She read the message. “ ‘G. H. Kennedy, Central Trust Company, Los Angeles. Drawing on you for five hundred. Must have it. Absolutely sure thing this time. Full explanations follow by letter. Gilbert.’ Sixty-seven cents, please,” she said. She wished that she could think of something more to say; she would have liked to talk to him. There was about him an impression of something happening every instant. When, turning away, he paused momentarily, she looked at him quickly. But he was speaking to the rival operator.
“Hello, kid!”
“On your way,” the girl replied imperturbably. Her eyes laughed and challenged. But with an answering smile he went past, and only his hat remained visible in glimpses through the crowd. Then it turned a corner and was gone.
“Fresh!” the girl murmured. “But gee, he can dance!”
Helen looked at her with interest. She was a new girl, on relief duty. The regular operator for her company was a sober, conscientious woman of thirty, who studied German grammar in her leisure moments. This one was not at all like her.
“Do you know him?” said Helen, smiling shyly. This was an opening for conversation, and she met it eagerly. The other girl had a friendly and engaging manner, which obviously included all the world.
“Sure I do,” she answered, though there was uncertainty under the round tones. She ran a slim forefinger through the blond curl that lay against her neck, smiling at Helen with a display of even, white teeth. Helen thought of pictures on magazine covers. It must be wonderful to be as pretty as that, she thought wistfully. “Who’s he wiring to?”
Helen passed the message across the low railing that separated the offices. She noticed the shining of the girl’s fingernail as she ran it along the lines.
“Well, what do you know about that? He was giving me a song and dance about being Judge Kennedy’s son. You never can tell about men,” she commented sagely, returning the telegram. “Sometimes they tell you the absolute truth.”
A childlike quality made her sophistication merely piquant. Her comments on the passing guests fascinated Helen, and an occasional phrase revealed glimpses of a world of gaiety in which she seemed to flutter continually, like a butterfly in the sunshine. She worked, it appeared, only at irregular intervals.
“Momma supports me, of course on her alimony. Papa certainly treated her rotten, but his money’s perfectly good,” she said artlessly. Her frankness also was childlike, and her calm acceptance of the situation made it necessary to regard it as commonplace. Helen, in self-defense, could not be shocked.
“She’s lot of fun, momma is. Just loves a good time. She’s out dancing now. Gee! I wish I was! I’m just crazy about dancing, aren’t you? Listen to that music! All I want is just to dance all night long. That’s what I really love.”
“Do you ever—often, I mean—do it? Dance all night long?” Helen asked, wide-eyed.
“Only once a night.” She laughed. “About five nights a week.”
Helen thought her entertaining, and warmed to her beauty and charm. In an hour she was asking Helen to call her Louise, and although she made no attempt to conceal her astonishment at the barrenness of Helen’s life, her generous desire to share her own good times took the sting from her pity. Why, Helen didn’t know the city at all, she cried, and Helen could only assent. They must go out to some of the cafés together; they must have tea at Techau’s; Helen must come to dinner and meet momma. Louise jumbled a dozen plans together in a rush of friendliness. It was plain that she was genuinely touched in her butterfly heart by Helen’s loneliness.
“And you’re a brunette!” she cried. “We’ll be stunning together. I’m so blonde.” The small circle of her thought returned always to herself. Helen, dimly seeing this, felt an amused tolerance, which saved her pride while she confessed to herself her inferiority in cleverness to this sparkling small person. Louise would never have drifted into dull stagnation; she would have found some way to fill her life with realities instead of dreams.
Midnight came before Helen realized it. Tidying her desk for the night, she found the unfinished letter to Paul and tucked it into her purse. She had not been forced to feed upon her imagination that evening.
Louise walked to the car-line with her, and it was settled that the next night Helen should come to dinner and meet momma. It meant cutting short her extra work and paying the day-operator to stay late at the St. Francis, but Helen did not regret the cost. This was the first friend the city had offered her.
Three weeks later she was sharing the apartment on Leavenworth Street with Louise and her momma.
The change had come with startling suddenness. There had been the dinner first. Helen approached it diffidently, doubtful of her self-possession in a strange place, with strange people. She fortified herself with a new hat and a veil with large velvet spots, yet at the very door she had a moment of panic and thought of flight and a telephone message of regrets. Only the thought of her desperate loneliness gave her courage to ring the bell.
The strain disappeared as soon as she met momma. Momma, slim in a silk petticoat and a frilly dressing-sack, had taken her in affectionately. Momma was much like Louise. Helen thought again of pictures on magazine covers, though Louise suggested a new magazine, and her mother did not. Even Helen could see that Momma’s pearly complexion was liberally helped by powder, and her hair was almost unnaturally golden. But the eyes were the same, large and blue, fringed with black lashes, and both
