“Who you with, Bert? Didn’t see your car outside,” said Duddy.
“Oh, I was with some crowd. Don’t know where they are. Haven’t got the car,” he answered.
“Stick around with us then.” “I bet you’ve been hitting the high spots, and smashed it!” Bob and Duddy said simultaneously. But the orchestra was beginning another tune, and only Helen noticed that in the general pushing back of chairs he did not reply.
She shook her head at the question in his eyes, and he asked no one else to dance. Of course, after that, she had to refuse the others, too, and they were left sitting at the bare table ringed with the imprints of wet glasses. An unaccountable depression was settling on her; she felt sorry and full of pity, she did not know why, and an impulse to put her hand on his smooth, fair hair surprised and horrified her.
“Rotten life, isn’t it?” he said. It was a tone so new in him that she did not know how to reply.
“I’m sorry,” she answered.
“Sorry? Good Lord, what for?”
“I don’t know. I just am. I’m sorry for—whatever it is that’s happened.” She saw that she had made a mistake, and the remnant of her exhilaration fluttered out like a spent candle. She sat looking at the dancers in silence, and they appeared to her peculiar and curious, going round and round with terrific energy, getting nowhere. The music had become an external thing, too, and she observed the perspiring musicians working wearily, with glances at the clock.
“Funny,” she said at length.
“What?”
“All these people—and me, too—doing this kind of thing. We don’t get anything out of it. What do we do it for?”
“Oh, safety-valve. Watts discovered the steam-engine on the principle.” His voice was very tired.
The more she considered the idea, the more her admiration for him grew. She was not in the least afraid of him now; she was eager to talk to him. Her hand went out detainingly when he rose, but he disregarded it. “So long,” he said carelessly, and she saw that, absorbed in some preoccupation, he hardly knew that she was there. She let him go and sat turning an empty glass between her fingers, lost in speculations concerning him. Though she spent many of her evenings at the beach during several weeks, she did not see him again, and she heard one night that he had gone broke and left town.
She could not believe that disaster had conquered him. That last meeting and his disappearance had increased the charm he had for her. Her mind recurred to him, drawn by an irresistible fascination. She had only to brood on the memory of him for a moment and a thrill ran through her body. It could not be that she loved him. Why, she did not even know him.
X
In March Paul came to see her.
It had been a hard day at the office. A mistake had been made in a message, and a furious broker, asserting that it had cost him thousands of dollars, that she was at fault, that he was going to sue the telegraph company, had pounded the counter and refused to be quieted. All day she was overwhelmed with a sense of disaster. It would be months before the error was traced, and alternately she recalled distinctly that she had sent the right word and remembered with equal distinctness that she had sent the wrong one.
Dots and dashes jumbled together in her mind. She was exhausted at four o’clock, and thought eagerly of a hot bath and the soothing softness of a pillow. Slumped in the corner of a streetcar, she doggedly endured its jerks and jolts, keeping a grip on herself with a kind of inner tenseness until the moment when she could relax.
Louise was hanging over the banister on the upper landing when she entered the hall of the apartment-house. Her excited stage-whisper met Helen on the stairs.
“Sh‑sh‑sh! Somebody’s here to see you.”
“Who?” The event was unusual, but Louise’s manner was even more so. Vague pictures of her family and accident and death flashed through Helen’s startled mind.
He said his name was Masters. He was an awful stick. Momma’d sent Louise out to give her the high sign. Louise’s American Beauty man was in town, and there was going to be a party at the Cliff House. They could sneak in and dress and beat it out the back way. Momma had the guy in the living-room. He’d simply spoil the party.
“Aw, have a heart, Helen. Momma’ll get rid of him somehow. You can fix it up afterward.”
Helen’s first thought was that Paul must not see her looking like this, disheveled, her hair untidy, and her fingers ink-stained. Her heart was beating fast, and there was a fluttering in her wrists. It was incredible that he was really near, separated from her only by a partition. The picture of him sitting there a victim of momma’s efforts to entertain him was ghastly and at the same time hysterically comic. She tiptoed in breathless haste past the closed door and gained the safety of the bedroom, Louise’s kimono rustling behind her. The first glance into the mirror was sickening. She tore off her hat and coat and let down her hair with trembling fingers.
“He’s—an awful good friend. I must see him. Heavens! what a fright! Be an angel and find me a clean waist,” she whispered. The comb shook in her hand; hairpins slipped through her fingers; the waist she found lacked a button, and every pin in the room had disappeared. It was an eternity before she was ready, and then, leaning for one last look in the glass, she was dissatisfied. There was
