There was no pity for herself in Mimi’s reflections. She had been flung this way and that, buffeted by winds that often threatened to capsize the tiny boat which was her life. But with it all her lot had not been as hard as it might have been. There had been compensation—Jean and Petit Jean, her work, the love of people, human beings she had studied at first to take herself out of herself, and later because she found in them interest and joy in that interest. But all the things hitherto now seemed easy, for through them all she had kept her soul free. Now she was threatened with inundation, the great rising of a wave that rose up—up—up and, bursting into a million silver bubbles, took shape again and formed the face of Jimmie Forrester. That face haunted her with its pleading, its suffering, eloquent of the struggle which he too was making.
From below voices came to her. She recognized one of them as that of Mrs. Mahoney, the wife of the janitor, out for a breath of air before going to bed.
“And I says to him, says I,” Mrs. Mahoney was declaring in tones redolent of shamrocks and St. Patricks and harps, “you can’t get nowhere by dodging the truth. If you got a hard job in front of you, the only thing to do is to jump at it and clean it up. …”
Mrs. Mahoney was probably speaking of housework but her words filtered through the fog of thoughts which enveloped Mimi. “You can’t get nowhere by dodging the truth!” The only thing to do is to jump at it and clean it up! She had been dodging the truth and shrinking from doing the very thing which she had known from the beginning she must do. There could be no happiness either for her or Jimmie if there was deceit or concealment of facts which he should know. She determined to tell him everything. If he was repelled by these facts, as she felt sure he would be, then the telling would end this strain for both of them and they could pass quietly out of each other’s lives.
Fearing that if she waited until morning her mind might be changed, she rose from the window and hurried, head held high and all her indecision and haggard fears fled, to the telephone. Her lips were set in a grim line, pressed so tightly together they made a thin red gash across her chalky-white bloodless face. Perversely, her mind flew back to that other crisis—when she waited outside the door which closed her from the operating-room in which Petit Jean was being put to sleep, perhaps never to waken again. Then, nerves raw and tingling, she had hovered dangerously near the brink of a collapse in the consciousness that flesh of her flesh was about to die. Now she felt the same quivering nerves stabbing her with fiery daggers as she knew that a thing, close and beautiful and precious, closer to her even than flesh, was even at the moment in danger of destruction, yes, was almost sure to wither up and pass into oblivion. She took the telephone in her hand, for some minutes holding down the receiver with the forefinger of her right hand, even then fearing to take the step which she feared but which she knew must be taken. …
Jimmie was at home. Incredulously he spoke to her, hardly daring to believe that it really was she. Come over, Jimmie, I want to talk with you—to tell you some things you must know, she whispered hoarsely. As she sat on the side of her bed after hanging up the receiver, she stared vacantly ahead of her, wondering, wondering. …
Hardly had she had time to dash a bit of powder on her face and arrange her hair before he rang the bell. She was shocked when she saw him, the first time in several weeks. His face was drawn and there were telltale hollows in his cheeks, and his eyes were far back in his head.
“Mimi, tell me, have you decided? You need not answer now about marrying me—if you don’t want to answer—but won’t you let me try to show you how I love you?” he pleaded. “I’ve suffered agonies, Mimi darling—sometimes I believed I was almost crazy—”
“No—no, Jimmie, you mustn’t say such things to me—I didn’t ask you to come over for that—” Mimi sought to stop him.
“Then why—why did you ask me?” His voice was low-pitched, little more than a whisper, but there was in it a huskiness that showed the strain he was undergoing. Mimi felt sick at heart as she saw the changes that had taken place in him. He was no longer the laughing, debonair, assured individual he had been that day they met in Paris. His eyes burned with a blazing intensity from the deep sockets in which they were sunk, his hands twitched as he alternately closed and opened them, he kept his lips pressed tightly together, and his words came short and crisp from the emotion that lay behind them. Mimi felt her resolution to tell him all slipping away into thin air. She did not want to hurt him further, though she knew that for his own good and hers she must tell him now. She braced herself as though she were about to plunge into an icy bath in January.
“I’ll tell you why I sent for you,” she began. “I did run away from you in Paris. And I’ve been running from you here in New York because
