lilah thought, like a wet cod-fish, sat almost at his elbow, yet he disposed of her, and her seduction, with a glance. He ordered planked shad and regretted that there was no white wine; at the Point, he had over a thousand bottles of Sauterne....

“I want to meet your grandfather,” Lilah interrupted.

“He would like you. He doesn’t like Grace Fuller.”

“Why?”

Robert’s face puckered. “I don’t know.”

Lilah said quickly, in a way she had of disposing of things: “She’s not quite sane. She will never be contented. She’s such a darling ... but she takes life too seriously. She depresses me. She’s like white grass growing in a dark place.... I don’t know.... Yes, I do know. She’s a celibate. I hope she’ll never marry. For her own sake. But more for the man’s. I’d pity a man who found that instead of a woman he had an obstinate, distorted idea in his arms. Not love at all, but a misconception of love. She wants experience but runs away from it--she curls her hair and rouges and then hides.”

“I like her,” Peabody said. “But I don’t pretend to understand her. Perhaps you are right.”

“I know I’m right.”

She dismissed Grace Fuller and set about captivating this rather ponderous intelligence. Again, she relied on her quickness, her intuition, her adroit penetration. He had been, evidently, upset by mention of Grace Fuller; either he had a sense of responsibility or he was annoyed by Lilah’s analysis. His was a basic honesty and loyalty. She changed the subject to herself. She could see that she excited him; he was, she had heard from Grace Fuller, accustomed to women who preferred sport clothes and who rode to hounds; he had been brought up in a society which imitated, on a smaller, more restricted scale, the life of the English counties. He had had no intellectual companionship. He could not juggle with the stock phrases of the _cognoscenti_; he was too simple, or too indifferent, to acquire a modern vocabulary of names and cults, movements and personalities. But she could stir his imagination with herself, her decisive manner, her melting eyes, the little upward turn of her mouth, as if, always, she wanted to be kissed. She felt him leaning toward her, absorbed. She knew how to make what she said audacious, and, by a subtle turn, to leave the implication in doubt. She suggested desire without feeling it. This was a part of what other people called her “technique.” She was not unaware of it, but she did not consider that it was something she ought to be ashamed of. Rather, it gave her an inestimable advantage.

After dinner they walked through the park, their arms and shoulders touching in the darkness. There was everywhere a subdued gurgle of water in shallow basins or lipping the banks of the lake. Couples passed, drifting, close together, with a murmur of voices. The blatant artificiality of the landscape was blurred, softened, gathered into somber walls of vegetation, threaded with globes of light. Groups of people passed in and out of the shadows, made mysterious, dignified by an unreality that had about it something of the theater. Faces glimpsed in passing were indefinite; the sound of feet on the asphalt paths, the murmur of voices were Venetian, melancholy....

Robert Peabody drew her arm through his. At Eighty-fifth Street, as they crossed the road, he raised his cane and signalled for a cab. Lilah sank back with a little sigh.

“This is comfortable! Let’s drive.”

Suddenly his arm went about her shoulders. She was surprised at the strength, the violence of his grasp.

“You’re adorable. Let me kiss you.”

She shook her head. “No.”

But he bent down, kissed her, once, twice, a dozen times. She was breathless, angry, frightened, but helpless in the circle of his arm. “Don’t! Don’t!” she said. “Please. Here....”

She heard him say: “I love you. I want you to marry me.”

Her heart contracted. How on earth had this happened? What would the driver think of such a scene? This was what, all along, she had wanted. He had everything ... everything.... Something in his eyes, his voice, husky, shaken, made her know that he loved her. It would be easy to manage him.... Love.... She couldn’t expect to kiss him like that at once. As always, she shrank from contact. But if she....

“Answer. Open your eyes.”

She made a struggle to throw into her expression something ardent, convincing. And lifting her face, she kissed him. She need not say, at once, the words he expected. She was not as dishonest as that.... A wave of feeling, relief, excitement, went over her. His head fell back, down again, on her shoulder. He was, suddenly, weak, surrendered to his emotion. She saw the back of his neck, his close, blonde hair. The intimacy of their attitude assailed her and she pushed him away.

“Not here. Later....”

“You’ll marry me?”

“Yes. Yes.”

She lifted her arms and straightened her hat. Then she felt her hand seized and his lips fastened on her fingers, hungry, insatiable....