West of Fifth

CHAPTER TEN

Like others who belonged to it, Grace was wont to excuse herself for attending the weekly luncheons of the Three Cheers Club on the ground that it was good business. One made contacts there. One exchanged the gossip of the day. The club ate in a private dining room at a Park Avenue hotel. This noon, as Grace walked into the small antechamber where the members were gathering, her face was strained with resolution. The girl she searched for stood in a corner, a large bouncing girl, visible and audible. Grace marched up to her.

"How are you, Madge?" she said, widening her eyes and spacing her words with an acute gentleness. "I hear—you had—quite a discussion—about me at your house one night."

The buxom girl stepped back. "Why, no!" she said. "Why, Grace, I hope you don't think I'd say anything unkind about you or let anyone in my house say a word against you."

Grace looked at her with a sweet, unbelieving smile.

"Why, no, Grace," she repeated in alarm under that smile. "I don't know what you heard but I give you my word all that happened was—we were discussing a lot of things and someone remarked wasn't it a coincidence that Grace Kline's friend had the same name as the man who used to be married to a college classmate, Edith Woolever, in St. Louis. Honestly that's every word that was said."

Wearing the same sweet smile and continuing to fix Madge with her eyes, Grace replied, "Then perhaps it might—interest you to know—that he not only used to be married to Edith Woolever, but still is." She swept past.

An "oh" dropped from Madge's lips and she babbled after Grace scared phrases at random: "... think the world and all of you ... wouldn't want you to think otherwise."

Grace betook herself to the shelter of one of her friends who had witnessed the encounter. Her skin was white but under it the blood burned in her cheeks. She removed a glove and tried to soothe them with chilly hands.

"I think I've stopped her," she said. She continued conversationally, halting now and then for composure. "I've discovered a swell method, Jeannette, of dealing with people who talk about you. You just walk up to them very sweet and ruthless and naïve and ask them did they really say that? It frightens them to death."

Her friend, a little woman like a little bird, teetering on very tiny feet and very high heels, patted her arm with a sympathy that was none the less for being highly spiced with curiosity. She herself was a tactful, orderly little soul, a good manager, but she was very broadminded, as she often told people, and regarded Grace with an admiring and interested wonder. "I wouldn't have told you if I'd known it would upset you so," she said in real concern.

"Oh, it doesn't upset me any more," said Grace. "I'm getting hardened."

After a moment she remembered what else had brought her to the club.

"You know Mrs. Whitten, don't you?" she said, now quite alert. "Introduce me, will you? I'd like to sit next to her—if it can be arranged."

"Of course, dear. Why? Have you anything in mind for her? I didn't know you were writing."

"Oh, it's—just an idea," said Grace vaguely. Her eyes wandered afresh over the room, choosing friends, recording herself again on the minds of those she knew, and permitting them to record themselves on her mind; seeing who was present and who was not.

The girls (not women, but distinctly girls) disposed themselves at three long tables arranged in the form of an ell. Originally the Three Cheers Club had unfurled its banner with a provision that members be self-supporting and a dedication of encouragement to "women of all professions." But it had become increasingly difficult to judge the exact extent of their self-support and, though there might have been members of other professions, they went unnoticed. Nearly all these women (so distinctly girls) acted, wrote, drew, sang, clutched the skirts of the various arts in varying capacities and with varying success and took much credit to themselves for so doing.

Grace usually sat by Diana Reece in her own coterie that formed one of the groups within the group. To-day she found herself in a somewhat different atmosphere between Mrs. Whitten and Jeannette Croak, looking attentively across the table at a woman who bore well the dignity of black crêpe de chine and pearl earrings. She was Rachel Dorf, the one who got two thousand dollars a short story. And how well she knew it, thought Grace, with a certain detachment in consequence of her own slight acquaintance in this circle. The two thousand dollars was apparent in every costly fold of silk, in the full, massaged texture of her authoritative face, in the commanding movements of her thick, white hands. She and Mrs. Whitten were discussing short-story prices. Grace listened with a perfect demeanor, a blend between that of a novice hearkening to elders and that of a personage incognito, secure in his own secret status. The glow shed by her skin and eyes, like the soft, swooning light shed by the moon, the delicate synthesis of her clothes drew involuntary glances from Mrs. Dorf and Mrs. Whitten. Each had noticed her in the past and remembered her and would remember her, wondering why. When she spoke each looked at her, following the motions of her long, tender lips and her widening eyes, following each word dropped after her curious pauses, as if these might furnish the clue to that glowing mystery which her eyes and her skin had the power to suggest. Mrs. Dorf was the first to turn her glances away, chafing under the spell. When Grace spoke she would attempt instinctively to interrupt, only to hear the low, penetrating contralto superimpose itself on her voice without effort, continue, and finish the sentence which Grace had begun.

Mrs. Whitten, who was a small, dowdy person dressed in brown, with generous brown eyes, frankly allowed herself to be engrossed by Grace. It gave her pleasure to watch Grace. She answered her warmly, assuring her that it would be a good idea to do a story about the movie star, Carolyn Hale.

"I thought," said Grace, "since she had made—such a hit in comedy, it might be interesting to get her to talk on the feminine sense of humor."

"N-no," said Mrs. Whitten thoughtfully. "That's a little too—too—intellectual, I believe, for our readers. Something more personal is what they would like—for instance, Love: 'What I Think of Love.' Or perhaps, 'Why I Have Never Married,' if you can get her to sign it."

Grace looked at Mrs. Whitten with a smile. "Isn't that—a little obvious?" she hinted. "After all——"

"Yes. After all, everyone knows why she hasn't married. She finds it more profitable the other way," finished Mrs. Whitten, sharing Grace's amusement. "But an article on Love, if you can get her to sign it, would go, I think. Of course, I haven't the final say."

"Oh, I can get her to sign it," said Grace, and sniggered within herself. She had her own opinion of what Carolyn Hale thought of Love. Becoming serious, she said intently, "Then—if I get it written—shall I bring it in to you?"

"Yes, indeed. It's a good idea."

The luncheon was rapidly climbing to its predestined heights. The president rapped for order; the bubbles of chatter evaporated and the real business of the session began. She started to announce the announcements. Grace was sure that this president, a matronly girl, who conducted an Advice to the Lovelorn column, could hardly wait to breathe her touching sentiments, with a little comical twist at the end, anent the arrivals of new babies to club members. Perhaps she even practised before a glass so as to obtain the exact cloying simper with which these sentiments emerged from her lips. At this point, Anita, who had once been present at a luncheon, had caused a hushed commotion of disapproval by shifting, in her agony, tapping her plate, shuffling her feet, overturning her water glass, and muttering comments to Grace. Anita was far too impatient. As for Grace, she sat in ladylike calm, as others did about the tables, only permitting herself a small smile when she caught Dee's eye.

"And, girls, I have a great surprise for you. Mary Covill. Can you guess? Yes, girls, she's been married for two months, and the lucky man's name you will all like to know is Howard Higgins, in the advertising business. So now Mary can add the Lucy Stone League to her list of clubs."

Laughter and applause and a general turning of heads toward where Mary Covill sat, somewhat flushed but triumphant.

Grace noticed that Mrs. Dorf and Mrs. Whitten and Jeannette were all applauding quite seriously. Dee sent her an ironic wink across tables. But Dee was patting her hands too. She made one or two perfunctory claps.

The president had not yet done. She took another sheet of paper from her table. She grew sober.

"Now girls," she said, "before I introduce the guests of honor, who to-day are Mr. and Mrs. Reuben Barnes, the big-game hunters, of whom you have all heard [applause], I am sure you will all be interested to know what your co-members have been accomplishing."

She cleared her throat. She said, "I don't want to boast, girls, but I thought you'd all be pleased to know that your president has at last entered—oh, very timidly, you may be sure—the Halls of the Bards. Your president has had a poem accepted by Home Life!" (Applause).

She called prettily through the applause, "Yes, and if you don't like it, you have only the editor of Home Life to blame. He assures me it's fine!"

After the excitement had bubbled down there followed a list of stories sold, sketches placed, designs ordered, jobs changed. The president sat down, releasing a swarm of chatter.

Immediately she bounced up again. She raised one hand for silence. "There has just come to my hand," she said impressively, "a belated announcement which I am sure you will want to have repeated at once. Girls, Bessie Firestone has—just—sold—her first short story—to True Stories!"

The guests of honor had been brought by their press agent. Grace was among the first to escape. Meeting Dee in the anteroom, she agreed that the club was growing "more terrible by the minute," and listened to a collection of fresh gossip, while her eyes followed the people she wished to speak with presently. They arranged to sit together at the next luncheon.

Afterward she taxied across town to the Algonquin and, making her way through the patronizing groups in the lobby, she reconnoitered over the ropes of the small dining room. It was easy to pick out Carolyn Hale from among all the sleekly hatted women. For the sake of her public, which was accustomed to see her curls unbound in the dramatic sequences, Carolyn Hale had not yet dared to cut her hair. It was really golden and really heavy. Great braided loops of it weighted her head so much that she was always removing her hat. So lovely a girl on the screen, so frail and wistful, she looked extraordinarily matter-of-fact in real life. The Publicity Department stressed the point that she made her own clothes. After seeing them, Grace thought this likely but saw no reason for pride. She had been in attendance on Carolyn for several weeks, arranging appointments for her with the fan writers, taking Carolyn to teas and luncheons, and ingratiating herself with Carolyn in many ways. They now called each other by their first names.

Carolyn Hale was lunching with her "girl friend," another movie actress, a study in ebony, sepia, and scarlet beside Carolyn's fairness. Pushing a chair out for Grace, she continued to regale them with an account of an afternoon spent with L. L. Farissey. It seemed that he had swept her from auctions of antiques to auctions of pictures to auctions of manuscripts, she "standing on my feet and perishing from my corns—you can imagine. And that damned old furniture, you ought to see it. What anybody wants to buy the stuff for! I just touched a table and I give you my word it jumped apart! And those pictures! They're enough to give anyone the willies! And here I had to get blue in the face admiring all that junk. When I got home I swear my mouth was sore from making ohs.

"And I was out all night," she wailed, "and I had to shop all morning—and now I have to go see L. L. again. I bet he drags me to more junk shops this afternoon. Oh, my Gawd! Girls, come on along with me. I can't see that big bozo alone again; last night was enough."

Stepping from the cloistered dimness of the Algonquin, they straightway entered the luxuriant dimness of Carolyn Hale's limousine, while she wailed comically and did imitations of L. L. She had a strange voice to come from a creature so heavenly on the screen—thin, flat, nasal. It made one want to laugh in her face at its incongruity.

The moment did not seem propitious to speak of Love, but Grace managed to ask if Carolyn would sign an article for a woman's magazine.

"Sure, I'll sign anything you say," declared Carolyn. "That would be swell. Only just don't mention names. I gotta think of my Goddamn public."

Her friend, Lily, inquired with interest what the article would be about.

"It's to be called, 'What I Think of Love,'" said Grace hesitantly. But neither appeared to notice any untoward significance.

Carolyn nodded. "That'll be fine," she said. "The fans will eat that up."

And, "I wish my press agent would put something like that over for me," remarked Lily. "I sometimes wonder if he's any good. I notice you're getting so much for Carolyn."

"Oh, yes, Grace is swell," said Carolyn generously. Lily was a free lance who earned a great deal and no doubt paid well for publicity services. But Grace thought it best to keep silent and let Lily make her own comparisons.

In a great pink and gilt room in a great pink and gilt hotel they found the great man, L. L. Farissey. He was an automobile magnate who had got into so many front-page scrapes that it was impossible not to have heard of him. He was assisting Carolyn Hale to maintain her position at that special moment in her career. Fat and tousled, he sat in a suit of fiercely striped pajamas in a mild pink armchair, looking ill-tempered and eating a meal of sauerkraut, frankfurters, olives, cheese, and tomatoes. The three girls stood astounded at this meal. Raising small bloodshot eyes, the great man glanced at them and grunted. He knew Lily and disregarded her. Being introduced to Grace, he grunted and disregarded her also. He muttered to Carolyn Hale in a surly voice, "Havin' my breakfast. Want some?"

"Oh, L. L. I've just had an enormous lunch," pleaded Carolyn.

He grunted. His silence became stony.

Lily and Grace took chairs by the door and remained quiet, quiet as little mice, not daring to look at each other and trying not to look at Carolyn Hale. She had perched herself on the arm of the great man's chair. Whenever she caught their glances she opened her mouth and gawped without sound and rolled her eyes over the great man's shoulder. For her pains with him, she received a series of grunts.

Finally, leaning her face close to his, she said meekly, "L. L., could Carolyn have one of these lovely little teeny-weeny olives? Just one little teeny-weeny olive?"

"Have 'em all!" mumbled the great man magnificently. He took a plate and piled it high with olives, sauerkraut, tomatoes. "Bet' have some cheese—" "Well then, I will have a little, teeny-weeny piece. It looks so good." He added a hunk of cheese. Over his shoulder Carolyn put her hand to her heart and made a huge gawp with her mouth and rolled her eyes in extreme despair. She began to pick at the food, now and then glancing at the two girls and going through the motions of inaudible signs. The great man's frown seemed to be moderating. Carolyn, peering around at him, signaled such an enormous silent gawp of relief behind him that the two girls thought she would fall backward off the chair.

She leaned her face closer to his. "L. L.," she coaxed, "couldn't we go to see that lovely picture again this afternoon? You know, the beautiful, beautiful one that Carolyn liked so much, the one with the woman on horseback and all the lovely dogs?"

"Hm. Worst one of the whole collection!" grumbled the great man. But his face had relaxed into some semblance of pleasure.

"Might take a look in the Bitterman Galleries," he murmured, as if to himself.

Behind his bent head Carolyn raised her hands and twirled her fingers in the air and let her chin fall and her mouth droop to resemble the aspect of a half-wit. The two girls simultaneously took out their handkerchiefs, patted their noses, and hid their giggles.

Carolyn winked and nodded at them and pointed to the door. They understood. They rose and said farewells which the great man did not acknowledge.

Out in the lobby Grace at once found her way to a telephone booth. She had been on the trail of Susanna Beddes all morning. It was most important that Susanna Beddes should be notified of the lunch for Nola Winter and should promise to attend. She was a personage. She wrote a widely syndicated motion-picture column. Press agents might mimic Susanna Beddes' coy habit of speaking of herself in the third person ("Susanna is feeling thus and so"—"Susanna is doing this and that"—"Susanna is very busy just now") but in her presence they trembled. At least, Susanna did everything in her power to cause them to tremble. Grace finally traced Susanna to her home.

"Oh, Susanna has such a headache to-day," she moaned over the telephone. "Don't speak to Susanna about business! She's desperate."

A lengthy conversation followed, soothing, apologetic, consoling on Grace's part, bored and reluctant on Susanna's. Susanna really could not think. Susanna really did not know what engagements she had. Susanna did not care about these group interviews. She preferred tête-à-têtes.

"Oh, I'm certain—Miss Winter would be delighted to have you take lunch with her," Grace assured her. "I was—just about to ask you. But we—would like you to be present at the formal reception too."

Susanna said that she would see.

"Shall I—call you at the office then—to-morrow?"

Susanna said that she might do so.

Grace had spent almost half an hour in the stifling booth. She staggered into the pink and gilt lobby, rested for a few minutes, inhaled a few pink and gilt breaths. She supposed it might be good policy to send Susanna Beddes flowers—from the M.A.N.—or some such touching recognition of her headache.

When Grace at last stepped out of the hotel she paused, startled, she could not say why, to see the sky so blue. A faint breeze stirred the blazing, dust-moted air. The interiors of the serene shops along Madison Avenue looked limpid as water to a parched throat. A great breath melted in her lungs and gave a special luster to her face. A trolley clattered by with open sides. The tops of all the taxis were down; their black upholsteries glistened between smears of dust. The heavy sidewalks bloomed here and there unexpectedly with the dresses of girls, yellow silks and green silks, and rose and lavender, slimly conforming to their bodies. Of course. It was summer, a season that she loved, and the middle of the afternoon.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Anita's office, a free employment bureau, closed early, so that she was always the first to return to the apartment which she and Grace now shared. It stood on the same street as Dee's old studio, and at this time of the afternoon, in the lull between the exodus from shops and offices and the re-migration to restaurants and theaters, it greeted Anita with a soothing fragrance of quiet. She threw herself down on the couch. The odds and ends of gray, home-painted furniture were spotted with lingering sunshine; one pale beam lay across the bookcase; an orange vase shone. She was sure of perhaps half an hour of utter peace.

Thereafter the telephone began to squeal. The early calls were always for Grace. Then there would be a short interval. Finally, always to Anita with the force of surprise, the tone of Dennis Meloney's "Hul-lo," long-drawn and resonant, warm and vague, drifted through the telephone.

Anita said, as always, "Is—this—you, Dennis?"

He answered reassuringly, as always, the words resounding through his nose, "None other!"

"Sober?"

"Very!" said Dennis, with too much conviction. He added, "I'll be right over."

As she knew from experience, this might well mean several hours later. It was one of the phrases which Dennis used to assert his complete spiritual willingness behind which the uncontrollable body lagged under no matter what goads, to his bewilderment, even to his dismay. He had informed Anita, in one of his solemn moments of drunken articulateness, "You'll learn this about me—I'm a terrible liar." Anita had only been able to smile and sigh and shake her head in resignation that had in it a note of noblesse oblige, of staying one's hand as with an inferior in one's power. She was often on the point of not bearing with Dennis any longer. If she had been alone she could have swiftly made up her mind, but with Grace in the background she felt almost as if she were playing before an audience, as if she were constrained to go on with the performance before it though hampered by its presence. Grace, she knew, did not treat her as a poor relation because she "had Dennis." She could almost see the idea behind Grace's mounting intimacy. A girl who could attach even one not wholly undesirable man for that length of time and with that comparative regularity could not be beyond the pale, might even be "one of us." The old formula of contrast, a beautiful girl selecting a colorless girl as companion and foil, is outmoded. Two charming girls, it has been learned, are better than one to attract men.

The telephone rang more and more insistently. Blake called up and left a message. The entry of Grace dispersed the last vestige of solitude.

She searched the room with a wide and tenacious gaze.

"What have you been doing?" she said, and, not waiting for a reply, she launched into an account of her afternoon.

"I don't believe—I'll have any more trouble with Madge Murphy," she concluded. "I can't understand—girls like that! Madge Murphy gets around a lot; she knows a lot of people. I don't see how she does it. She's so homely! She has little, wrinkled, blackish eyes, raisin eyes. She's one of those girls who—stick—out in front and in back and who always, by instinct, sort of, gravitate to stripes, those heavy, long stripes, in purple and red, you know. I suppose they think it makes them look thin! Nothing could make her look thin—not even a steam roller!"

This trick of Grace's of describing people by means of the simplifications of the caricaturist always seemed strange to Anita. How could Grace, who disapproved of Anita's penchant for taking sides, who, though she enjoyed gossip, was always careful to repeat it with impartial omniscience—how could Grace, who was so tolerant, pass such cruel judgments with her eyes and ears? Anita had learned to be on guard against Grace's descriptions, for when she saw the people herself, they were apt to be so different.

"There are so many girls like that," continued Grace, "that you—meet around. There's nothing to them that you can put your finger on. And they take themselves so—seriously. But they seem to get along. I suppose it's just push," she added thoughtfully. "They simply—push themselves in everywhere."

She went on: "Anyhow, I've discovered a grand method of dealing with people who talk about you. Hereafter I mean to confront them as I did Madge and ask them straight out, but very—sweetly, you know, did they really say that? It's like confronting a murderer with the body of his victim. It works."

"It wouldn't work with me. I'd just answer yes," said Anita coolly. "Besides," she added, "there's danger in that method. It might actually keep people from talking about you."

But Grace didn't mind. That was just Anita's way. "We can't all be little tartars like you," she said amiably.

The deliberate rhythm of her movements as she went about the business of making her toilette and choosing her clothes for the evening could not be ruffled. Each motion was so precise, followed upon every other so perfectly, had such a smooth place in Grace's daily ritual, that Anita could not resist following with her eyes and even with her mind, as one follows involuntarily the rhythm of the hymns and genuflections in a church, the rhythm of the Perpetual Adoration before an altar. Grace was ready to do up her hair when Dennis appeared. She was still engaged with it when Blake followed him.

Making her entrance through the bedroom door, she stood poised for a moment, in a pale, ocher-colored, georgette dress, the glamorous product at last of all her small, attuned labors. She glanced at Dennis, who was neither entirely drunk nor entirely sober, with a smile of intimate and amused understanding, then turned her eyes to Anita, as if to reassure her that smiles for Dennis must also be smiles for her.

"How—are you?" she said gravely, with a slight, coy lift of her brow.

"O.K.," said Dennis. Viewing her luminous harmony with a pleasure that imprinted itself on his face, he found nothing more to say. He retired into the silence which was his only way of being dignified and polite.

Grace passed in front of him and took her place on Blake's lap.

"You ought to be able—to help me out," she said, drawing the great pools of her eyes from Dennis to Anita, then to their final resting place on Blake's countenance. "I have to write a woman's magazine article about Carolyn Hale called, 'What I Think of Love.'"

Blake snickered. "Be sure to spell love with a capital letter. The capitalization of love is very appropriate for Carolyn Hale."

"Are you—punning, Blake, by any chance?"

She secured her attention entirely to him, gazing in his face and beginning for him the motions of her special laugh.

"Punning, Blake, is the lowest form of humor," said Anita.

But neither Grace nor Blake appeared to hear or to be affected. They continued the duet of their particular amusement, while Dennis sat, silent, with a polite grin glued to his mouth and Anita did not smile at all and tapped a foot.

It was Grace who interrupted herself, not having lost track of her plans.

"It's rather—important," she explained. "I'd like to get in with Carolyn. If I can put this over it'll be quite a good stunt for her. It might—give me a start with the magazines. And, on the strength of it, I might—be able to sell Carolyn the idea of making Blake's play into a movie."

She looked questioningly at Blake. Grace was always tactful about injecting herself into Blake's affairs, but Anita couldn't help wondering how much of her interest was a sincere wish to help Blake and how much was a desire to show him that she was no mere hanger-on of his new-found importance, that she and her connections were valuable to him.

He replied by a pleased lift of his brows.

Grace addressed Dennis: "You ought to have some ideas for me, Dennis. You're a press agent yourself."

"I got out a story like that for a fan magazine," offered Dennis after a deep silence. "It's the same old hokum. But it might give you an idea. I could look it up for you."

"That's what they want, the same old hokum," said Blake.

And, "That sounds perfect," declared Grace. "I don't suppose—you care if I—use—some of it."

"O.K.," said Dennis, shrugging.

Grace paused. "You wouldn't like—to come back here after dinner and help me—plan it?" She let each word drop slowly from the edges of her mouth, sweetened with a tentative smile, and glanced at Anita.

"No," said Anita crisply, "we wouldn't like. Are we going to dinner or aren't we? I'm starved."

Dennis was about to pick up his hat when Grace asked, "Would you—mind—if I ate with you? Blake has to go to dinner with some man."

"Oh, all right, come along. We're meeting some friends of Dennis's later."

"I have to leave you right after dinner," stated Grace.

It was always like that, Anita thought. Not that she objected to Grace's accompanying them when nothing better turned up—Grace often invited her along, made many kind attempts to include the social life of Anita, with Dennis, in the convolutions of her own. But Anita waited to be asked, while Grace, though it was she who had established the rule that neither should interfere with the other's engagements—Grace took it for granted that she was welcome, unless told otherwise. Anita repeated to herself that she had no right to resent trifles, considering all Grace had done for her.

She looked from her own work-day silk to Grace's clothes of leisure. "I suppose I ought to get dressed."

"No," she said suddenly, "I shan't bother." She walked into the bedroom to smooth her hair. She couldn't and wouldn't compete. Dennis ought to know by now that she was no beauty alongside of Grace. Besides, what was there to compete for anyhow?

Grace, following on her heels, offered, "You can wear my blue dress."

"Thanks. No."

Grace would not give advice, but she did think Anita was careless. "You ought to get—yourself—some more things," she said, with meaning. "Clothes—are an investment, Anita."

"An investment in what?"

"Well, you needn't be so scornful. Things like that—help."

CHAPTER TWELVE

At two o'clock next morning Anita was riding home alone from Two Hundred and Twentieth Street. Dark houses, like regimented soldiers, stood up straight, then fell before the onslaught of the train. Around her all the drowsy couples were sagging toward each other; heads nodded lower and lower; heads jerked up to a moment of consciousness at each stoppage of the train. She should be angry to be taking this weary subway ride alone at night, yet watching them—watching the even houses, the drowsy couples, the nodding heads—she was flooded with the vast relief of her solitary aliveness; she only felt relief rising like a flag of triumph within her.

She held herself stiller in her seat, so that no movement of hers should flaunt to these people her secret victory. In that subway train she felt her eyes and her eyes only to be alert with a strange alertness, darting from her moveless self, drawing these people into her consciousness, while she herself was alone and apart, content to be so, unreachable by them, unreachable by all, unreachable (and heaven be praised therefore) unreachable even by Dennis. Oh, this was the essence of all victories, the smart of all defeats—there within the grasp of all, to be discovered by all, and ignored by all the drowsy eyes, the nodding heads, the somber houses. She tightened her lips; she would have bit them, feeling as if at any moment a smile would give the concrete signal of the elation soaring in her veins.

All was dark in the city. Broadway lay wan and disordered. The Palace was dark, and the burlesque house was dark. Loungers in the stuffy side streets west of Sixth, about the pallid hotels and down-at-heels houses, made little lights with sudden cigarettes.

Running up the stairs, she was surprised to hear the taps of the typewriter.

"My Gawd!" said Grace, confronting her. "I was about to send the police for you!"

She pointed to the typewritten sheets. "Blake had to work, so I thought I might as well begin that story."

She looked at Anita sharply, "What's got you so excited? Where have you been anyhow?"

Anita sank into a chair. It had been one of those evenings which seem to traverse many separate periods of time; in moments of awakening, during the transitions, one finds them, much to one's surprise, to be still continuing. This sort of evening is better relished in retrospect, when the memory with its own inarticulate art is found to have selected and retained only the most diverting incidents. Anita was overcome with accumulated laughter.

They had been at one time in a Chinese restaurant, and there was a sign, guardian of the place's respectability, and it said, "Ladies are requested to dance solely with their own escorts." They had sat at another time in a clandestine German beer garden through whose musty lattices oozed a gentle backyard breeze, and Dennis spoke of the beer picnics of his childhood, how cool had been the first breath of the green branches for which the children waited in the sweating cars, and Mac—this was Dennis's friend—spoke of God and the Devil, and Anita announced, a little drunken with Mac's scared admiration, her lack of concern with either, and Frances—this was Mac's girl—said that she didn't know—there must be something when one considered Nature and she said that she loved flowers.

"So then we went back to Two Hundred and Twentieth Street, where there was a tableful of liquor," said Anita. "And there was a girl and a man on the couch. But Frances took me aside and told me it was all right because the girl was a virgin and the man was a respectable married man and he had eight children. So, at length, the virgin and the married man departed and Dennis took a cold bath and went to sleep and snored and Mac took off his shoes and the radio played, 'My Wild Irish Rose, the sweetest flower that grows,' and Mac and Frances had a long argument about a friend of hers who was trying to get her father into an old folks' home, and Mac said, 'So that's the kind of a girl you are! You and your girl friend, you'd take an old man away from his kiddies and stow him in some damned old folks' home. If I was a daddy,' he said, 'I'd want to stay right with my kiddies!'

"So then I decided to go home. But Mac wouldn't hear of it because he explained Dennis was out and he was out and I couldn't ride home alone in the subway—'with all those damned mashers around, moving up close to the girls in the trains late at night.' He knew, he said, he'd seen 'em! He said I was to stay, and Frances said I could stay. She said it wasn't every girl she asked to stay; she said once she had had two girls there who, when asked to stay, objected and said, 'Oh, but we're not like Frances!' So she turned them out. But I could stay because she said she could see I wasn't 'that kind of a girl.' By that time I was a little mixed on the subject myself.

"Anyhow, I decided to go. So Dennis woke up and looked at me a long time and shook his head and said, 'You're too idealistic.' So I wanted to know why. So then he said, 'A-aah, yah punkie!' in his nice street-urchin way. 'You're too damn analytical!' Then he told me I had no abandon and I was the dumbest jane he'd ever run across—in fact, I was his dumbest woman. Upon which home truths I sallied forth."

"In Two Hundred and Twentieth Street!" exclaimed Grace. "It's improbable. Look—couldn't we all go up there some night—Blake too—and get a look at them?"

"Well, I'm not exactly running excursions up there," Anita pointed out.

Grace sniggered. "They sound too good to miss. Blake would love them. We must arrange it."

She paused. During a period of silence an expression adjusted itself on her face which warned Anita. She was prepared for the slow fixing of Grace's eyes that slowly turned to her face, for the halting phrases. She might have known Grace had stayed up for a purpose.

"I've had—an exciting time myself," said Grace.

Anita folded her hands. She listened.

"Blake nearly had a fight over me," Grace continued, and stopped to see the effect. If she was disappointed it did not show in the subtle enjoyment about her mouth, nor did it halt the penetrating spaced flow of her confidences. Blake had had to see someone at a theater owned by Trout, a producer whose current musical comedy he had "doctored." "And never thinking," went on Grace, "I was about to—look in back stage. I've been there so many times with Blake. The doorkeeper knows me and was going to—pass me. Then Fred walked up. You know—he's connected with Trout now. I have always told Blake that Fred made a point of being particularly nasty to me but he laid it to my imagination. Well—to-night—he saw for himself. Fred said, 'Don't pass this girl; we can't have everybody's sweeties hanging around.'"

She paused and swallowed nervously. Anita noticed how her face had become strained, her cheeks lengthened, under the narrative. These concrete signs of emotion never failed to exact sympathy from her, no matter how she might try to evade, to look everywhere, to prevent the focusing of her attention.

"I simply stood," went on Grace. Anita could imagine how she had stood, the tragic hugeness of her eyes. "You know—it's dark there—at the stage door. Neither of us saw Blake. He hissed! He actually did. He drew his face close up to Fred and he said, 'As long as I have any connection with this show, Grace can go in and out here as she damn well pleases, any time. D'ye hear that?' He was so white. I could see he was ready—to smash his fist into Fred's face. But Fred drew back. As he naturally would. 'Oh, I didn't know Grace was with you,' he said. Very honeyed. Scared, too. I dare say he and Blake will not do so much—business together in future."

Anita frowned, wondering what comment she could adequately make. But Grace spared her the necessity. "I really didn't mind so much," she concluded, "after it was over. It sort of opened things up—gave us a chance to talk. Things have been sliding along so..." She looked to Anita expectantly.

"The divorce?"

"Well—that appears to be still in the distant future," said Grace with reserve.

She paused. But as Anita asked no further questions she at length amended: "It's been—intimated, and I understand it was hinted in reply very coolly that—there might not be so much difficulty about that as he thought. But this was quite a while ago. Blake says she's stopped writing."

Anita spoke suddenly what had been on her mind for a long time: "Don't you think, if Blake told her about you, she'd give the divorce and make an end of it? After all, she seems to be quite decent."

To her surprise, Grace replied with feeling, "Yes. And it's hard on her, too. But Blake seems to be—determined to keep me out of it. He says because of his family—in case—in the future... And then—he thinks it would hurt her and there might be a mess. I told him to tell her. If it's for my sake—I don't care about a mess. And if I were she, no matter what it was, I'd rather know. Wouldn't you, instead of fighting with shadows? But—he—has his own ideas."

She rose. "Anyhow," she said, shrugging, "nothing can be arranged for the present. She's sick; something wrong with her heart."

Grace began to loosen her hair. Looking at Anita, who sat still where she had been left, she made a slow addition, as if, now that she had taken advantage of a moment so conducive to confidences, she might as well take the fullest advantage and divest herself of the rest of the truth. "I have no—assurance that he'll marry me, you know," she said softly. "He's never actually said so."

She continued with long, calm strokes to brush her hair that vibrated in little electric spasms of light down its fine spread to her shoulders, so that her face, white, hardened, with the chin raised, seemed to be the face of a stone lady surrounded by the strange, quivering life of the hair. She made a tiny movement of her head and shoulders. "That doesn't bother me," she said hardily. "I'm just as likely to—change my mind, too." She almost smiled at her reflection in the glass, or rather pressed her lips together to form an expression that was firm, a little secretive, and a little malicious. "I'm just as much of a person as Blake—just as free to do as I please."

She brushed for a few moments, absorbed in thought. Then, with a sigh, she relaxed into a full shrug. "After all, one can't blame him," she said, indulgent, condoning. "He doesn't want to get involved again—in all that—domesticity." She scanned Anita's face. "I suppose it's that way with Dennis, too," she remarked.

But Anita swiftly stood up. "Don't include me!" she cried. With her hands, she made motions of shoving away, palms toward Grace, head turned sideways.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

That winter Diana Reece left her husband. She had adopted Letty as bosom friend and often came to Letty's house, smothered in mink, her dark, hot eyes flashing in little torrents of energy above excited cheeks. When she opened her coat she disclosed a new lissomeness sheathed in black satin. "I've lost ten pounds," she announced in her rich voice. Walter liked her thin. Walter was the man she would marry when she had been divorced and he had been divorced. Walter also liked her in subdued dress, and black was Diana Reece's sole notion of a quiet color.

She always seemed to be impressed by the sacrifices she was capable of making for love and was always boasting of them. "The other day he was a little late in calling me. I had a hair dresser's appointment. But I give you my word I couldn't move a step from the telephone. I was like chained to it until I heard his voice!" With elated conviction her eyes darted from one to another of the group.

Paul rose from the bridge table with the habituated gallantry of the lady's man, to remove her coat.

She thrust forward one satined arm whose wrist was locked in gleaming platinum. "This is what Walter gave me for my birthday." Simultaneously, she curved an index finger loaded with a huge green stone that stuck out of its silver setting. "And this, too."

"A diamond wrist watch," said Grace, admiring, though privately she felt above diamond wrist watches. "How nice of him!"

Blake sneered a little. This sneer was lost in the growing roundness and ruddiness of his face, and there was a faint sense of after-dinner relaxation about his posture, with knees far apart, as if for the stomach to rest between. "A diamond wrist watch is Grace's idea of heaven, isn't it, Grace? She's never got over envying Madalynne's wrist watch, have you, Grace? Jerry won't get over it either for a long time. He's still paying the bill for it while Madalynne sues for breach of promise."

Grace's soft eyes wandered, drawing in sympathy. She said, in a special voice, at once submissive and explanatory, which she often used after some remark of his, "Blake thinks—men who give presents to girls are silly. He thinks because he's never had to, there aren't men who must. Otherwise, girls would not even look at them. Or men like Walter who—like to give things from sheer generosity."

"Oh, there's no one like Walter for generosity," said Diana warmly. She turned with a new conviction to the company. "He never comes to see me without bringing me something. I don't know what to do with all the candy and flowers. And bath salts! I have tons of bath salts. All men haven't your ideas, Blake, thank the Lord! You get away with murder." Shooting him a look of disapproval from her hot eyes, she sailed into the bedroom.

There was silence. Blake had paled. His mouth had a wry twist, and when Grace spoke to him he would not answer. She spoke again and touched his arm. "After all," she reminded him in an undertone, "it wasn't I who said that." He grimaced impatiently.

As soon as Dee reappeared he took his departure, saying that he must look in at the theater. His second play had just opened, and, in view of the fact that he was to begin a well-earned playwright's vacation the next day, golfing in Florida, he shook hands around the bridge table and kissed Letty good-bye. Pointedly he ignored Diana Reece, and would almost have passed Grace by in his sullen mood if she had permitted it. She followed him out. Through the half-open door were to be heard ensuing murmurs and the final kiss of reconciliation.

"Well!" said Diana Reece with a sigh of mock relief when Grace reëntered. "I didn't really mean to annoy him. But I should say, Grace, that you have him badly trained."

"Yes, she has," agreed Letty from the bridge table. "I'm devoted to Blake. But you should have heard the things he said about our playing bridge. The next thing, he said, would be for us to get a radio and move to the suburbs and become the perfect Babbitts. But it's all right for Blake to go down South and play golf! People who play golf aren't Babbitts, oh, no! That goes for you, too, Grace. You're always making fun of people who are interested in games. Why don't you laugh at Blake's golf?"

"I do, dearie, I do," said Grace decidedly. "It's not I who play golf, or bridge either. When you see me fighting over cards as you and Paul were fighting a minute ago, then you can crow."

Her eyes and her low, tenacious voice unconsciously concerned themselves with sucking the attention of the others toward herself.

She said pensively and gazed about the circle: "It's funny about Blake, isn't it? He used to—sneer at people who—played golf and fussed with cars. He—wanted to be free of all that—and now, he—rushes away to play golf and even thinks—of buying a car."

And each word sank into the minds of her listeners, impregnating them, despite themselves, even against their wills, irresistibly with her concerns. Their thoughts began to revolve about her chief interest, that now became their chief interest.

"It's because he has money," declared Diana Reece. Almost, her wide, red mouth smacked over the words, especially over the last that so admirably suited her taste.

Grace's shoulders began to curve, her chin to dig into the nook thus made, and her mouth to curl with her particular amusement. "So Anita says. She says that—so long as he hasn't bought a cane, however, there are still—hopes."

"I don't see what's wrong with a cane," muttered Paul, who always carried one.

"No! You wouldn't!" said Letty, briskly scornful.

Paul remained subdued, in silence. But Harold, studying his cards, mildly attempted to change the subject.

It was at Harold's invitation that Paul had come to play bridge. The clandestine meetings which had given Letty so much pleasure in the past had dwindled to this, that Letty now called him "poor Paul," and it was Harold who felt sorry for him. Seeing Paul look at Letty during the evening, Harold felt as if he were watching some lost but still-remembered part of himself, following vicariously the course of a personal experience, as one may perhaps do in a book, with a vivid recognition of each symptom but no pain. He could only show his sympathy by kindnesses that he hoped would go unnoticed—they did not; there was banter in the crowd about "what good friends Paul and Harold are getting to be"—such as asking for Paul's presence at the bridge table, because Paul was, fortunately, a very good player, and now and then turning aside the shaft of one of Letty's observations.

Formerly, Harold had gone out to play bridge. Letty had jeered at the game. Since the birth of the baby, however, bridge night once a week on the maid's evening out had become an institution. Letty said she was tired of spending the evening alone with Harold and if they had people in there was nothing else to do. Only it was difficult to find partners among their close friends. The Lindens played, but they lived in the suburbs. Grace and Blake contented themselves with sitting on the couch and mocking.

To-night Paul had, at Letty's behest, spent an hour telephoning to his club and among his acquaintances to find a fourth. And they had finally been obliged to commandeer a new admirer of Letty's. By profession he was a teacher of shorthand in a high school, but a youthful tramp journey to Africa had seemed to give him a lien on the words "romance" and "adventure," which he used incessantly. He also wrote sonnets. His given name was Leroy and, being fully sensible of his outward characteristics, the girls called him "li'l Leroy." It was perfect. It satisfied even Grace's keen quality of derisive description. She got any amount of amusement from the phrases he used—"I love to roam; I love to wander"—with a dreamy swaying of the head and swooning of the eyes—and from his habit of using the word "child" when he addressed women, delicately, tenderly, dropping it like a crystal from the heights of Olympus to a well-loved mortal. At the same time she took him quite seriously as an admirer of Letty's and a man with a literary background who wrote sonnets.

It was to li'l Leroy, since the others knew it anyway, that Grace announced she had begun a novel.

She caused the bridge game much strangled irritation by distracting his attention to discuss some incidents of the plot. Harold rose finally, crying that the game might as well be broken up.

"So it might," she agreed with a snigger.

And she and li'l Leroy turned their backs on a wrangle over eighteen cents, which Paul and Letty claimed to have won, to engage in an analysis of the story. It had been begun on the advice of Grace's literary agent, who always instructed tyros to write novels first and short stories afterward, as the latter were then apt to sell for bigger and better prices.

"It's a novel about a girl who—wants to—belong to herself—to be free," Grace informed li'l Leroy.

"Not autobiographical!" she emphasized, raising her voice and turning her eyes upon the card table. "The girl is to come from a small town. And she's not—to write. I think I'll make her an illustrator."

She paused. Her eyes wandered from face to face, insistent on comment.

Diana, as a professional, felt called upon to ask in a richly derogatory voice, "How would you get the small-town stuff? You never lived in a small town."

"Oh—that will be just—for the opening chapters. Anita is giving me some stuff—and Blake, too. He was brought up in a small town, you know."

"Are you putting Blake in?"

"No, indeed!" said Grace vigorously. She proclaimed: "Blake is not—to have—any place at all in this book. I'm making the man—a publicity agent for a movie company. He's to be dark—and to wear glasses. I know everyone'll look for a resemblance—but I defy anyone to find it."

Dee, who was not much in Grace's confidence, having considered her in the past a fool to "waste her time on a married man," now lowered her voice in the expression of a new alliance. She was learning for herself. "How's the status quo?" she asked, with warm sympathy.

"Oh." Grace drew away and shrugged. "As usual." But she could not resist the lure of Dee's attention and explained, after a pause, "She has heart disease."

Dee rolled her eyes to heaven. "They always develop something! Walter's wife was undecided whether to develop t.b. or cancer, as a matter of pride, you understand—not that she wasn't at bottom quite ready for a divorce herself."

"No. It's heart disease all right," said Grace coldly. She might show a sardonic good sense about the loves of others, but she resisted any effort to undermine the solemnity of her own.

"Then perhaps you won't have to bother. She might die."

"Wives never die," declared Letty. "I know. Aren't I a wife? Even if they have cancer they don't die. Look at Ruth's boy friend's wife. She's had cancer for years and she won't die."

"As someone says somewhere, 'They only die—in happy marriages,'" quoted Grace. Her eyes fixed themselves on space, taking on their mournful depths. "It's just as well this way, I suppose," she said at length. "I don't see that marriage is any more—happy. Less, in fact."

"What's that you said about Ruth?" queried Dee. "Is his wife still alive? Why, she's had cancer for at least five years—that I remember. I've already lost my faith in God. Don't let me lose my faith in cancer," she implored them, rolling the morsels of words on her tongue and lavishly rolling her heated eyes. "In spite of what you say," she added with fervent decision, "I'm taking no chances. Marriage is very convenient, you have to admit. Walter has it all arranged to go to Mexico. Millard and I are all set for Reno. And we're to meet and marry in California."

"It ought to be a slogan for the tour companies: 'Get divorced and see the world,'" commented Letty.

Dee appreciated the wit of this as well as anyone. She began a racy account of how Millard and she were rehearsing the way he was to strike her (before witnesses) en route to Reno. "He's so afraid to hurt me." To a question, she grew sober in the midst of her radiance, as one might at a party at the mention of a dead comrade.

"Twelve years," she replied gravely. "Mal's very much upset. I'm sorry for him. But what can you do?"

And, having remembered to pay this tribute to the dead, she went on with the opulent wit of her recital.

The men said nothing. They were a little shocked by the conversation. Besides, it did not concern them. It dealt with women's matters.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Grace nearly always went "out" in the evenings. All the girls whom she admitted to equality and who admitted her to equality went "out." It was the basis on which attractiveness and status were judged; it was a rigid convention, a game which one had to play in her sphere under peril of social neglect, just as in some circles it is necessary to play bridge for the same reason. Thus, Anita, when she came home later than usual, would find her curled up on the couch, horn-rimmed spectacles outlining her enormous eyes, the lamp shining on her book in those November twilights (so like heads just sprinkled with iron gray) as she read intently and chewed hard candy reflectively to the luxurious sound of running bath water. Grace enjoyed books, current ones by preference, since these had the additional use of keeping her up with current literary talk. If she were going "out" with Blake or the second-best young man of the moment, a dinner or afternoon dress would most often be spread out in the bedroom, as denoting the intimacy rather than the display of the engagement. These second-best young men formed a slow procession that advanced in single file, as it were, each member halting, involving Grace's spare attention for a while, then making way for a successor.

If, however, Grace were just having a "date," the dress would usually be an evening dress, with, beside it, the brocaded, furred cloak that Mrs. Kline, in token of reconciliation, had fashioned out of Grace's old sealskin. The escorts on such nights were merely pawns in the game of going "out"; were chosen for their utility, the money they had, the places they could take one to, rather than for their charm. And on such nights Grace would stay out exceptionally late, making the most of her chance to be escorted to the new fashionable restaurants and dance places and night clubs. She was not a "drinking woman." Her set did not frequent speakeasies, except from curiosity.

At first it was a source of wonder to Anita how Grace could find sufficient entertainment for so many nights, but she learned that it was very simple really. Grace had no desire to abandon herself to pleasure. She used pleasure for her own purposes. Grace did not seek for conviviality, or for amusement. She only sought to be present. She liked, as a matter of business, to see all the motion pictures that were talked of. Although she relished the theater, she had to see plays also so as to be able to pass her measured opinions on them. The theater and the movies were vital matters to the people she knew. A large part of their talk was of plays and players, and Grace had a memory for and a store of information about these as perfect and detailed as a boy's memory for the showings of athletic teams.

Between routine work, avocations, and social life, it might be considered difficult to fit in the writing of a novel. But there is always Sunday, when one does not have to go to the office, and when even social life disintegrates. Grace wrote her novel on Sundays. She planned it according to a simple mathematical formula: twenty chapters—twenty Sundays—five months. She applied herself to it with the astute, persistent, and organized vigor which she carried to all her undertakings.

She had not used the depths of intelligence suggested by her beautiful eyes, her clear, grave, deliberate diction, she had not used her assured bearing, her wide circle of acquaintance as well as her concrete accomplishments (some articles on motion pictures printed in large magazines)—she had not used all these to no purpose. They had all helped to "plant the idea," as she said, that she was "a young writer of promise." She was also prominent. She was seen often at luncheon in the places where one should be seen at luncheon, in the Algonquin and later in Sardi's. She was seen at first nights, where she greeted and was greeted. She believed the compliments which important people paid her and, divesting them of any qualifications, repeated what had been said to her in a simplified and exaggerated form.

She had some acquaintance among publishers and these she arranged for her agent to sound. One she impressed sufficiently with her beauty, her tactful certainty, and her knowledges to extract a contract and an advance from him. It was a good idea, he agreed, to write a novel about a girl who wanted to be "free." The novel about girls who want to be "free" is as hardy a perennial as the novel about newspapermen's adventures among womankind.

Then Grace proclaimed that she was writing a book in every quarter where she had or could get entrée. She knew reviewers, she knew colyumnists, she knew a few critics. She exhibited her loot among her friends. So-and-so would run her picture, and another person had promised to print a preliminary announcement; she had met a critic from Cleveland who would say nice things about it; she knew some bookshop owners who had bound themselves to feature it in their windows. She only hoped the "breaks" would be "right," and that she could establish the beginning of one of those settled and accepted reputations which, from her publicity work, she knew to be so valuable.

On Sundays Grace would put a meaningful question to Anita: "What are—your plans for to-day?" It implied that Anita, according to the original pact, was to keep out of the way as much as possible. If she could not go out, she would sit and read in the bedroom.

Whenever Grace had a free evening, it was also arranged that Anita should make a date and disappear between the hours of seven and twelve. Her dates were nearly always with Dennis. She and Dennis would go to dinner, then to the theater, or, if the cold chanced to be fine and clear, they would first walk up and down Fifth Avenue.

In the Fifties this street at night has the hush and luxury of deep carpets; the shops amble by and the lovers amble, and the faint lights among the glassed-in treasures seem to amble too. They stopped to gaze in great show windows, shining and magnetically smooth as the smooth backs of cats. They examined the titles of rows and rows of books. They stood long before pictures. Fifth Avenue would be growing stiller. All nevertheless would be throbbing softly, thrumming steadily with the steady flow of the motor cars, echoing the powerful note that lower down and one street west pulsed so insistently, struck so heavily, pounded hard and loud on the ear, while roundabout new buildings bloomed like great white roses in the sky and the lights of towers and windows chanted their golden melody in all shades, from amber to topaz, from pearl to copper color, and the excitement of all was overwhelming. Oh, they understood very well why people lived in cities, pooling their small forces palpably so that a turbulent, ceaseless, diversified river of force should tear them along, so that its mighty roar should deafen them to the faintness of their individual rhythms, so that from the resonance of its composite power they might extract some slight vibration of strength in their weakness.

Late at night they would return, clambering up the musty stairs that had only one pale bulb to light them, halting at the silent door. Before Anita could use her key, it opened on an interior permeated with warmth and electricity, framing Grace in the doorway, a Grace glad to see them, tired of being alone. Or they would find her tapping out the last words on the typewriter. A bag of hard candies was spilled on the shabby gray paint of the table among a clutter of sheets. The terse light summed up her hair and her cheeks and her plain tan jersey dress, her "office uniform," leather-belted and collarless. But no laconism of light could squelch the soft glow of her hair, eyes, skin, and the beads at her throat. She would shuffle the last sheet in with the others and turn, stretching, satisfied. "Look. I did eight pages to-night."

And, if she were not expecting Blake, who objected to the smell of smoke about her, she would ask for a cigarette and relax and give them her news. She always had some news. "Blake asked Letty to choose my Christmas present with him. It's his own idea. Guess what? A diamond wrist watch!" She sniggered lengthily. "I really didn't expect—what we said the other night to have that effect."

Or:

"I had to buy Christmas things for Blake's child to-day. And what a job that was, too! Still, it's not so bad as Ruth Frick. She has to help choose—hats—for Carl's wife."

Sometimes she would put her finger to her lip, and after a silence they would become aware of a pounding next door. It was the lady-next-door, of whose profession they could not help acquiring some knowledge, quarreling with her Jack. "He's been hammering on the door and threatening to kill her all evening," murmured Grace.

Between giggles and in hushed accents, they speculated on the possibility of a murder. Grace always followed murder trials in the papers with an absorbed curiosity, with an open and defiant understanding of the ways in which the skeins of a life might be so tangled as to importune that sort of cutting. She had once told Anita how, in the early days of her love for Blake, wrought up to a final frenzy of harassment by her mother's insistence, she had grabbed a kitchen knife against her.

Then Dennis would insist that one of them read aloud from a poetry anthology. He had a racial streak of artistry, formless and unformulated, as all his ideas and opinions were, and though he preferred Francis Thompson and Clarence Mangan, he could listen tirelessly to almost any sort of poetry. If neither Grace nor Anita would read, he would read himself, in a stumbling sing-song, mispronouncing or eliding half the words. But if he came to a line or verse that struck him—Anita noticed how often it was apt to be an admirable line—he would raise his voice as his only way of giving unusual expression.

This was on nights when Dennis remained actually sober throughout. On other nights he appeared to escort Anita to dinner a little "mellow," after his description, became more mellow in some restaurant where he was known and served accordingly, and could not be prevented from finishing the evening in a speakeasy. Anita, in order to avoid a scene in public, would be obliged to let him see her home.