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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Blood Red Dawn, by Charles Caldwell Dobie
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Blood Red Dawn
+
+Author: Charles Caldwell Dobie
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2004  [eBook #11875]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLOOD RED DAWN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Hélène Poirier and Project Gutenberg Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+THE BLOOD RED DAWN
+
+by
+
+CHARLES CALDWELL DOBIE
+
+1920
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To My Mother
+
+
+
+
+
+Book I
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The pastor's announcement had been swallowed up in a hum of truant
+inattention, and as the heralded speaker made his appearance upon the
+platform Claire Robson, leaning forward, said to her mother:
+
+"What?... Did you catch his name?"
+
+"A foreigner of some sort!" replied Mrs. Robson, with smug sufficiency.
+
+For a moment the elder woman's sneer dulled the edge of Claire's
+anticipations, but presently the man began to speak, and at once she
+felt a sense of power back of his halting words, a sudden bursting fort
+of bloom amid the frozen assembly that sat ice-bound, refusing to be
+melted by the fires of an alien enthusiasm. She could not help wondering
+whether he felt how hopeless it would be to force a sympathetic response
+from his audience. In ordinary times the Second Presbyterian Church of
+San Francisco could not possibly have had any interest in Serbia except
+as a field for foreign missionaries. Now, with America in the war and
+speeding up the draft, these worthy people were too much concerned with
+problems nearer their own hearthstones to be swept off their feet by a
+specific and almost inarticulate appeal for an obscure country, made
+only a shade less remote by the accident of being accounted an ally.
+
+Claire, straining at attention, found it hard to follow him. He talked
+rapidly and with unfamiliar emphasis, and he waved his hands. Frankly,
+people were bored. They had come to hear a concert and incidentally
+swell the Red Cross fund, but they had not reckoned on quite this type
+of harangue. Besides, an appetizing smell of coffee from the church
+kitchen had begun to beguile their senses. And yet, the man talked on
+and on, until quite suddenly Claire Robson began to have a strange
+feeling of disquiet, an embarrassment for him, such as one feels when an
+intimate friend or kinsman unconsciously makes a spectacle of himself.
+She wished that he would stop. She longed to rise from her seat and
+scream, to create an outlandish scene, to do anything, in short, that
+would silence him. At this point he turned his eyes in her direction,
+and she felt the scorch of an intense inner fire. Instinctively she
+lowered her glance.... When she looked up again his gaze was still fixed
+upon her. She felt her color rise. From that moment on she had a sense
+that she was his sole audience. He was talking to her. The others did
+not matter. She still did not have any very distinct idea what it was
+all about, but the manner of it held her captive. But gradually the
+mists cleared, he became more coherent, and slowly, imperceptibly, bit
+by bit, he won the others. Yet never for an instant did he take his
+eyes from _her_. When he finished, a momentary silence blocked the final
+burst of applause. But Claire Robson's hands were locked tightly
+together, and it was not until he had disappeared that she realized that
+she had not paid him the tribute of even a parting glance.
+
+The pastor came back upon the platform and announced that refreshments
+would be served at the conclusion of the next number. A heavy odor of
+coffee continued to float from the church kitchen. A red-haired woman
+stepped forward and began to sing.
+
+Already Claire Robson dreaded the ordeal of supper. The fact that tables
+were being laid further disturbed her. This meant that she and her
+mother would have to push their way into some group which, at best,
+would remain indifferent to their presence. When coffee was served
+informally things were not so awkward. To be sure, one had to balance
+coffee-cup and cake-plate with an amazing and painful skill, but, on the
+other hand, table-less groups did not emphasize one's isolation. Claire
+had got to the point where she would have welcomed active hostility on
+the part of her fellow church members, but their utter indifference was
+soul-killing. She would have liked to remember one occasion when any one
+had betrayed the slightest interest in either her arrival or departure,
+or rather in the arrival and departure of her mother and herself.
+
+The solo came to an end, and the inevitable applause followed, but
+before the singer could respond to the implied encore most of the
+listeners began frank and determined advances upon the tables. The
+concert was over.
+
+Mrs. Robson rose and faced Claire with a look of bewilderment. As usual,
+mother and daughter stood irresolutely, caught like two trembling leaves
+in the backwater of a swirling eddy. At last Claire made a movement
+toward the nearest table. Mrs. Robson followed. They sat down.
+
+The scattered company speedily began to form into congenial groups.
+There was a great deal of suddenly loosened chatter. Claire Robson sat
+silently, rather surprised and dismayed to find that she and her mother
+had chosen a table which seemed to be the objective of all the prominent
+church members. The company facing her was elegant, if not precisely
+smart, and there were enough laces and diamonds displayed to have done
+excellent service if the proper background had been provided. Claire was
+further annoyed to discover that her mother was regarding the situation
+with a certain ruffling self-satisfaction which she took no pains to
+conceal. Mrs. Robson bowed and smirked, and even called gaily to every
+one within easy range. There was something distasteful in her mother's
+sudden and almost aggressive self-assurance.
+
+Gradually the company adjusted itself; the tables were filled. The only
+moving figures were those of young women carrying huge white pitchers of
+steaming coffee. Claire Robson settled into her seat with a resignation
+born of subtle inner misery. Across her brain flashed the insistent and
+pertinent questions that such a situation always evoked. Why was she not
+one of these young women engaged in distributing refreshments? Did the
+circles close automatically so as to exclude her, or did her own
+aloofness shut her out? What was the secret of these people about her
+that gave them such an assured manner? No one spoke to her with cordial
+enthusiasm.... It was not a matter of wealth, or brains, or prominent
+church activity. It was not even a matter of obscurity. Like all large
+organizations, the Second Presbyterian Church was made up of every
+clique in the social calendar; the obscure circle was as clannish and
+distinctive in its way as any other group. But Claire Robson was forced
+to admit that she did not belong even to the obscure circle. She
+belonged nowhere--that was the galling and oppressive truth that was
+forced upon her.
+
+At this point she became aware that one of the most prominent church
+members, Mrs. Towne, was making an unmistakably cordial advance in her
+direction. Claire had a misgiving.... Mrs. Towne was never excessively
+friendly except for a definite aim.
+
+"My dear Miss Robson," Mrs. Towne began, sweetly, drooping
+confidentially to a whispering posture, "I am so sorry, but I shall have
+to disturb you and your mother!... It just happens that this table has
+been reserved for the elders and their wives.... I hope you'll
+understand!"
+
+For a moment Claire merely stared at the messenger of evil news. Then,
+recovering herself, she managed to reply:
+
+"Oh yes, Mrs. Towne! I understand perfectly.... I am sure we were very
+stupid.... Come, mother!"
+
+Mrs. Robson responded at once to her daughter's command. The two women
+rose. By this time the task of securing another place was quite
+hopeless. Claire felt that every eye in the room was turned upon them.
+Picking their way between a labyrinth of tables and chairs, they
+literally were stumbling in the direction of an exit when Claire felt a
+hand upon her arm. She turned.
+
+"Pardon me," the man opposite her was saying, "but may I offer you a
+place at our table?"
+
+Claire said nothing; she followed blindly. Her mother was close upon her
+heels.
+
+The table was a small one, and only two people were occupying it--the
+man who had halted Claire, and a woman. The man, standing with one hand
+on the chair which he had drawn up for Mrs. Robson, said, simply:
+
+"My name is Stillman, and of course you know Mrs. Condor--the lady who
+has just sung for us."
+
+Claire gave a swift, inclusive glance. Yes, it was the same woman who
+had attempted to beguile a weary audience from its impending repletion;
+at close range one could not escape the intense redness of her hair or
+the almost immoral whiteness of the shoulders and arms which she was at
+such little pains to conceal.
+
+"Stillman?" Mrs. Robson was fluttering importantly. "Not the old Rincon
+Hill family?"
+
+"Yes, the old Rincon Hill family," the man replied.
+
+Mrs. Robson sat down with preening self-satisfaction. Wearily the
+daughter dropped into the seat which Mrs. Condor proffered. The name of
+Ned Stillman was not unfamiliar to any San Franciscan who scanned the
+social news with even a casual glance, and Claire had a vague
+remembrance that Mrs. Condor also figured socially, but in a rather more
+inclusive way than her companion. At all events, it was plain that her
+mother, with unerring feminine insight, had placed the pair to her
+satisfaction. Already the elder woman was contriving to let Stillman
+know something of _her_ antecedents. _She_ was Emily Carrol, also of
+Rincon Hill, and of course he knew her two sisters--Mrs. Thomas Wynne
+and Mrs. Edward Finch-Brown! As Stillman returned a smiling assurance to
+Mrs. Robson's attempts to be impressive, a young woman in white arrived
+with ice-cream and messy layer-cake. Unconsciously Claire Robson began
+to smile. She could not have said why, but somehow the presence of Ned
+Stillman and Mrs. Condor at a table spread with such vacuous delights
+seemed little short of ridiculous. They did not fit the picture any more
+than her beetle-browed, red-lipped Serbian who.... She turned
+deliberately and swept the room with her glance. Of course he had gone.
+It was not to be expected that _he_ would descend to the level of such
+puerile feasting. A sudden contempt for everything that only an hour ago
+seemed so desirable rose within her, and, in answer to the young woman's
+query as to whether she preferred coffee to ice-cream, she answered with
+lip-curling aloofness:
+
+"Neither, thank you.... I am not hungry."
+
+Stillman looked at her searchingly. She returned his gaze without
+flinching.
+
+Claire Robson did not sleep that night. She lay for hours, quite
+motionless, staring into the gloom of her narrow bedroom, her mind
+ruthlessly shaping formless, vague intuitions into definite convictions.
+She could not put her finger upon the precise reason for her inquietude.
+Was it chargeable to so trivial a circumstance as a stranger's formal
+courtesy or had something more subtle moved her? If the depths of her
+isolation had been thrown into too high relief by the almost shameful
+sense of obligation she felt toward Stillman for his courtesy, what was
+to be said of the uniqueness of the solitary position which the Serbian
+awarded her by singling her out for a sympathetic response? Could it be
+that a vague pity had stirred him, too? Had things reached a point where
+her loneliness showed through the threadbare indifference of her glance?
+In short, had both men been won to gallantry by her distress? In one
+case, at least, she decided that there was a reasonable chance to doubt.
+And that doubt quickened her pulse like May wine.
+
+But the humiliation of her last encounter with chivalry stuck with
+profound irritation. She recalled the scene again and again. She
+remembered her contemptuous silence before Stillman's obvious suavities,
+the high, assured laugh which his companion, Mrs. Condor, threw out to
+meet his quiet sallies, the ruffling satisfaction of her mother,
+chattering on irrelevantly, but with the undisguised purpose of creating
+a proper impression. How easily Stillman must have seen through Claire's
+muteness and the elder woman's eager craving for an audience! And all
+the time Mrs. Condor had been laughing, not ill-naturedly, but with the
+irony of an experienced woman possessing a sense of humor.
+
+And at the end, when the four had left the church together, to be
+whirled home in Stillman's car, the sudden nods and smiles and farewells
+that had blossomed along the path of her mother's exit! Claire could
+have laughed it all away if her mother had not betrayed such eagerness
+to drink this snobbish flattery to the lees....
+
+Claire's father had never entered very largely into her calculations,
+but to-night her readjusted vision included him. Stubborn, kind, a bit
+weak, and inclined to copying poetry in a red-covered album, he had been
+no match for the disillusionments of married life. Her mother's people
+had felt a sullen resentment at his downfall--he had taken to drink and
+died ingloriously when Claire was still in her seventh year. Claire,
+influenced by the family traditions, had shared this resentment. But now
+she found herself wondering whether there was not a word or two to be
+said in his behalf. Her father had been a cheap clerk in a wholesale
+house when he had married. The uncertain Carrol fortunes were waning
+swiftly at the time, and Emily Carrol had been thrown at him with all
+the panic that then possessed a public schooled in the fallacy that
+marriage was a woman's only career. The result was to have been
+expected. Extravagance, debts, too much family, drink, death--the
+sequence was complete. He had been captured, withered, cast aside, by a
+tribe that had not even had the decency to grant his memory the
+kindness of an excuse.
+
+Wide-eyed and restless, Claire Robson felt a sudden pity for her father.
+Tears sprang to her eyes; it overwhelmed her to discover this new father
+so full of human failings and yet so full of human provocation. In her
+twenty-four years of life she had never shed a tear for him, or felt the
+slightest pang for his failure. If she had ever doubted the Carrol
+viewpoint, she had never given her lack of faith any scope. She had
+taken their cast-off prejudices and threadbare convictions as docilely
+as she had once received their stale garments. She had shrunk from
+spiritual independence with all the obsequious arrogance of a poor
+relation at a feast. Her diffidence, her self-consciousness, her
+timidity, were the outward forms of an inbred snobbery. It was curious
+how suddenly all this was made clear to her....
+
+At length she fell into a troubled sleep.... When she awoke the room's
+outlines were reviving before the advances of early morning. For the
+first time in her life she caught the poetry of the new day at first
+hand. For years she had reveled vicariously in the delights of morning.
+But it had always been to her a thing apart, a matter which the writers
+of romantic verse beheld and translated for the benefit of late
+sleepers. It never occurred to her that the day crawling into the
+light-well of her Clay Street flat was lit with precisely the same flame
+that colored the far-flung peaks of the poet's song. And instantly a
+phrase of the Serbian's harangue came to her--blood-red dawn! He had
+repeated these words over and over again, and somehow under the heat of
+his ardor and longing for his native land this hackneyed phrase took on
+its real and dreadful value. In the sudden sweep of this vital
+remembrance, Claire Robson rose for a moment above the fretful drip of
+circumstance.... _Blood-red Dawn_!... She threw herself back upon her
+bed and shuddered....
+
+She rose at seven o'clock, but already the morning had grown pallid and
+flecked with gray clouds.
+
+An apologetic tap came at the door, and the voice of Mrs. Robson
+repeating a formula that she never varied:
+
+"Better hurry, Claire. If you don't you'll be late for the office!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+As Claire stepped out into the cold sunlight of early November, she
+smiled bitterly at the exaggeration of last night's mood. After the
+first hectic flush of dawn there is nothing so sane and sweet and
+commonplace as morning. The spectacle of Mrs. Finnegan, who lodged in
+the flat below, slopping warm suds over the thin marble steps, added a
+final note of homeliness, which divorced Claire completely from heroics.
+
+"Well, Miss Robson, so you really got home, last night," broke from the
+industrious neighbor as she straightened up and tucked her lifted skirts
+in more securely. "I thought you never would come!... A package came
+from New York for you. The man nearly banged your door down. I had
+Finnegan put it on your back stoop.... It's from that cousin of yours, I
+guess. I was so excited about it I kept wishing you'd get home early so
+that I could get a peep at all the pretty things. But I'll run up just
+as soon as I get through with the breakfast dishes."
+
+Claire smiled wanly. "It was very good of you to take all that trouble,
+I'm sure, Mrs. Finnegan!"
+
+"Oh, bother my trouble!" Mrs. Finnegan responded. "I just knew how crazy
+I'd be about a box. I guess we women are all alike, Miss Robson.
+Anyway, your mother and I are!"
+
+Mrs. Finnegan bent over her task again with a quick exasperated
+movement, and Claire passed on. Her neighbor's abrupt rebuke gave Claire
+a renewed sense of exclusion. She had meant to be warmly appreciative,
+but she knew now that she had been only coldly polite. But, as a matter
+of fact, the prospect of delving through a box of Gertrude Sinclair's
+discarded finery moved her this morning to a dull fury. She felt
+suddenly tired of cast-offs, of compromise, of all the other shabby
+adjustments of genteel poverty. And by the time she reached the office
+of the Falcon Insurance Company her soul was seething with a curious and
+unreasonable revolt. The feminine office force seemed seething also, but
+with an impersonal, quivering excitement. Nellie Whitehead had been
+dismissed!
+
+This Nellie Whitehead, the stenographer-in-chief, was big, vigorous,
+blond--vulgar, energetic, vivid; and Miss Munch, her assistant, a thin,
+hollow-chested spinster, who loafed upon her job so that she might save
+her sight for the manufacture of incredible yards of tatting, never
+missed an opportunity to lift her eyes significantly behind her
+superior's back.
+
+"And what do you suppose?" Miss Munch was querying as Claire stepped
+into the dressing-room. "She told Mr. Flint to go to hell!... Yes,
+positively, she used those very words. And I must say he was a gentleman
+throughout it all. He told her gently but firmly that her example in the
+office wasn't what it should be and that in justice to the other
+girls...."
+
+Claire turned impatiently away. The fiction of Mr. Flint's belated
+interest in the morals of his feminine office force was unconvincing
+enough to be irritating. For a man who never missed an opportunity to
+force his attentions, he was showing an amazingly ethical viewpoint. On
+second thought, Claire remembered that Miss Munch was never the
+recipient of Mr. Flint's attentions, which to the casual eye might have
+seemed innocent enough--on rainy days gallantly bending his ample girth
+in a rather too prolonged attempt to slip on the girls' rubbers,
+insisting on the quite unnecessary task of incasing them in their
+jackets and smoothing the sleeves of their shirt-waists in the process,
+flicking imaginary threads where the feminine curves were most opulent.
+Not that Mr. Flint was a wolf in sheep's clothing; he played the part of
+sheep, but he needed no disguise for his performance; he merely lived up
+to a sort of flock-mind consciousness where women were concerned.
+
+The group clustered about Miss Munch broke up at the approach of Mr.
+Flint, who gave a significant glance in the direction of Claire Robson,
+intent upon her morning work. But the excitement persisted in spite of
+the scattered auditors, and the fact was mysteriously communicated that
+Miss Munch's interest in the event was chargeable to her hopes. It
+seemed impossible to Miss Munch that any one but herself could succeed
+to the vacant post of stenographer-in-chief.
+
+At precisely eleven o'clock the buzzer on Claire Robson's desk hummed
+three times. This announced that she was wanted by Mr. Flint. She
+gathered her note-book and pencils and answered the call.
+
+Mr. Flint was busy at the telephone when Claire entered the private
+office. She seated herself at the flat oak table in the center of the
+room.
+
+Mr. Flint's office bore all the conventional signs of
+business--commissions of authority from insurance companies, state
+licenses in oak frames, an oil-painting of Thomas Sawyer Flint, the
+founder of the firm, over a fireplace that maintained its useless
+dignity in spite of the steam-radiator near the window. On his desk was
+the inevitable picture of his wife framed in silver, a hand-illumined
+platitude of Stevenson, an elaborate set of desk paraphernalia in beaten
+brass that bore little evidence of service. In two green-glazed bowls of
+Japanese origin, roses from Mr. Flint's garden at Yolanda scattered
+faint pink petals on the Smyrna rug. These flowers were the only
+concession to esthetics that Mr. Flint indulged. In spite of a masculine
+distaste for carrying flowers, hardly a day went by when he did not
+appear at the office with a huge harvest of blossoms from his country
+home.
+
+Claire was bending over, intent on picking up the crumpled rose-petals,
+when Mr. Flint finally spoke. She straightened herself slowly. Her
+unhurried movements had a certain grace that did not escape the man
+opposite her. She tossed the bruised leaves into a waste-basket and
+reached for her pencil. Her heart was pounding, but she faced Mr. Flint
+with a clear, direct gaze.
+
+"Miss Robson, of course you've heard all about the rumpus," Mr. Flint
+was saying. "I had to fire Miss Whitehead.... I think you can fill the
+bill."
+
+Claire rose without replying. Mr. Flint left his seat and crossed over
+to her.
+
+"I hope," he said, flicking a thread from her shoulder, "that you're
+game.... Some girls, of course, don't care a damn about getting on ...
+especially if there's a Johnny somewhere in sight with enough cash in
+his pocket for a marriage license."
+
+"I am very much taken by surprise," Claire faltered. "You see, the
+change means a great deal to me."
+
+Mr. Flint moved closer. His manner was intimate and distasteful.
+"Sometimes I think we business men ought to get more of a slant on our
+employees.... You know what I mean, not exactly bothering about how many
+lumps of sugar they take in their coffee, or their taste in after-dinner
+cheese ... but, well, just how often they have to resole their boots and
+turn the ribbons on their spring bonnets.... Now, in Miss Whitehead's
+case.... But of course you're not interested in Miss Whitehead."
+
+"Why, I wouldn't say that," stammered Claire. Then, as she reached for
+her shorthand book she said, more confidently: "To be quite frank, Mr.
+Flint, I liked Miss Whitehead tremendously. She was so alive ... and
+vivid."
+
+Flint beamed. "Do you know why I picked you instead of that Munch
+dame?... It's because you had all the frills of a woman and none of the
+nastiness. For instance, you wouldn't be bothered in the least if I took
+a notion to overload the office with another pretty girl.... I've
+watched you for some time. It has taken me six months to make up my mind
+to fire Miss Whitehead and boost you into her job."
+
+He stood with an air of condescending arrogance, his thumbs bearing down
+heavily on his trousers pockets, his broad fingers beating a
+self-satisfied tattoo upon his thighs. Claire shrank nearer the table.
+"You mean, Mr. Flint, that you dismissed Miss Whitehead merely to give
+me her position?"
+
+Flint smiled. "Well, now you're coming down to brass-headed tacks. I'm
+not keen on spelling out the whys and wherefores of anything I do....
+But one thing is certain enough--if Miss Munch had been the only
+available candidate I _could_ have stood Miss Whitehead.... There ain't
+much question about that."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Flint! I'm sorry!"
+
+He gave a wide guffaw. "That only makes you all the more of a corker!"
+he answered, rubbing his hands together in narrow-eyed satisfaction.
+
+She escaped into the outer office, flushed, but with her head thrown
+back in an attitude of instinctive defense, and the next instant she
+literally ran into the arm of a man.
+
+"Why, Miss Robson, but this _is_ pleasant! I'm just dropping in to see
+Mr. Flint."
+
+She drew back. Mr. Stillman stood smiling before her.
+
+Greetings and questions flowed with all the genial ease of one who is
+never quite taken unawares. Claire, outwardly calm, felt overcome with
+inner confusion. She passed rapidly to her desk and sat down.
+
+Miss Munch was upon her almost instantly.
+
+"Do _you_ know Ned Stillman?" Miss Munch asked, veiling her real
+purpose.
+
+"Yes," replied Claire, with uncomfortable brevity.
+
+"I have a cousin who was housekeeper for his wife's father.... You know
+about his wife, of course."
+
+Claire lifted her clear eyes in a startled glance that was almost as
+instantly converted into a look of challenge.
+
+"Yes," she lied.
+
+Miss Munch hesitated, then plunged at once into the issue uppermost in
+her mind. "It's too bad you've had to be bothered with Flint's
+dictation, Miss Robson. It just happens I'm writing up a long
+home-office report, otherwise I'm sure he wouldn't have annoyed you."
+
+Claire Robson fixed Miss Munch with a coldly polite stare. "You've made
+a mistake, Miss Munch. Mr. Flint has given me no dictation." The speech
+in itself was nothing, but Claire's tone gave it unmistakable point.
+Miss Munch grew white and then flushed. She turned away without a word,
+but Claire Robson knew that in a twinkling of an eye she had gained not
+only an enemy, but an uncommon one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Claire took an unusually long way round on her walk home. Her
+path from the Falcon Insurance Company's office on California Street to
+the Clay Street flat was never a direct one, first, because there were
+hills to be avoided, and, second, because Claire found the streets at
+twilight too full of charm for a rapid homeward flight. The year was on
+the wane and the November days were coming to an early blackness. Claire
+reveled in the light-flooded dusk of these late autumn evenings. To her,
+the city became a vast theater, darkened suddenly for the purpose of
+throwing the performers into sharper relief. Most clerks made their way
+up Montgomery Street toward Market, but Claire climbed past the German
+Bank to Kearny Street. She liked this old thoroughfare, struggling
+vainly to pull itself up to its former glory. The Kearny Street crowd
+was a varying quantity, frankly shabby or flashily prosperous, as far
+south as Sutter Street, suddenly dignified and reserved for the two
+blocks beyond. To-night Claire missed the direct appeal of the streets
+lined with bright shops. They formed the proper background for her
+broodings, but they scarcely entered into her mood. She could not have
+said just what flight her mood was taking, or upon just which branch her
+thought would alight. She was confused and puzzled and vaguely uneasy.
+She had a sense that somehow, somewhere, a door had been opened and that
+a strong, devastating wind was clearing the air and bringing dead things
+to ground in a disorderly shower. She was stirred by twilights of
+uneasiness. It was almost as if the monotonous truce of noonday had been
+darkened by a huge, composite, masculine shadow, made up in some
+mysterious way of the ridiculous Serbian and his blood-red dawn, and
+this man Stillman, who had a wife, and Flint, with hands so ready to
+flick threads from her sloping shoulders. Yesterday her outlook had been
+peaceful and unhappy; to-day she felt stimulation of an impending
+struggle. She was afraid, and yet she would not have turned back for one
+swift moment. And suddenly the words of Mrs. Finnegan recurred, "I guess
+we women are all alike." Were they?
+
+At which point she came upon a pastry-shop window and she went in and
+bought a half-dozen French pastries. The thought of her mother's
+pleasure at this unusual treat brought her in due time smiling to her
+threshold.
+
+Mrs. Robson was not in her accustomed place at the head of the stairs;
+about half-way up the long flight her voice sounded triumphantly:
+
+"Oh, Claire, do hurry and see what Gertrude has sent! Everything is
+perfectly lovely."
+
+Claire quickened her pace and gained the cramped living-room. Thrown
+about in a sort of joyous disorder, Gertrude Sinclair's finery quite lit
+up the shabbiness. Hats, plumes, scraps of vivid silks, gilded slippers,
+a spangled fan--their unrelated vividness struck Claire as fantastic as
+a futurist painting. Her mother seemed suddenly young again. Claire
+wondered whether, after the toll of sixty-odd years, she could be moved
+to momentary youth by the mere sight of the prettiness that was
+quickening her mother's pulse.
+
+Mrs. Robson held up a filmy evening gown of black net embroidered with a
+rich design of dull gold. "Isn't this heavenly?" she demanded. "And it
+will just fit you, Claire. I think Gertrude has spread herself this
+time."
+
+"Yes, on finery, mother. But didn't she send anything sensible? What
+possessed her to load us up with a lot of things we can never possibly
+get a chance to wear?"
+
+Claire had not meant to be disagreeable, but there was rancor in her
+voice. Mrs. Robson cast aside the dress with the carelessness of a
+spoiled favorite; she always adapted her manner to the tone of her
+background.
+
+"Claire Robson!" she cried, good-naturedly. "You're a regular old woman!
+I'm sure _I_ haven't much to be cheerful about, but I just won't let
+anything down me!... If I wanted to, I could give up right now. Where
+would we have been, I'd like to know, if I hadn't held my head up?
+Goodness knows, _my_ folks didn't help me. If they had had their way,
+I'd been out manicuring people's nails and washing heads for a living.
+And _you_ in an orphan-asylum! That's what my people did for me! As it
+is, they shoved you out to work. What chance have you of meeting nice
+people? No, Claire, I don't care how they have treated me, but they
+might have given you a chance. I'll never forgive them for that!... I
+thought last night when I was talking to Mrs. Condor and watching you
+and Mr. Stillman how nice it would have been if.... Oh, that reminds me!
+Who do you think has been here to-day?... Mrs. Towne! She came to
+apologize about asking us to move our seats the other night. _She_ knows
+the Stillmans well. The old people were pillars of the Second Church in
+the 'sixties. I fancy he is dancing about that Mrs. Condor's heels a
+bit. Of course, as Mrs. Towne said, _she_ wouldn't be likely to make
+herself a permanent feature of Second Church entertainments. But now in
+war-times _anything_ is possible. Mrs. Towne was telling me all about
+Stillman and his wife. I _should_ have remembered, but somehow I forgot.
+Get your things off and I'll tell you all about it."
+
+Claire handed her mother the package of pastries. "I heard about it
+to-day," she said, coldly.
+
+"But Mrs. Towne knows the whole thing from A to Z," insisted Mrs.
+Robson, genially.
+
+"I'm not interested in the details," Claire returned, doggedly.
+
+Mrs. Robson's face wore a puzzled, almost a harried, expression. Claire
+moved away. Her mother gave a shrug and renewed her efforts to drag
+further finery from the mysterious depths of the treasure-box. Her
+daughter cast a last incurious glance back. The glow on Mrs. Robson's
+face, which Claire had mistaken for youth, seemed now a thing hectic and
+unpleasant, and gave an uncanny sense of a skeleton sitting among gauds
+and baubles.
+
+A feeling of isolation swept Claire, such as she had never experienced.
+The person who should have been closest suddenly had become a
+stranger.... She went into her room and closed the door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The following week Claire was surprised to find a letter on her desk at
+the office. The few written favors that came her way usually were
+addressed to the Clay Street flat, so that she was puzzled by this
+innovation and the unfamiliar handwriting. Glancing swiftly at the
+signature, she was surprised to see the name "Lily Condor," scrawled
+loosely at the foot of the note. It seemed that Mrs. Condor was giving a
+little musicale in Ned Stillman's apartments on the following Friday
+night, and, if one could believe such a thing, the lady implied that the
+evening would scarcely be complete without the presence of Claire
+Robson--or, to put it more properly, Claire Robson and her _mother_.
+
+As Claire had scarcely said a half-dozen words to Mrs. Condor on the
+night of the Red Cross concert, this invitation seemed little short of
+extraordinary. But, as Claire thought it over, she recalled that there
+had been some general conversation about music, in which she had
+admitted a discreet passion for this form of entertainment, even going
+so far as to confess that she played the piano herself upon occasion.
+Her first impulse, clinched by the familiar feminine excuse that she had
+nothing suitable to wear, was to send her regrets. At once she thought
+of the scorned finery that Gertrude Sinclair had included in her last
+box, and the more she thought about it the more convinced she became
+that she had no real reason for refusing. But a swift, strange regret
+that her mother had been included in the invitation took the edge off
+her anticipations. She tried to dismiss this feeling, but it grew more
+definite as the morning progressed.
+
+For days Claire had been striking at the shackles of habit with a rancor
+bred of disillusionment. She had been on tiptoe for new and vital
+experiences, and yet, for any outward sign, her life bid fair to escape
+the surge of any torrential circumstance. Particularly, at the office,
+things had gone on smoothly. The other clerks had accepted Claire's
+advancement without either protest or enthusiasm. Even Miss Munch had
+veiled her resentment behind the saving trivialities of daily
+intercourse. She had gone so far as to introduce Claire to her cousin, a
+Mrs. Richards, who had come in at the noon hour for a new tatting
+design. This cousin was a large, red-faced woman, with an aggressively
+capable manner. She had the quick, ferret-like eyes of Miss Munch and
+the loose mouth of a perpetual gossip.
+
+"She's the one I told you about the other day," Miss Munch had explained
+later--"the housekeeper for _your friend_ Stillman's father-in-law." She
+gave nasty emphasis to this trivial speech.
+
+Flint had been direct and business-like almost to the point of
+bruskness. But Claire knew that such moods were not unusual, so she took
+little stock in the ultimate significance of his restrained manner.
+
+Perhaps the most indefinable change had come over Claire's home life.
+Her mother's unfailing string of trivial gossip, formerly not without a
+certain interest, now scarcely held her to even polite attention.
+Indeed, her self-absorbed silence, while Mrs. Robson poured out the
+latest news about Mrs. Finnegan's second sister's husband's mother--who
+was suddenly stricken with some incurable disease, made all the more
+mysterious by the fact that its nature was not divulged--was so apparent
+that her mother, goaded on to a mild exasperation, would ask,
+significantly:
+
+"What's the matter, Claire? Have you a headache?"
+
+Mrs. Robson was never so happy as in the discovery of some one with a
+mysterious disease, particularly if the victim's relatives were loath to
+discuss the issue.
+
+"They think they fool me!" she would say, triumphantly, to Claire, "but
+I guess I know what ails her.... Didn't her mother, and her uncle, and
+her sister's oldest child die of consumption? I tell you it's in the
+family. The last time I saw her she nearly coughed her head off."
+
+Not that Mrs. Robson was unsympathetic; brought face to face with
+suffering, she blossomed with every impulsive tenderness, but her
+experiences had confirmed her in pessimism, and every fresh tragedy
+testified to the soundness of her faith. Her pride at diagnosing
+people's ills and pronouncing their death-sentences was almost
+professional. And she had an irritating way of making comments such as
+this:
+
+"Well, Claire, I see that old Mrs. Talbot is dead at last!... I knew she
+wouldn't live another winter. They'll feel terribly, no doubt; but, of
+course, it is a great relief."
+
+Or:
+
+"Why, here is the death notice of Isaac Rice! I thought he died _years_
+ago. My, but he was a trial! What a blessing!"
+
+This was the type of conversation that Claire was finding either empty
+of meaning or illuminating to the point of annoyance. What amazed her
+was the fact that she had remained blind so long to the slightest of the
+conversational food upon which she had been fed.
+
+Claire did not tell her mother about the invitation to Mrs. Condor's
+musical evening.
+
+"I'll wait," she said to herself. "Thursday will be time enough."
+Although why delay would prove advantageous was not particularly
+apparent.
+
+On Wednesday night at the dinner-table, Mrs. Robson, as if still puzzled
+at her daughter's altered mood, said, rather cautiously:
+
+"There's to be a reception at the church on Friday night."
+
+"For whom?" inquired Claire, with pallid interest.
+
+"I didn't quite catch the name.... Some woman back from France. She's
+been nursing in one of the British hospitals. She's to get Red Cross
+work started at the church. It seems San Francisco is a bit slow over
+taking up the work, but, then, you know, we're poked off here in a
+corner and I suppose we don't quite realize yet.... Anyway, Mrs. Towne
+wants us to help with the coffee. She says you should have been in the
+church-work long ago. You look so self-contained and efficient.... I
+told her we would be there at half past seven and get the dishes into
+shape."
+
+Claire's heart beat violently. "Friday night? I'm sorry, mother; I have
+another engagement."
+
+"Another engagement? Why, Claire, how funny! You never said anything
+about it. I don't know what to say to Mrs. Towne."
+
+Claire felt calm again. "Just tell her the truth."
+
+"But she'll think so strange that I didn't know ... that I...."
+
+"You shouldn't have spoken for me until you found out whether I was
+willing."
+
+"Willing! _Willing!_ I didn't suppose you'd be anything else. I've been
+trying to get you in with the right people at the church for the last
+fifteen years. I've tried so hard...."
+
+"Yes, mother, I know," said Claire, patiently. "But don't you see?
+That's just it. You've tried too hard."
+
+Mrs. Robson began to whimper discreetly. "How you do talk, Claire! I
+declare I don't know what to make of it. I suppose you're bitter about
+Mrs. Towne the other night. I felt so at first, but I can see now we
+were at the wrong table. And, after all, everything came out
+beautifully. We sat with Mr. Stillman, and that had a very good effect,
+I can tell you. Especially when everybody saw us leave with him. Why, it
+brought Mrs. Towne to her feet."
+
+"Yes, and that's the humiliating part of it."
+
+"Well, Claire, when you've lived as long as I have you won't be so
+uppish about making compromises," flung back Mrs. Robson. "Of course, if
+you've got another engagement, you've got another engagement, but
+if...."
+
+"I wouldn't have gone, anyway. I'm through with that sort of thing."
+
+"Why, Claire, how can you! It's your duty, _now_!--with your country at
+war--and ... and ... Even that dreadful Serbian the other night made
+_that_ plain."
+
+"I'll go with you to church on Sundays, of course, but--"
+
+"What am _I_ to do?" wailed Mrs. Robson. "At least you might think of
+me! I've not had much pleasure in my life, goodness knows, and now just
+as I...."
+
+Mrs. Robson broke off abruptly on a flood of tears. Two weeks ago these
+tears would have overwhelmed Claire. As it was, she sat calmly stirring
+her tea, surprised and a little ashamed of her coldness. The truth was
+that Claire Robson was feeling all the fanatical cruelty that comes with
+sudden conviction. The forms of her new faith had hardened too quickly
+and left outlines sharp and uncompromising.
+
+For years Claire had found shelter from the glare of middle-class
+snobbery beating about her head, by shrinking into her mother's
+inadequate shadow as a desert bird shrinks into the thin shadow of a dry
+reed by some burned-out watercourse. Now a full noon of disillusionment
+had annihilated this shadow and given her the courage of necessity. And
+there was something more than courage--there was an eagerness to stand
+alone in the commonplace words with which she sought to temper her
+refusal to assist at the coming church reception:
+
+"I can't see any good reason, mother, why you shouldn't go and help Mrs.
+Towne.... What have my plans to do with it?"
+
+To which her mother answered:
+
+"I do so hate to be seen at such places alone, Claire."
+
+Claire made no reply. She did not want to give her mother's indecision a
+chance to crystallize into a definite stand. She knew by long experience
+that if this happened it would be fatal. But in a swift flash of
+decision Claire made up her mind for one thing--she would either go to
+Mrs. Condor's evening alone or she would send her regrets.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+By a series of neutral subterfuges and tactful evasions Claire Robson
+won her point--she went to the Condor musicale at Ned Stillman's
+apartments alone, and on that same night her mother wended a rather
+grudging way to the Second Presbyterian Church reception.
+
+Acting under her mother's advice, Claire timed her arrival for nine
+o'clock, an hour which seemed incredibly late to one schooled in the
+temperate hour of church socials. Mrs. Condor herself opened the door in
+answer to Claire's ring.
+
+"Oh, my dear, but I _am_ glad to see you!" burst from the elder woman as
+she waved her in. But she did not so much as mention the absence of Mrs.
+Robson, and Claire was divided between a feeling of wounded family
+pride, and gratification at the intuition which had warned her to leave
+her mother to her own devices. More people arrived on Claire's heels,
+and in the lively bustle she was left to shed her wraps in one of the
+bedrooms. Her heart was pounding with reaction at her outwardly
+self-contained entrance. She let her rather shabby cloak slip to the
+floor, revealing a strange, new Claire resplendent in the
+gold-embroidered gown that had once so stirred her rancor. For a brief
+instant she had an impulse to gather the discarded wrap securely about
+her and make a quick exit. A swooning fear at the thought of meeting a
+roomful of people assailed her. But there succeeded a courage born of
+the realization that they all would be strangers. With a sense of
+bravado she stepped out into the entrance hall again.
+
+Ned Stillman came forward. She halted and waited for him. His face had
+lit with a sudden pleasure, which told Claire that for once in her life
+her presence roused positive interest. He inquired after her health, why
+her mother had not come, whether the abominable fog was clearing. His
+easy formality put her, as usual, completely at ease.
+
+It was only when he asked her, with the most inconsequential tone in the
+world, "whether she could read music at sight" that a sinking fear came
+over her. And yet she found courage enough to be truthful and say yes.
+
+"That's fine!" he returned. "Our accompanist hasn't come yet and we want
+to start off with a song or two."
+
+From this moment on the evening impressed itself on Claire in a series
+of blurred hectic pictures.... She knew that Stillman was leading her
+toward the piano, but the living-room and its toned lights gave her a
+curious sense of unreality. She seated herself before the white keyboard
+and folded her hands with desperate resignation while she waited for
+Stillman to dictate the next move.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Condor," Stillman explained, as that lady came up to them,
+"we sha'n't have to wait for Flora Menzies. Miss Robson will accompany
+you."
+
+Claire sat unmoved. She was beyond so trivial a sensation as anxiety.
+Stillman drifted away; Mrs. Condor began to run through the sheet music
+lying on the piano.
+
+"Of course you know Schumann, Miss Robson. Shall we start at once? How
+is the light? If you moved your stool a little--so. There, that's
+better."
+
+Claire did not reply. She looked at the music before her. She was
+conscious that it was a piece she knew, although its name registered no
+other impression. She began to play. The opening bars almost startled
+her. She felt a hush fall over the noisy room. Her fingers stumbled--she
+caught the melody again with staggering desperation. Mrs. Condor was
+singing.... The room faded; even the sound of Mrs. Condor's voice became
+remote. Claire had a desire to laugh.
+
+All manner of strange, disconnected thoughts ran through her head. She
+remembered a doll she had broken years ago and buried with great pomp
+and circumstance, a pink parasol that had been given her as a child, the
+gigantic and respectable wig which had incased the head of her old
+German music-teacher, Frau Pfaff. And as she played on and on the music
+further evoked the memory of this worthy lady who had given her services
+in exchange for lodgings in an incredibly small hall bedroom, with
+certain privileges at the kitchen stove. And pictures of this irritating
+woman rose before her, stewing dried fruit, or preparing sour beef, or
+borrowing the clothes boiler for a perennial wash. What compromises her
+mother had made to give her child the gentle accomplishments that Mrs.
+Robson associated with breeding! It came to Claire that it was almost
+cruel to have denied this mother a share in the triumphs of that
+evening. And with that, she realized that Mrs. Condor had ceased
+singing. A hum broke loose, followed by applause. Claire grew faint. Her
+head began to swirl. She clutched the piano stool and by sheer terror at
+the thought of creating a scene she managed to keep her consciousness as
+she felt Mrs. Condor's hand upon her shoulder and heard a voice that
+just missed being patronizing:
+
+"My dear, you did it beautifully."
+
+Claire longed to burst into tears....
+
+The concert was over shortly after eleven o'clock. Besides Mrs. Condor,
+there had been a 'cellist, very masculine in his looks but rather
+forceless in his playing, and a young, frail girl who brought great
+breadth and vigor to her interpretations at the piano. But Claire was
+really too excited for calm enjoyment. Supper followed--creamed minced
+chicken and extraordinarily thin sandwiches, and a dry, pale wine that
+Claire found at first rather distasteful. Claire sat with a little group
+composed of Mrs. Condor, Ned Stillman, a fashionable young man, Phil
+Edington, who frankly confessed boredom at all things musical except
+one-steps and fox-trots, and two or three artistic-looking souls who
+pretended to be quite shocked by young Edington's frankness.
+
+Conversation veered naturally to the subject of the war. Edington had
+tried for a commission in an officers' training-camp and failed. He was
+extraordinarily frank about it all, and good-natured at the chaffing
+that Mrs. Condor and Stillman threw at him.
+
+"I'm going to wait now and be drafted," he announced. "As long as I
+failed to make a high grade I want to begin at the bottom and see the
+whole picture."
+
+Claire rather waited for a word from Stillman as to his convictions on
+the subject. Of course one could see that he was over the draft age,
+still.... For the most part she was silent, but happy and content. By
+contributing her share to the evening's entertainment she had justified
+her presence. Wine as a factor in midnight suppers was a new but not a
+revolutionary experience to Claire Robson, but she gasped a bit when the
+maid passed cigarettes to the ladies. And yet she felt a delicious sense
+of being a party to something quite daring and _outré_, although she did
+not have either courage or skill to enjoy one of the slender,
+gold-tipped delights.
+
+The time for departure finally came. Claire rose reluctantly. Mrs.
+Condor, slipping one arm in Phil Edington's and the other in Claire's,
+sauntered with them toward the entrance hall.
+
+"I say," ventured Edington as Stillman caught up to the group. "What's
+the matter with just us four dropping down to the Palace for a whirl or
+two?"
+
+Claire stared. She had not grown used to the novelty of being included,
+but any instinctive objections to the plan were promptly silenced by
+Mrs. Condor's enthusiastic approval.
+
+They arrived at the Palace Hotel shortly before midnight. The Rose Room
+was crowded. All the tables seemed filled, and Claire had a moment of
+disappointment caused by the fear that their party would be unable to
+gain admittance. But young Edington's presence soon set any uneasiness
+on that score at rest, and a place was evolved with deftness and
+despatch. The novelty of the situation to Claire was nothing compared
+with her matter-of-fact acceptance of it. She was neither self-conscious
+nor timid. Her three companions had a way of tacitly including her in
+even their trivial chatter that was unmistakable, though hard to define.
+She felt that she was one of them, and she blossomed in this strange new
+warmth like a chilled blossom at the final approach of a belated spring.
+All evening her starved sense of self-importance had been feeding
+greedily upon the compliments that had come her way. There had been her
+mother's rather apologetic words of approval at her appearance, to begin
+with, then Mrs. Condor's appreciation at the piano, and finally a word
+dropped by one of the women who had shared a mirror with her at the hour
+of departure.
+
+"How do you manage your hair, Miss Robson?" the other had said, digging
+viciously at her shifting locks with a hairpin. "I do declare you're the
+only woman in the room that looks presentable."
+
+But it was Edington's words to Stillman while they stood waiting for the
+hotel attendants to prepare the table that brought a quickened beat to
+her heart. The conversation was low and not meant for her ears, but her
+senses were too sharpened to miss Edington's furtive words as he
+whispered to Stillman:
+
+"Where did ... amazing.... Miss Robson?"
+
+Claire did not catch the reply which must have also been something of a
+query, but she heard Edington continue.
+
+"Well ... a little too silent, I must admit.... No, I don't dislike 'em
+that way ... but I'm afraid of them."
+
+Stillman answered with a low laugh.
+
+They sat down. Edington ordered wine. The crowd at the tables was rather
+a mixed one. There was plenty of elaborate gowning among the groups of
+formal diners who had prolonged their feasting into the supper hour, but
+many casuals, drifting in for a few drinks and a dance or two, robbed
+the scene of its earlier brilliance.
+
+The orchestra struck up a one-step. Claire denied Stillman the dance,
+explaining that she knew none of the new steps, and he whirled away with
+Mrs. Condor. Edington, robbed of his chance, pouted unashamed.
+
+"I say, Miss Robson, can't you do a one-step--really? There isn't
+anything to it! Come on--try; I'll pull you through."
+
+Claire's knowledge of dancing was instinctive, but not a matter of much
+practice, yet his distress was so comic that she relented. She wondered
+if he could feel her trembling as they swung into the dance. She
+stumbled once or twice from timidity, but Edington guided unerringly.
+Half-way round she suddenly struck the proper swing.
+
+"There--that's it," cried Edington, enthusiastically. "Now you've got
+it! Fine!"
+
+His praise mounted to her brain like a heady wine, and suddenly, in the
+twinkling of an eye, all the repressed youth within her awoke with a
+sweet and terrible joy.... They danced madly, perfectly, the rhythm
+entering into them like something at once fluid and flaming. Her ecstasy
+awoke a vague response in her partner, who bent forward as he kept
+repeating, monotonously:
+
+"And you said you couldn't, Miss Robson! Fancy, you said you couldn't!"
+
+The music stopped abruptly with a crash. Some of the dancers made their
+way leisurely back among the tables, but the most of them wandered about
+the polished' floor, clapping insistent hands for an encore. In this
+brief interlude, groups arrived and departed. The musicians lifted their
+instruments to chin and lip, struck an opening chord; couples began to
+whirl and glide. Claire Robson, palpitant and eager, followed Edington's
+lead, but almost at the first moment of their rhythmic flight they came
+crashing into the overcoated bulk of a man cutting across the corner of
+the ballroom in an attempt at a swift exit. A smothered protest escaped
+Edington, and Claire detached herself from her partner long enough to
+see the offender bow very low and hear his apology in a voice and manner
+that seemed curiously familiar:
+
+"I beg your pardon. Pray forgive me! I should have known better."
+
+In the twinkling of an eye the interrupted dancers were sweeping on
+again, and the apologetic stranger, hat in hand, turning for a farewell
+look at the pair. Claire Robson felt an up-leap of the heart; a fresh
+ecstasy quickened her. It was the Serbian!
+
+They finished the dance almost opposite their table and were met by a
+patter of applause from Mrs. Condor and Stillman, who were already
+seated.
+
+Claire was flaming with embarrassment as she faced Stillman.
+
+"I hope you'll understand, Mr. Stillman," she faltered. "But Mr.
+Edington seemed willing to risk my ignorance."
+
+Mrs. Condor turned Claire's plaintive apology into a covert attack upon
+Stillman's courage, but Stillman rescued Claire from further confusion
+by laughing back:
+
+"Well, I'll have my revenge on Edington. I'll grant him all the
+one-steps, but he can't have any of the waltzes, Miss Robson."
+
+The waiter began to pour out the champagne. Claire settled back in her
+seat with a feeling of delightful languor. The dance had released all
+the pent-up emotions that a night of vivid sensations had called into
+her life. She had come into the Rose Room of the Palace Hotel quivering
+in the leash of a restrained enjoyment; it had taken the quick lash of
+opportunity to send her spirits hurtling forward in wild and headlong
+abandon. She lifted her wine-glass in answer to the upraised glasses of
+her companions, and the thought flashed over her that it would be
+impossible for her to have quite her old vision again. In every life
+there are culminating moments of joy or sorrow which either clear or
+dim the horizon, and Claire felt that such moment was now hers.
+
+Stillman rose promptly in his seat at the first strains of the waltz,
+which proved to be the next number. Claire stepped out upon the floor
+with confidence.
+
+She did not need any word of reassurance this time to tell her that her
+dancing was more than acceptable, and, true to her brief experience with
+Stillman, he refrained from voicing the obvious. They had begun the
+dance promptly and for the first whirl about they had the floor almost
+to themselves. Claire's discreet sidelong glances detected many
+approving nods in their direction; people were noticing them and making
+favorable comment.... The floor filled, but even in the crowd Claire had
+a sense that she and her partner were standing out distinctly.
+
+The very nature of the waltz contrasted sharply with the one-step. There
+was less abandon and more art. The first dance had expressed a primitive
+emotion; the present slow and measured whirl a discriminating sensation.
+And slowly, under the spell of Stillman's calm and yet strangely glowing
+manner, Claire recovered her poise. All night she had been inhaling
+every fresh delight rapturously with the closed eyes and open senses
+that one brings to the enjoyment of blossoms heavy with perfume. It took
+Stillman's influence to rob the hours of their swooning delight by
+recapturing her self-consciousness. Things became at once orderly and
+reasonable. And as he led her back to their table she felt the flame
+within cease its flarings and become steady, with a pleasurable glow.
+For a moment she felt uneasy, as if she were being trapped by something
+sweetfully insidious. Slowly, almost cautiously, she withdrew her arm
+from his. He made no comment; it was doubtful if he really noticed her
+recoil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Long past its appointed time the hall light in the Robson flat continued
+to burn dimly. Mrs. Robson, sleepless and a bit anxious, waited alertly
+for the sound of Claire's key in the door. The welcome click came
+finally, succeeded by the unmistakable slam of an automobile door and
+the sharp, quick note of a machine speeding up.
+
+"She's come home in Stillman's car," flashed through Mrs. Robson's mind,
+as she sat up in bed. At that moment Mrs. Finnegan's cuckoo clock,
+sounding distinctly through the thin flooring, warbled twice with a
+voice of friendly betrayal. "Mercy! it's two o'clock!" she muttered. "I
+wonder if Mrs. Finnegan is awake?... I do hope she heard the
+automobile!..."
+
+Seated at the foot of her mother's bed, Claire tried her best to give a
+satisfactory report of the evening, but she found that she had
+overlooked most of the details that her mother found interesting. Who
+was there? What did Mrs. Condor wear? Did they have an elaborate
+spread?--the questions rippled on in an endless flow.
+
+Under the acceleration of Claire's recital, Mrs. Robson found her
+experiences at the church reception left far behind. Even with scant
+details, Claire had managed to evolve a fascinating picture of a life
+robbed sufficiently of puritanism to be properly piquant. There was a
+tang of the swift, immoral, fascinating 'seventies in Claire's still
+cautious reference to champagne and cigarettes. It was impossible for
+any San Franciscan who had lived through those splendid madcap bonanza
+days to deny the lure of gay wickedness. At least it was hard to keep
+one's eyes on a prayer-book while the car of pleasure rattled by. And a
+coffee-and-cake social was, after all, a rather tame experience in the
+face of beverages more sparkling and eatables distinctly enticing.... Of
+course, if Claire had been introduced to any of these questionable
+delights by anybody short of a survivor of the Stillman clan, Mrs.
+Robson might have had a misgiving. As it was, she was not above a
+certain forewarning sense that made her say with an air of inconsequence
+as Claire finished her recital:
+
+"Mrs. Towne tells me that there is a chance that Mr. Stillman's wife may
+get well. She's in a private sanitarium, at Livermore, you know." She
+stopped to draw up the bedclothes higher. "I do hope it's so!... But I'm
+always skeptical about _crazy_ people ever amounting to anything again.
+Seems to me they're better off dead."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+For Claire Robson, there followed after the memorable Condor-Stillman
+musicale a period of slack-water. It seemed as if a deadly stagnation
+was to poison her existence, so sharp and emphasized was her boredom. On
+the other hand, Mrs. Robson seemed to have contrived, from years of
+living among arid pleasures, the ability to conserve every happiness
+that she chanced upon to its last drop. Claire's invitation to be one of
+a distinguished group fed her vanity long after her daughter had outworn
+the delights of retrospection. The memory of this incident filled Mrs.
+Robson's thoughts, her dreams, her conversation. Gradually, as the days
+dragged by, bit by bit, she gleaned detached details of what had
+transpired, weaving them into a vivid whole, for the entertainment of
+herself and the amazement of her neighbor, Mrs. Finnegan.
+
+Formerly Mrs. Finnegan's information regarding what went on in exclusive
+circles was confined to society dramas on the screen and the Sunday
+supplement. The personal note which Mrs. Robson brought to her recitals
+was a new and pleasing experience. After listening to the authentic
+gossip of Mrs. Robson, Mrs. Finnegan would return to her threshold with
+a sense of having shared state secrets. On such occasions Mrs. Robson's
+frankness had almost a challenge in it; she exaggerated many details and
+concealed none.
+
+"Yes," she would repeat, emphatically, "they served cigarettes along
+with the wine. They _always_ do."
+
+"Well, Mrs. Robson," Mrs. Finnegan inevitably returned, "far be it from
+me to criticize what your daughter's friends do. But I don't approve of
+women smoking."
+
+As a matter of fact, neither did Mrs. Robson, but she felt in duty bound
+to resent Mrs. Finnegan's narrow attacks upon society.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Finnegan, that's only because you're not accustomed to it.
+Now, if you had ever...."
+
+"Did Claire smoke?"
+
+"Why, of course _not_! How can you ask such a thing? I hope I've brought
+my daughter up decently, Mrs. Finnegan."
+
+And with that, Mrs. Robson would deftly switch to a less exciting detail
+of the Condor-Stillman musicale, before her neighbor had a chance to
+pick flaws in her logic. But sooner or later the topic would again verge
+on the controversial. Usually at the point where the scene shifted from
+Ned Stillman's apartments to the Palace Hotel, Mrs. Finnegan's pug nose
+was lifted with tentative disapproval, as she inquired:
+
+"How many did you say went down to the Palace?"
+
+"Only four--Mr. Stillman, Claire, Mrs. Condor, and a young fellow named
+Edington."
+
+"I suppose _that_ Mrs. Condor was the chaperon. Finnegan knows her well!
+She used to hire hacks when Finnegan was in the livery business years
+ago. She's a gay one, I can tell you. When only the steam-dummy ran out
+to the Cliff House...."
+
+"That's nothing. Everybody who was anybody had dinners at the Cliff
+House in those days. I remember how my father...."
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Robson, maybe you do! But I'll bet _you_ never went to such a
+place without your husband ... and ... with a _strange_ man."
+
+Mrs. Robson never had, and she would tell Mrs. Finnegan so decidedly.
+This always had the effect of switching the subject again and Mrs.
+Robson found her desire to know the real details of Mrs. Condor's
+questionable gaieties offered up on the altar of class loyalty. For it
+never occurred to Mrs. Robson to doubt that her social exile had nothing
+to do with the inherent rights of her position.
+
+When everything else in the way of an irritating program failed to rouse
+Mrs. Robson's dignified ire, her neighbor fell back upon the fact that
+Stillman was a married man. Mrs. Finnegan really worshiped Mrs. Robson
+to distraction, but she had a natural combative tendency that was at
+odds with even her loyalty.
+
+"Mr. Stillman is a married man," Mrs. Finnegan would insist, doggedly.
+"And I don't approve of married men taking an interest in young girls.
+Who knows?--he may spoil your daughter's chances."
+
+This statement always had the effect of dividing Mrs. Robson against
+herself. She resented Mrs. Finnegan's insinuations concerning Stillman,
+because it was not in her nature to be anything but partizan, and at the
+same time she was mollified by her neighbor's recognition of the fact
+that Claire had such things as chances. She always managed cleverly at
+this point by saying, patronizingly:
+
+"Why, how you talk, Mrs. Finnegan! Mr. Stillman is just like an old
+friend. Not that we've known _him_ so long ... but the family, you know
+... they're old-timers. Everybody knows the Stillmans! Really one
+couldn't want a better friend."
+
+Thus did Mrs. Robson take meager and colorless realities and expand them
+into things of blossoming promise. She was almost creative in the
+artistry she brought to these transmutations. In the end she convinced
+_herself_ of their existence and she was quite sure that Mrs. Finnegan
+shared equally in the delights of her fancy.
+
+Meanwhile November passed, and the first weeks of December crowded the
+old year to its death. November had been shrouded in clammy fogs, but no
+rain had fallen, and everybody began to have the restless feeling
+engendered by the usual summer drought in California prolonged beyond
+its appointed season. The country and the people needed rain. Claire,
+always responsive to the moods of wind and weather, longed for the
+cleansing flood to descend and wash the dust-drab town colorful again.
+She awoke one morning to the delicious thrill of the moisture-laden
+southeast wind blowing into her room and the warning voice of her mother
+at her bedroom door calling to her:
+
+"You'd better put on your thick shoes, Claire! We're in for a storm."
+
+She leaped out of bed joyously and hurried with her dressing.
+
+As she walked down to work the warm yet curiously refreshing wind flung
+itself in a fine frenzy over the gray city. Dark-gray clouds were
+closing in from the south, and in the east an ominous silver band of
+light marked the sullen flight of the sun. People were scampering about
+buoyantly, running for street-cars, chasing liberated hats, battling
+with billowing skirts. It seemed as if the promise of rain had revived
+laughter and motion to an extraordinary degree. At the office this
+ecstasy of spirit persisted; even Miss Munch came in hair awry and
+blowsy, her beady eyes almost laughing.
+
+Mr. Flint had not been to the office for two days. A sniffling cold had
+kept him at home. Claire had rather looked for him to-day, and had
+prepared herself for a flood of accumulated dictation. But the threat of
+dampness evidently dissuaded him, for the noon hour came and went and
+Mr. Flint did not put in an appearance. At about three o'clock in the
+afternoon a long-distance call came on the telephone for Miss Robson.
+Claire answered. Flint was on the other end of the wire. He wanted to
+know if she could come at once over to Yolanda and take several pages of
+dictation. His cold was uncertain and he might not get out for the rest
+of the week. He realized that it was something of an imposition on her
+good nature, but she would be doing him a great favor if.... She
+interrupted him with her quick assent and he finished:
+
+"I'll have the car at the station, and of course you'll stay for
+dinner."
+
+Claire hung up the receiver and looked at her watch. It was just half
+after three. The next ferryboat connecting at Sausalito with the
+electric train for Yolanda left at three-forty-five. She had no time to
+lose; it was a good ten minutes' walk from the office to the ferry and
+little to be gained by taking a street-car. She managed her preparations
+for departure successfully, but in the end she had to ask Miss Munch to
+telephone her mother. Miss Munch assented with an alarmingly sweet
+smile.
+
+Claire walked briskly down California Street toward the ferry-building.
+No rain had fallen, but the air was full of ominous promise. The wind
+was even brisker than it had been in the morning, and its breath almost
+tropically moist.
+
+"At sundown it will simply pour," thought Claire, as she exchanged fifty
+cents for a ticket to Yolanda.
+
+She presented her ticket at the entrance to the waiting-room and passed
+in. The passageway to the boat was already open; she went at once and
+found a sheltered corner outside on the upper deck. A strong sea was
+running and already the ferryboat was plunging and straining like a
+restless bloodhound in leash. The air was full of screaming gulls and
+the clipped whistling of restless bay craft. Claire was so intent on all
+this elemental agitation that she took no notice of the people about
+her, but as the boat slid lumberingly out of the slip she was recalled
+by a voice close at hand saying:
+
+"Why, Miss Robson, who would think of seeing you here at this hour!"
+
+Claire turned and discovered Miss Munch's cousin sitting beside her,
+intent on the inevitable tatting.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Richards, how stupid of me! Have you been here long?"
+
+"About ten minutes. But I get so interested in my work I never have eyes
+for anything else. How do you put in the time? A trip like this is so
+tiresome!"
+
+Claire delved into her bag and brought out knitting-needles and an
+unfinished sock.
+
+"I'm trying a hand at this," she admitted, holding her handiwork up
+ruefully. "But I'm afraid I'm not very skilful."
+
+Mrs. Richards inspected the sock with critical disapproval.
+
+"Oh, well," she encouraged, "you'll learn ... practice makes perfect.
+I've just finished a half-dozen pairs. I suppose I'm laying myself out
+for a roast doing tatting in public _these_ war days! But it's restful
+and I'm not one to pretend. As long as my conscience is clear I can
+afford to be perfectly independent.... You don't make this trip every
+night, do you?"
+
+"Oh my, no! I'm going over to Mr. Flint's to take some dictation. He's
+home sick."
+
+"I saw Mrs. Flint and the children coming _off_ the boat just as I got
+on." Mrs. Richards's voice took on a tone of casual directness.
+
+"You know Mrs. Flint?"
+
+"My dear girl, a trained nurse knows everybody--and everything about
+them, too. You never get a real line on people until you live with
+them. I've never nursed any of the Flint family, but I wouldn't have to
+to get their reputation--or perhaps I should say, old Flint's."
+
+"_Old_ Flint's?" echoed Claire.
+
+"Well, of course he isn't so awfully old, but men like him always give
+that impression. They're so awfully wise--about _some_ things. I _was_
+so relieved when Gertie didn't get that dreadful Miss Whitehead's
+place. Being in the general office is bad enough, but in his _private_
+office...." Mrs. Richards lifted and dropped her tatting-filled hands
+significantly.
+
+Claire felt the blood rush to her face. "I'm in the private office, Mrs.
+Richards.... No doubt you forgot it."
+
+"Well now, you know I _had_ ... for the moment. But with a girl like you
+it's different. Some women can handle men, but Gertie would be so
+helpless!"
+
+The humor of Mrs. Richards's remark saved the situation for Claire. She
+changed the subject deliberately. But somehow, with the conversation
+forced from the particular to the general, Miss Munch's cousin lost
+interest, and by the time the boat had passed Alcatraz Island Claire was
+deep in her thoughts again and the other woman following the measured
+flight of the tatting-shuttle with strained attention.
+
+The boat was romping through the stiff sea like a playful porpoise,
+dipping and plunging. A half-score of adventuresome gulls were still
+following in the foam-churned wake. In the face of all the pitching
+about, Mrs. Richards had quite a battle to direct her shuttle to any
+efficient purpose, and Claire was almost amused at the grim
+determination she brought to the performance.
+
+Presently a warning whistle from the ferryboat betrayed the fact that
+they were nearing Sausalito. Mrs. Richards began to gather up her
+numerous bundles, and Claire and she made their way down the narrow
+stairs to the lower deck. Their progress was slow and uncertain. The
+southeaster was tearing across the open spaces and bending everything
+before it; the lumbering boat dipped sideward in a stolid encounter with
+its adversary.
+
+"Mercy! What a night!" gasped Mrs. Richards, clutching at Claire's arm.
+
+A gust of wind struck them with its force just as they reached the lower
+deck. Mrs. Richards staggered and wrestled vainly with tatting-bag and
+bundles and a refractory skirt. For the moment both women were stalled
+in a desperate effort to retain their equilibrium.
+
+"Come!" gasped Claire. "Let's get over there in the shelter of that
+automobile."
+
+They made the leeward side of the automobile in question, and while Mrs.
+Richards began to recover her roughly handled dignity Claire turned her
+attention to the car. It was a huge dark-red affair, evidently fresh
+from the shop. Claire knew none of the fine points of automobiles, but
+this one had unmistakable evidences of distinction. She was peering in
+at its opulent depths when who should surprise her but Ned Stillman.
+
+"My dear Miss Robson!" he cried, in a tone of delight, as he faced her
+from the opposite side of the car. "What do you think of it?"
+
+"Yours?" she queried.
+
+"Just out of the shop to-day. I couldn't wait until it cleared. I just
+had to get out with it. And this kind of weather always puts me up on my
+toes. Where are you going--to Ross? If you are, don't bother with the
+train. Come along with me."
+
+He circled about the machine and came up to her with a frank,
+outstretched hand. "Oh, I beg your pardon!" he murmured as Mrs. Richards
+came into view.
+
+Claire began an introduction, but Mrs. Richards cut in with her odd,
+challenging way.
+
+"Oh, _I_ know Mr. Stillman! But I guess he's forgotten _me_. It's been
+some years, of course. At Mr. Faville's--your _wife's_ father's house."
+
+Stillman paled for the briefest of moments, but he recovered himself
+cleverly. "Mrs. Richards--of course! How do you do? It _has_ been some
+years."
+
+"I'm going to Mr. Flint's--at Yolanda," said Claire, "to take some
+dictation. He's been ill, you know."
+
+"Ill? No, I hadn't heard it. Nothing serious, I hope."
+
+"Not serious enough to keep Mrs. Flint at home, anyway," volunteered
+Mrs. Richards, in her characteristically disagreeable way.
+
+"Mrs. Richards saw Mrs. Flint and the children coming off the boat...."
+
+"As I got on," interrupted the lady again.
+
+"Oh, indeed, is that so?" Claire fancied that Stillman's tone held
+something more than polite acceptance of what he had just heard. "I can
+take you ladies to Yolanda if you'd like a spin in the open better than
+a stuffy ride in the train."
+
+"Thank you," Mrs. Richards returned, "but I get off at Sausalito. I've
+no doubt Miss Robson will be delighted."
+
+"I think I'd better not," said Claire. "Mr. Flint is sending his car to
+the train for me. I shouldn't want to change my program and cause
+confusion. But I'd like nothing better! The air is so bracing!"
+
+"You can excuse _me_!" put in Mrs. Richards, moving toward the forward
+deck. "It's going to pour in less than ten minutes. I'm not one of those
+amphibious creatures who like to get wringing wet just for the fun of
+it!"
+
+Stillman lifted his hat. Claire stood for a moment undecided whether to
+follow Mrs. Richards or remain for a chat with Stillman.
+
+"I'm an awful fool, I suppose," Stillman smiled at Claire, "bringing the
+car out on a night like this. But the truth is Edington promised to
+catch this boat and I wanted him to try out the new plaything. I might
+have known he wouldn't make it. We're running over for dinner with
+Edington's sister."
+
+At this moment the boat crashed clumsily against the Sausalito
+ferry-slip, and in the sudden confusion of landing Claire was swept
+along without further ado.
+
+She looked back. Stillman waved a genial good-by to her. She felt glad
+that he was behind her, in a vague, impersonal, thoroughly inexplainable
+way.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Claire was disappointed that Mrs. Flint was not to be at home. She had
+caught glimpses of her now and then coming into the office and she was
+interested in the hope of seeing her at closer range. Mrs. Flint was a
+rather frumpish individual, who always gave the impression of pieced-out
+dressmaking.
+
+"She must subscribe to the _Ladies' Home Journal_," Nellie Whitehead had
+commented one day. "You know that 'go-up-into-the-garret-and-get-five-
+yards-of-grandmother's-wedding-gown' column. Well, she's a walking ad
+for it. She's no raving beauty, but if she would throw out her chest and
+chuck those flat-heeled clogs of hers, and put a marcel wave in her
+hair, maybe the old man would sit up and take notice."
+
+To which Miss Munch had replied:
+
+"Well, she's a mighty sweet woman, anyway!" in a tone calculated to
+freeze the irrepressible Nellie Whitehead into silence.
+
+"Who says she isn't? And at that, a good tailor-made suit and a
+decent-looking hat won't spoil her disposition any...."
+
+The children, too, were what Nellie Whitehead had termed "perfect guys."
+On warm days Mrs. Flint would drag these two daughters of hers into the
+office, dressed in plaid suits and velveteen hats; and when a cold north
+wind blew it seemed inevitable that they would appear in gay and airy
+costumes up to their knees, with impossible straw bonnets trimmed with
+daisies and faded cornflowers, reminiscent of the white-leghorn-hat era.
+
+"Men don't marry women for their clothes," Miss Munch used to say,
+challengingly, to Nellie.
+
+"Oh, don't they, indeed! Well, I've lived longer than sixteen and a half
+years and I've noticed that it's the up-to-the-minute dame that gets
+away with it and holds onto it every time, just the same. And any woman
+silly enough to work the rag-bag game when her husband can afford seven
+yards of taffeta and a Butterick pattern is a fool!"
+
+Claire knew women who looked dowdy on dress-parade and yet managed to be
+quite charming in their own houses. She was wondering whether this might
+not be Mrs. Flint's case; anyway, she had hoped for a chance to decide
+this point, and now Mrs. Flint was not at home.
+
+As she settled into her matting-covered seat in the train she began to
+wonder just who _would_ be home at the Flint establishment. And she
+thought suddenly of the disagreeable emphasis that Mrs. Richards had
+seen fit to give the fact that Mrs. Flint was bound cityward. At this
+stage she became lost in discovering so many points of contact between
+Mrs. Richards and her cousin, Miss Munch. Then the train started with a
+quick lurch, and a view of the rapidly darkening landscape claimed her
+utterly.
+
+Claire always took a childish delight in watching the panorama of the
+countryside unroll swiftly before the space-conquering flight of a
+train. And to-night the quick close of the December day warned her to
+make the most of her opportunity. The wind was whipping the upper
+reaches of the bay into a shallow fury, and the water in turn was
+beating against the slimy mud and swallowing it up in gray, futile
+anger. This part of the ride just out of Sausalito was always more or
+less depressing unless a combination of full tide and vivid sunshine
+gave its muddy stretches the enlivening grace of sky-blue reflections.
+Worm-eaten and tottering piles, abandoned hulks, half-swamped skiffs,
+all the water-logged dissolution of stagnant shore lines the world over,
+flashed by, to be succeeded by the fresher green of channel-cut marshes.
+The hills were wind-swept, huddling their scant oak covering into the
+protecting folds of shallow canons. At intervals, clumps of
+eucalyptus-trees banded together or drew out in long, thin, soldier-like
+lines.
+
+Presently it began to rain. There was no preliminary patter, but the
+storm broke suddenly, hurling great gray drops of moisture against the
+windows. Claire withdrew from any further attempt to watch the whirling
+landscape. It was now quite dark, the short December day dying even more
+suddenly under a black pall of lowering clouds.
+
+She began to have distinctly uncomfortable thoughts about her visit to
+the Flints'. But the more uncomfortable her thoughts became, the more
+reason she brought to bear for conquering them. Surely one was not to be
+persuaded into a panic by any such person as Mrs. Richards! And by the
+time the brakeman announced the train's approach to Yolanda, Claire had
+recovered her common sense. What of it if Mrs. Flint had gone to town?
+There must be other women in the household--at least a maid. It was
+absurd! The train stopped and Claire got off.
+
+Flint's car was waiting, and Jerry Donovan, the chauffeur, stood with a
+dripping umbrella almost at Claire's elbow as she hopped upon the
+platform.
+
+As they swished through the inky blackness, Claire said to Jerry, with
+as inconsequential an air as she could muster:
+
+"I thought I saw Mrs. Flint get off the boat in town. But I guess I was
+mistaken. She wouldn't be leaving Mr. Flint alone ... when he's ill."
+
+"Ill?" Jerry chuckled. "Well, he ain't dead by a long shot. Just a case
+of sniffles, and a good excuse for hitting the booze. He's in prime
+condition, I can tell you."
+
+Claire had never seen Flint in "prime condition," but she had it from
+Nellie Whitehead that there were moments when the gentleman in question
+could "go some," to use her predecessor's precise terms.
+
+"About twice a year," Nellie had once confided to Claire, "the old boy
+starts in to cure a cold. I helped him cure one ... but _never_ again!"
+
+Jerry's observations aroused fresh anxiety, but they did not settle the
+issue for Claire. She felt that she could not turn back at the eleventh
+hour. There was nothing else for her to do but go through with the game.
+Yet she still hoped for the best.
+
+"_Did_ Mrs. Flint go to town to-day?" she finally asked, point-blank.
+
+"Sure thing," said Jerry, swinging the car past the Flint gateway.
+
+Claire refused to be totally lacking in faith.
+
+"There must be a maid," flashed through her mind, as Jerry stopped the
+car and swung down to help her out.
+
+A Japanese boy threw open the door as they scrambled up the rain-soaked
+steps. But the fine, orderly, Colonial interior reassured Claire. The
+few country homes she had seen had been of the rambling, unrelated
+bungalow type, with paneled redwood walls either stained to a dismal
+brown or quite frankly left to their rather characterless pink. This
+home was different. Even the pungent oak logs crackling in the fireplace
+did so with indefinable distinction. The general tone of the
+surroundings was as little in keeping with the patchwork personality of
+its mistress as one could imagine. It was as if the singular
+completeness of Mrs. Flint's home left no time nor energy for a finished
+individuality. Claire got all this in the briefest of flashes, just a
+swift, inclusive glance about the entrance hall and through the doorways
+leading into the rooms beyond. Particularly did she sense the severe
+opulence of the dining-room, twinkling at a remoter distance than the
+living-room--its perfectly polished silver, its spotless linen, its
+wonderfully blue china, not to mention the disconcerting fact that the
+table in the center was laid for but two.
+
+And then Flint himself came forward with a very red face and an absurdly
+cordial greeting.
+
+"Well, I began to wonder whether you'd risk it. This will be a storm and
+no mistake.... Here, let me have your coat. Come, you're quite wet....
+Shall you warm up on a hot toddy or something cooler--a cocktail?"
+
+She felt his hand sliding down her arm as she released the coat to his
+too-eager fingers. "Oh no, Mr. Flint! Thank you, nothing. It's only a
+bit of rain on the surface. I'm quite dry."
+
+"Quite dry!" He echoed her words with a guffaw. "Well, then, we'll have
+to moisten you up. I always say everything's a good excuse for a drink.
+If you're cold you take a drink to warm up; if you're warm you take one
+to cool off. You dry out on one, and you wet up on one. I don't know of
+any habit with so many good reasons back of it. I'm dry, too.... We'll
+have a Bronx! That's a nice, ladylike drink."
+
+Claire weighed her reply. She did not want to strike the wrong note; she
+wanted to let him have a feeling that she was accepting everything in a
+normal, matter-of-fact way, as if she saw nothing extraordinary in the
+situation.
+
+"You're very kind, but really you know ... if I'm to get my dictation
+straight...."
+
+"Well, perhaps there won't be any dictation. We're not slaves, you and
+I. Maybe it will be much pleasanter to sit before the fire and listen to
+the storm. What do you say to that?"
+
+She turned from him deliberately, under the fiction of fluffing up her
+hair before a gilt mirror near the door. She was thinking quickly and
+with a tremendous, if concealed, agitation. "Why," she laughed back,
+finally, "that _would_ be pleasant. But I came to take dictation, Mr.
+Flint. And women ... women, you know, are so funny! If they make up
+their minds to one thing, they can't switch suddenly to another idea."
+
+He was paying no attention to her remark, a remark which she felt would
+have fallen flat in any event, since it was so palpably studied.
+
+"The living-room is in there," he said, pointing. "Make yourself at
+home."
+
+She went in and sat before the fire. Flint disappeared. She tried hard
+to analyze the situation. It was unthinkable that Mr. Flint had
+deliberately planned this piece of foolishness. He must have had some
+idea of work when he had telephoned her; perhaps he still had. It was
+his way of being facetious, she argued, this fine pretense that it was
+all to be a pleasant lark, or it may have been his idea of hospitality.
+Of course he had been drinking, but she took comfort in the thought that
+there must be instinctive standards in a man like Flint that even whisky
+could not swamp. At least he must respect his wife--surely it was not
+possible for Flint, drunk or sober, to offer such an affront to _her_,
+however little he respected the women in his employ. She dismissed Mrs.
+Richards's exaggerated insinuations with their well-deserved contempt,
+but she could not thrust aside quite so readily the eye-lifting tone
+with which Stillman had met the announcement of Mrs. Flint's absence
+from home.
+
+This was the first time that Claire had seen Stillman since the
+musicale. She had thought a great deal about him and particularly about
+his problem. She felt a great desire to know everything--all the details
+of the unfortunate circumstance that had driven his wife into a
+madhouse, and yet whenever her mother broached the subject Claire
+changed the topic with curious panic. She seemed to dread the hard,
+almost triumphant manner that her mother assumed in tracking misfortune
+to its lair and gloating over it. She began to wonder whether Stillman
+would be swinging back to the city on a late boat ... or would the storm
+keep him at Edington's sister's home all night?
+
+She was in the midst of this speculation when Flint came into the room.
+
+"We'll eat early and have that off our minds," he announced. His manner
+was brusk and business-like again. Claire felt reassured.
+
+But she was disturbed to find a cocktail at her place at the table.
+
+"Well, here's glad to see you!" Flint raised his glass and tilted it
+ever so slightly in her direction. Claire lifted the cocktail to her
+lips and set it down untasted. "What's the matter? Getting unsociable
+again?"
+
+"No, Mr. Flint. I don't care for cocktails."
+
+"Oh, all right! We'll send down-cellar and get some wine."
+
+"Thank you, not for me."
+
+"I suppose you don't care for wine, either?" His voice had a bantering
+quality, with a shade of menace in it. "Or maybe the right party isn't
+here. I've noticed that makes a difference. Females are damned moral
+with the wrong fellow."
+
+His attack was so direct and insolent that Claire missed the trepidation
+that might have come with a more covert move. She was no longer
+uncertain. There was a sharp relief in realizing that all the cards were
+on the table. She felt also that there was no immediate danger. Flint
+was far from sober, but he was in his own home. She had the conviction
+that he was merely skirmishing, testing the strength or weakness of the
+line he hoped to penetrate. Her reply was rather more of a challenge
+than she could have imagined herself giving under such a circumstance.
+
+"And if I were to tell you that I don't care for wine, Mr. Flint?"
+
+He threw open his napkin with a flourish. "You'd be telling me a damned
+lie! You drink wine at the Palace with Stillman and Edington."
+
+She had felt that he was going to say some such thing and for a moment
+it amused her. It was so ridiculous to find this rather wan and wistful
+indiscretion assuming damaging proportions. But a nasty fear succeeded
+her faint amusement. Could it be possible that Stillman had gossiped?
+
+"Who told you?" she demanded.
+
+"Oh, don't be afraid; it wasn't Stillman! You're like all women, you
+moon about sentimentalizing over Ned until it makes a man like me sick!
+I like Ned; I always have. But even when we went to college together it
+was the same way. Everybody ... yes, even the men ... always gave him
+credit for a high moral tone. Not that he ever took it.... I'll say that
+for him.... Ned Stillman didn't tell me, for the simple reason that he
+didn't have to. Nobody told me. I go to the Palace myself under
+pressure, and I've got two eyes. As a matter of fact, there isn't any
+reason why Edington or Stillman or the waiter who drew the corks
+shouldn't have mentioned it. A glass of wine is no crime. But the thing
+that makes me hot is to see any one pretending. If you drink with
+Stillman, you haven't any license to refuse a glass with me."
+
+There was something more than wine-heated rancor back of his harangue.
+Claire guessed instinctively that he both loved and hated Stillman with
+a curious confusion of impulses. It was a feeling of affection torn by
+the irritating superiority of its object. One gets the same thing in
+families ... among children. It was at once subtle and extremely
+primitive.
+
+"My dear Mr. Flint, this isn't quite the same thing. I've work to do for
+one thing and, and...."
+
+"And ... and.... Why don't you say it? You're alone with me and all that
+sort of rubbish! Want a chaperon, I suppose. Mrs. Condor, for
+instance.... Good Lord!"
+
+Claire dipped her spoon into the steaming bouillon-cup in front of her.
+She was growing quite calm under the directness of Flint's attack.
+
+"It isn't the same," she reiterated, stubbornly. "I've work to do, Mr.
+Flint."
+
+"I tell you that you haven't!" Flint brought his fist down upon the
+table.
+
+"Well, then, why did you send for me?"
+
+"I had something to say to you.... Gad! one can't talk in that ramping
+office of mine. We've never even settled the matter of an increase in
+salary for you. By the way, how much money do you get?"
+
+Claire had never seen any man look so crafty and disagreeable. He gave
+her the impression of a petty tyrant about to bestow largess upon an
+obsequious and fawning slave.
+
+"Sixty-five dollars a month."
+
+"Well, I don't exactly know.... I've been trying to figure out just how
+valuable you are to me, Miss Robson. Or, rather, how valuable you're
+likely to be." He thrust aside his soup and leaned heavily upon the
+table. "That's why I invited you over to-night. I wanted to see you at a
+little closer range. You live with your mother, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Flint."
+
+"You ... you support your mother, I believe?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Flint."
+
+"Well, sixty-five dollars don't leave much margin for hair ribbons and
+the like, does it, now?"
+
+"No, Mr. Flint."
+
+"No, Mr. Flint.... Yes, Mr. Flint...." he mocked. "Good Lord! can't you
+cut that school-girl-to-her-dignified-guardian attitude. I'm human.
+Dammit all, I'm as human as your friend Ned Stillman. I'll bet you don't
+yes-sir and no-sir him.... You know, that night I saw you at the Palace
+you quite bowled me over. I'd been thinking of you as a shy,
+unsophisticated young thing. But you were hitting the high places like a
+veteran. Even old lady Condor didn't have anything on you. Except, of
+course, that she looks the part. By the way, where did you meet
+Stillman?"
+
+"At ... at a church social," Claire stammered.
+
+"At a church social! Say, I wasn't born yesterday. Ned Stillman doesn't
+go to church. Tell me something easy."
+
+"It was really a Red Cross concert. He went with Mrs. Condor," Claire
+found herself explaining in spite of her anger. "We sat at the same
+table when the ice-cream was served."
+
+Flint was roaring with exaggerated laughter. Even Claire could not
+restrain a smile. What made the statement so ridiculous, she found
+herself wondering. Was she unconsciously reflecting Flint's attitude or
+had she herself changed so tremendously in the last few weeks?
+
+"Stillman at a church social! But that _is_ good! And eating
+ice-cream.... How long ago did all this happen, pray?"
+
+"Sometime in November."
+
+He stopped his senseless guffawing and looked at her keenly. "Where did
+you get the church-social habit?"
+
+"I ... why, I guess I formed it early, Mr. Flint. As you say, sixty-five
+dollars a month doesn't leave much for hair ribbons or anything else.
+Going to church socials is about the cheapest form of recreation I can
+think of."
+
+The bitterness of her tone seemed to pull Flint up with a round turn.
+"Well, we're going to get you out of this silly church-social habit.
+Dammit all, Stillman isn't the only possibility in sight. That's just
+what I wanted to get at--your viewpoint. I take an interest in you, Miss
+Robson--a tremendous interest. Good Lord! I can dance one-steps and
+fox-trots and hesitations as well as anybody! I danced every bit as
+well as Ned Stillman when we went to dancing-school together. But he
+always got most of the applause. He _has_ an air, I don't deny that, but
+he's working it overtime.... And he's not in any better position for
+being friendly to you than I am--_he's_ married."
+
+The talk was sobering him a little. Claire was amazed to find that she
+did not feel indignant. His tone was offensive, but at least it was
+forthright. Besides, she had known instinctively that some day he would
+force the issue, and she was rather glad to get it settled. And she
+began to hope that she could persuade him skilfully against his warped
+convictions. She was trembling inwardly, too, at the thought that she
+might make a false step and find herself out of a position. Positions
+were not easy to land these days. She knew a half-score of girls who had
+tramped the town over in a desperate effort to find a vacancy. Two or
+three months without salary meant debts piling up, clothes in ribbons,
+and no end of hectic worries.
+
+"I think you've got a decidedly wrong impression of my friendship for
+Mr. Stillman," she said, after some deliberation. "I really know him
+only slightly. He was good enough, or rather I should say Mrs. Condor
+was good enough, to include me in a little musical evening. That was on
+the night you saw me at the Palace. We dropped down for a dance or two
+after the music was over. I'd never been to such a place before, and I
+dare say I'll never go again. It was just one of those experiences that
+come to a person out of a clear sky. It's over as quickly as a shower."
+
+"Oh, don't you worry! There'll be other showers. I'm going to see to
+that. You know, the more I talk to you the more amazing you are....
+Fancy your graduating from dinky church things into Stillman musicales,
+and Palace dansants, and young Edington, and old lady Condor, all of a
+sudden ... and getting away with it as if you were an old hand at the
+game. Say, if you're that apt I'll give you a post-graduate course in
+high life that'll make your hair curl forty-seven ways. I don't mean
+anything vulgar or common ... _you_ understand. I'm a gentleman, Miss
+Robson, at that."
+
+He stopped for a moment to ring the bell for the Japanese boy. Claire
+maintained a discreet silence. She had a feeling that it would be just
+as well to let him take his full rein. The servant came in and cleared
+away the empty bouillon-cups. Fish was served.
+
+Flint took one taste of the fish and shoved it away impatiently. "You
+know, a fellow like me gets awfully bored at all this sort of thing." He
+swept the room with an inclusive gesture. "Not that my wife isn't the
+best little woman in the world, but _you_ know. She's got standards and
+convictions and all that sort of rot. I can't bundle _her_ off for
+dinner and a little lark at the Red Paint or Bonini's or some other
+Bohemian joint like them.... You know what I mean, no rough stuff ...
+but a good feed, and two kinds of wine, and a cigarette with the small
+black. Just gay and frivolous.... Of course I can get any number of
+girls to run around and help eat up all the nourishment I care to
+provide. But, good Lord! that isn't it! I'm looking for somebody with
+human intelligence. Not that I want to discuss free verse and the Little
+Theater movement. But I like to feel that if I took such a crazy notion
+the person sitting opposite me could qualify for a good comeback.... I
+like my home and everything, but.... Oh, well, what's the use in
+pretending? I'm just as human as your friend Ned Stillman and I've got
+just as keen an eye for class."
+
+He sat back in his seat with an air of satisfaction, waiting for
+Claire's reply. She had been calm enough while he talked, but under the
+tenseness of his silent expectancy she felt her heart bound.
+
+"Dammit all! Why don't you say something?" he blurted out. "I know, you
+need a little wine. I'm going down-stairs and pick out the best in the
+cellar ... _myself_."
+
+She did not attempt to dissuade him; as a matter of fact, she felt
+relieved to be left alone for a moment. She must leave as soon as dinner
+was over. She began to wonder about the trains. The storm was raging
+outside. She could hear the frenzied trees flinging their branches about
+and a noisy flood of rain against the windows. She spoke to the Japanese
+boy as he was carrying away Flint's unfinished fish course.
+
+"Do you know what time the next train leaves?"
+
+He laid the tray on the serving-table. "Please.... I telephone. Please!"
+He bobbed at her absurdly and went out into the hall. She listened. He
+was ringing up the station-master. He came back promptly.
+
+"Please," he began, sucking in his breath, "please ... no train
+to-night."
+
+"No train to-night? Why, what do you mean?"
+
+"Please ... very much water. Train track washed out. No train to-night.
+To-morrow morning, maybe."
+
+"Oh, but I must go home to-night! I really must! I...."
+
+She broke off suddenly, realizing the futility of her protest.
+
+"To-morrow morning," replied the Japanese, blandly. "All right to-morrow
+morning. You stay here.... I fix a place. You see.... I fix a very nice
+place for young lady."
+
+He went out with the tray and Claire rose and walked to the window.
+Flint broke into the room noisily. She turned--he had two dusty bottles
+in his hand, and an air of triumph.
+
+"Mr. Flint, it seems that there has been a washout. I understand that no
+trains are running. What can I do? I must get back; really I...."
+
+"Who says so?" Flint laid the bottles down with an irritating calmness.
+
+"The station-master. Your ... your servant just telephoned for me."
+
+"Oh, well, _we_ should worry! Sit down."
+
+"Mr. Flint, really, I must.... You know I can't.... I...."
+
+"Sit _down_!"
+
+His tone was a dash of cold water thrown in the face of her rising
+hysteria. She sat down. Flint ignored the bottles on the table and,
+crossing over to the Sheraton sideboard, poured himself a stiff drink
+of whisky. His hair-towsled condition stood out sharply against the
+precise background.
+
+He made no further comment, but he began to open the bottles of wine
+deliberately. Then he rummaged in the china-closet for the wine-glasses
+and set four, two at his place and two at Claire's, upon the table.
+
+"White wine with the entree and red wine with the roast," he muttered.
+And he poured out the white wine without further ado.
+
+The servant came in with creamed sweetbreads. Claire forced herself to
+make a pretense of eating, although her appetite had long since deserted
+her. She was thinking, and thinking hard.
+
+She should never have come, in the first place--at least she should have
+turned back upon the strength of Jerry's announcement. But she saw now,
+with a clearness that surprised her, that the situation had really
+challenged her imagination. She had been too calm, too collected, too
+well-poised, full of smug over-confidence. She had read in the current
+novels of the day how hysterically unsophisticated heroines conducted
+themselves in tight corners and she had followed their writhings with
+ill-concealed impatience. She never had really put herself in their
+place, but she had had a vague notion that they carried on absurdly. Her
+fear all evening had been not what Mr. Flint would do or say or even
+suggest--she had been anxious merely to have the impending storm over,
+the air cleared, and her position in the office assured upon a purely
+business-like basis. She had really welcomed the forced issue; for weeks
+her mind had been entertaining and dismissing the idea that Mr. Flint
+had any questionable motives in yielding Nellie Whitehead's place to
+her. With this fleeting trepidation had come the realization of her
+dependence, the importance her sixty-five dollars a month in the scheme
+of things, the compromises that she might be forced into accepting in
+order to insure its continuance; not definite and soul-searing
+compromises, it was true, but petty, irritating trucklings which wear
+down self-esteem.
+
+It had been the primitive violence of Flint's commanding, "Sit down!" to
+thrust the issue from the economic to the elemental. For the first time
+in her life Claire was face to face with unstripped masculine brutality.
+She had wondered why women of a lower order took men's blows without
+striking back, without at least escaping from further torment. But she
+was beginning to see, as her spirits tried to rise reeling from Flint's
+verbal assault, the fawning submission, half admiration, half fear, that
+could follow a frank, hard-fisted blow. And she had a terror, sitting
+there trying to thrust food between her trembling lips, that the sheer
+physical force of the male opposite her might shatter in one blow a will
+that could have withstood any amount of spiritual or material attrition.
+She had never seen Flint so clearly as at this moment; in fact, she had
+never seen him _at all_. Formerly, he had been a conventionalized
+masculine biped in a blue-serge covering who paid her salary and struck
+attitudes that were symbols of predatory instincts rather than an
+indication that such instincts existed. Life had, after all, been
+peopled by the precisely labeled puppets of a morality play; they came
+on, and declaimed, and made gestures--but they remained abstractions,
+things apart from life, mere representations of the vices and virtues
+they impersonated. She had entertained this idea particularly with
+regard to Flint. She had felt that the day would come when he and she
+would occupy the stage together. He would speak his part with a great
+flourish of the hands and much high-sounding emphasis, and when he had
+finished she would reply with a carefully worded retort, setting forth
+the claims and rewards of virtue. Thus it would continue, argument
+succeeding argument, a declamatory give and take, dignified,
+passionless, theatrical.
+
+They were occupying the stage now, it was true, but there was something
+warm and human and ragged about the performance. Flint was not a mere
+spiritless allegory in red-satin doublet and hose to give flame to his
+conventionality. Instead, she saw sitting opposite her a ponderous,
+quick-breathing, drunken male, handsome in a coarse, rough-hewn way,
+speaking in the quick, clipped speech of passion and striking her to the
+ground with the energy of his stage business. She was afraid, almost for
+the first time in her life, with a primitive, abandoned fear. And
+suddenly her vista of womanhood narrowed to include the ugly foreground
+of life that youth had looked over in its eager, far-flung scanning of
+the horizon beyond. Suddenly she felt all the oppression and sorrow of
+the sex bear down upon her and mark her with its relentless finger.
+Because she was a woman she would pay for every joy with a corresponding
+sorrow; receive a blow for every caress; know courage and fear with
+equal intimacy.... She stopped eating and she began to realize with a
+vivid terror that Flint was looking at her fixedly and beginning to
+speak.
+
+"What's the matter with the sweetbreads? Don't you like 'em?... And the
+wine?... Say, I'm going to get peeved in a minute. You don't suppose we
+serve this French-restaurant style of meal every day do you? I should
+say _not_! That's another one of the _frau's_ convictions. Plain living
+at home so as to set the right example to the _girls_!" Flint threw his
+head from side to side, mincing out his last statement. "Gad! I'm tired
+of setting a good example!... And even Sing gets tired. Chinks, you
+know, like to cook a bang-up meal once in a while. They like a chance to
+show their speed and put in all the fancy trimmings."
+
+His mood, during this speech, had changed with drunken facility from
+irritability to good humor. Claire, still attempting to marshal her
+wits, picked up her fork again and murmured:
+
+"Oh, you have a Chinese cook, then? I had no idea.... The Japanese boy,
+you know. They say that the two never get along."
+
+"That's a fairy-tale. Besides, it's next to impossible, these days, to
+get a Chinese second-boy. And the missus _won't_ hire a girl." He winked
+broadly. "Can't get one ugly enough, I guess. Sing's a wonder. I copped
+him from the Tom Forsythes. _You_ know--young Edington's in-laws.
+They've never quite forgiven me. Though they _will_ come back and tuck
+away one of his dinners occasionally."
+
+Claire's mind closed nimbly over Flint's statement. "The--the Tom
+Forsythes of Ross?" she asked.
+
+He nodded and tossed a glass of wine off in one gulp. The Tom Forsythes
+of Ross ... Edington's sister ... Ned Stillman! The sequence of ideas
+flashed through Claire's mind with flashing detachment. She leaned back
+in her seat and raised the wine-glass in obvious pretense to her lips.
+Flint was watching her keenly: an ugly gleam was in his eyes.
+
+"Well, Miss Robson, you might just as well make up your mind to finish
+that glass of wine first as last. We're not going to have the next
+course until you do."
+
+She measured him deliberately. She knew now that it was to be a fight to
+a finish. She was honestly afraid and full of the courage of
+realization.
+
+"I've had enough as it is, Mr. Flint. Besides, we must either be getting
+to work or figuring how I am to make the boat at Sausalito. I suppose
+you could send me in the car ... with Jerry."
+
+"Oh, with Jerry? So that's it!... No, not on your life! He's too
+good-looking a boy for a job like that. No, Miss Robson, you are going
+to stay _right_ here.... Now, understand me, I'm not a damn fool! You
+seem to have an idea that because I've had a glass or two that I've lost
+my reason. You're an attractive girl and all that, Miss Robson, and I am
+interested in you! But please don't flatter yourself that I'm staking
+everything on a throw like this. As a matter of fact, I'll see that you
+are properly chaperoned. We've plenty of neighbors. You've got the best
+excuse in the world for staying here and...."
+
+"But, my dear Mr. Flint, can't you see, I...."
+
+"No, I can't. I want you to stay _here_. My reasons are as good as
+yours. Now let's get that off our mind and enjoy the meal."
+
+His manner struck her protests to the ground again. She was no longer
+fearing the immediate outcome, in fact, she never had, but she knew that
+if he broke her to his will now, all the safeguards, all the chaperons,
+all the conventions in the world wouldn't save her from ultimate
+consequences. This was the try-out that was to establish her pace in the
+final contest; she would stand or fall upon the record she made at this
+moment. For she was trying out something more than Flint's temper,
+something greater than a mechanical adjustment of human
+relationships--she was trying out _herself_. She sat for some moments,
+thinking hard, one hand fingering the slender base of the wine-filled
+glass in front of her, the other dropped in pensive limpness at her
+side. Flint had cleared the space in front of him of everything but his
+two wine-glasses. He had slipped down in his seat and his two bloodshot
+eyes were fixing her with a level stare.
+
+She stirred finally and rose.
+
+He was on his feet in an instant.
+
+"I'm going to telephone," she said, calmly.
+
+"Telephone ... where?... What's the idea?"
+
+"Mr. Flint," she answered, a bit wearily, "at least I'm a guest in your
+house, am I not?"
+
+He settled back in his seat with a grunt of acquiescence. She stood
+dazed for a moment, surprised at the chance that had put such telling
+words into her mouth. She had been fingering timidly for the key to his
+chivalry; quite by accident she had hit upon it in the shape of this
+appeal to her expectations of him in the rôle of host. She could have
+lied, of course, and told him that she wished to telephone her mother,
+but she had not yet been cornered sufficiently to resort to so
+distasteful a weapon.... As she left the room she found herself
+wondering whether Stillman had by any chance left the Tom Forsythes. She
+looked at the clock. It was not quite eight o'clock. She felt reassured,
+yet she was tremendously frightened.... Especially as she realized that
+the telephone was in the entrance hall within earshot of the
+dining-room....
+
+She was decidedly more frightened when she got back from her
+telephoning, and looked at Flint. He was clutching at the table with
+both hands, his body tilted slightly forward, his lips ominously thin.
+
+"You telephoned to the Tom Forsythes, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you asked for Stillman.... Did you get him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did you want with him?"
+
+"If you heard that much, I guess you heard the rest, Mr. Flint."
+
+Claire stood at her place at the table. She decided not to sit. Flint
+bore down on both hands until things began to creak.
+
+"Yes, I heard everything, but, dammit all, I couldn't believe my own
+ears. You're like every woman I ever knew ... you don't play fair. You
+appeal to my instinct as host and then you go and outrage every
+privilege you've got me to concede. You're a pretty guest, you are! And
+I sit here and let you 'play me for a fool.' Let you ring up Ned
+Stillman and ask him to fetch you away from _my_ house in _his_ car!" He
+stopped and took a deep breath; his words were no longer passionate;
+instead, they were precise and cool and venomous. "Understand me, young
+lady, I'm through with you. I wouldn't care, if I thought you were
+really virtuous. But you're too clever for a virtuous woman.... Oh, I
+dare say you subscribe to the letter of the law, all right. For
+instance, you take care not to run around with married men whose
+incumbrances are in plain view of the audience.... Oh, I've seen lots of
+clever women in my time, but in the end they always took too much rope.
+Remember, you'll have your bluff called some day."
+
+He pushed back his chair noisily and rose. The Japanese servant came
+bobbing along.
+
+"Clear away the things!" Flint bellowed. "We're through!... Good night,
+Miss Robson, and a pleasant journey to you--you and your _immaculate_
+friend Stillman."
+
+He left the room with a melodramatic flourish.... Presently Claire heard
+him mounting the stairs.
+
+"He's drunk!" flashed through her mind, as if the idea had just struck
+her. "Of course, he must be drunk, otherwise he wouldn't have dared
+to...."
+
+She went out into the entrance hall and put on her hat.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Midway between Yolanda and Sausalito Stillman's machine died with
+disconcerting suddenness The rain was coming down in sheets. Stillman
+got out.
+
+"It's no use," he announced, lifting himself back into his seat. "I
+can't do anything in this deluge."
+
+This was the first word that had been said since he and Claire had left
+Flint's.
+
+"The worst will be over in a few moments," replied Claire, easily. But
+she was far from reassured.
+
+The deluge was _not_ over in a few moments. It kept up with an
+ever-increasing violence, until it seemed that even the stalled car
+would be compelled to yield to its force. Claire had never seen it rain
+harder; the storm had a vindictive fury that reminded her of the
+dreadful tempest in "King Lear."
+
+Stillman maintained his usual well-bred calm and smoked cigarettes while
+he chattered. He touched on every conceivable subject but the one
+uppermost in Claire's mind, until she began to wonder whether delicacy
+or contempt veiled his conversation. A half-hour passed ... an hour ...
+two. Still the rain swept from the sullen sky. Twice Stillman made a
+futile attempt to remedy the trouble with his engine, and twice he
+retired defeated to the shelter of the car. Claire was relieved that
+she was in the company of a man who did not emphasize the monotonous
+hours by indiscriminate raillery against the tricks of chance. At first
+he dismissed the situation with the most casual of shrugs; later he
+acknowledged his annoyance by an expression of regret at his companion's
+discomfort, but he stopped there.
+
+As the hours went on, with no abatement of the storm's devastating
+energy, Claire grew less and less pleased at the prospect. She began to
+wonder whether the shelter of Flint's roof had not been, after all, the
+discreet thing. Was not her headlong flight in company with Stillman
+more open to criticism than the frank acceptance of her employer's
+hospitality? But these vagrant questions were the spawn of a colorless
+spirit of social expediency which fastens itself on weak natures, and in
+Claire's case they died still-born. She had been too well schooled in
+loneliness to lean heavily on the crooked stick of public opinion.
+Accustomed to standing alone, she had something of the spiritual
+arrogance that goes with independence. People could think what they
+liked. And it was more a realization of her mother's anxiety than any
+thought of self which made her suggest to Stillman that they might get
+out and walk into Sausalito.
+
+"I think the last boat leaves there at twelve-thirty," she finished.
+"Surely we could make it if we keep going."
+
+Stillman thrust his arm out into the drenching rain, and withdrew it
+instantly. "I'm afraid that's out of the question, so long as the rain
+keeps up, Miss Robson," he said, in a tone of implied objection.
+"Perhaps if it should stop...."
+
+Claire settled back in her seat. Stillman was right. The storm was too
+furious to be lightly braved.
+
+It was eleven o'clock before a quick veering of the wind brought a
+downpour so violent that what had gone before seemed little better than
+a rather weak rehearsal.
+
+"It will clear presently," Stillman assured Claire. "Southeaster always
+break up in a flurry like this from the west."
+
+In ten minutes the stars were peeping brilliantly through rents in the
+torn clouds. Pungent odors floated up from the rain-trampled stubble of
+the hillsides, the air was cleared of its stifling oppressiveness, the
+first storm of the season was over.
+
+Both Claire and Stillman clambered out at the first signs of the storm's
+exhaustion. Stillman switched on his pocket-light and began to
+investigate the trouble with the engine. His decision was swift and
+conclusive.
+
+"It's hopeless," he announced, turning to Claire with a slight grimace.
+"We're stalled absolutely and no mistake. I guess we'd better strike out
+and walk. No doubt we'll get a lift into Sausalito before we've gone
+very far, but I dare say it's well to be on the safe side."
+
+They rolled the machine to one side of the roadway and struck out
+hopefully. The rain had made a thin chocolate ooze of the highway, and
+before they had gone a hundred yards their shoes were slimy with mud. It
+appeared that Stillman had been something of an aimless wanderer for
+many years, and as he talked on and on, giving detached glimpses of the
+remote places he had visited, Claire had a curious sense of futility.
+
+She read between his clipped and vivid sentences the tragedy of a
+personality worsted by the soft hands of circumstances. This man might
+have done things. As it was he was an idler. He gave her the impression
+of a man waiting vaguely for opportunity--like some traveler pacing
+restlessly up and down a railway station platform in expectation of the
+momentary arrival of a delayed train. She tried to imagine him as she
+felt sure he must once have been--youthful, eager, ardent, a man of
+charming enthusiasms that just missed being extravagances, who could
+bring zest to his virtues as well as to his follies.
+
+"Surely," she thought, "something more than inclination must have pushed
+him into this deadly stagnation."
+
+And at once Miss Munch's insinuating question leaped up to answer:
+
+"You know about his wife, of course!"
+
+Were men put out of countenance by such impersonal tricks of fortune?
+Impersonal?... this domestic tragedy?... Yes, Claire felt that it must
+be, otherwise the man tramping at her side would have wrestled so
+passionately against fate as to have come away at least spattered with
+the mud of defeat. No, Stillman was not defeated, he was merely
+arrested, restrained, held for orders.
+
+He had been in London when the war broke out. He had stayed long enough
+to watch the stolid, easy-going British public awake to the seriousness
+of the encounter, coming home after the first air raids.
+
+"I didn't mind being killed," he laughed, in explanation of his sudden
+flight. "But I didn't like being so frightfully messed up in the
+process. I want a chance to strike back when I'm cornered. The Zeppelin
+game was too much like a rabbit-drive to suit me."
+
+As he spoke of these experiences, Claire listened with a quickening of
+the spirit. The prospect of finding Stillman vibrant was too stirring to
+be denied. But he was still sober on this colossal subject of war ... a
+bit judicial, always well poised. He had his sympathies, but they did
+not appear vitalized by extravagances of feeling. Yet here and there
+Claire was conscious of truant warmths, like brief flashes of sunlight
+through a somber forest.
+
+"And the draft--what do you think of that?" The question rose to her
+lips as if his answer might unlock the door to something deeper in the
+way of convictions.
+
+He began with a shrug that chilled her; then his reply broke with sudden
+refreshment:
+
+"It helps ... some of us. There are many who can't decide for
+themselves. The obvious duty isn't always the correct one. In my
+case...."
+
+He did not stop speaking suddenly, but his voice trailed off into a dim
+region of musing. They both fell silent. But Claire knew. There was that
+haunting hope, almost like a fear, that his wife might some day get
+better. That was what he was waiting for! It might come to-morrow ...
+next week ... in a year ... never! But when it did come he felt that he
+must be there, ready. She wondered whether he loved his wife very much,
+and she found herself hoping that he did.... It would help, somehow ...
+yes, if that were so his sacrifice gained point. On the other hand....
+She put the thought away with a quick thrust, feeling that she had no
+right to such a speculation, and presently she was aware that they were
+swinging into Sausalito.
+
+Stillman looked at his watch. Twelve-thirty-five ... just five minutes
+late for the boat! She could see that he was disturbed.
+
+"I thought sure we'd get a lift," he railed, tossing aside a mangled
+cigar. "This _is_ luck!... I guess we'll have to rout out the Sherwins.
+It's something of a pull up the hill, but any safe port in a storm, you
+know."
+
+"The Sherwins?"
+
+"Another one of the Edington girls. They have a bungalow at the very
+dizziest point in Sausalito."
+
+But Claire objected and held firm. "I couldn't think of it, Mr.
+Stillman. No, really!... Please don't insist."
+
+They agreed on a lodging for Claire in a freshly painted but otherwise
+rather decrepit lodging-house, just north of the ferry-slip. Its chief
+advantage was that it seemed quite too stagnant to be anything but
+respectable, and the suppressed grumbling of the old shrew whom they
+routed out confirmed their estimate. She didn't approve of couples who
+dragged God-fearing old women out of bed at unholy hours in the
+morning, and it was only the generous tip from Stillman and the
+assurance that he intended looking elsewhere for quarters for himself
+that reconciled her to her loss of sleep and the compromise with her
+convictions.
+
+For a good half-hour Claire sat with folded hands peering out from her
+room upon the damp hillside to the west. From across the street came the
+bawdy thumping of a mechanical piano and the swish of a sluggish tide.
+Her encounter with Sawyer Flint had forced the door of her virginal
+seclusion and thrust her at once into the primitive and elemental open.
+She felt like one who was coming out of voluntary exile to the pathos of
+a deferred heritage. Before her stretched the eagle's horizon, but she
+had only the fledgling's strength of wing. She longed for the faith and
+courage and daring to take life at its word, longed with all the
+dangerous fierceness of one who had fed too long upon the husks of
+existence. And, longing, she fell asleep, sitting in a chair before the
+open window, without thought or preparation....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The morning broke cloudless. All traces of the night's fury were
+obliterated as completely as sorrow from the face of a smiling child.
+The sun touched the open spaces with a tender, caressing warmth, but the
+shadows held a keen-edged chill.
+
+Claire decided upon an early boat to town.
+
+"I'll be less likely to meet any of the California Street crowd," she
+said to herself, as she picked her brief way toward the ferry.
+
+The boat was crowded, especially the lower cabin. It was the artisans'
+boat and the air was heavy with the smoke of pipe-tobacco. Claire passed
+rapidly to the dining-room. Perched upon the high revolving chairs
+surrounding a horseshoe counter, a score or more of soft-shirted men sat
+devouring huge greasy doughnuts and gulping coffee. The steward, taking
+note of Claire's hesitation, came forward and led her to a seat at one
+of the side tables. She was about to take advantage of the chair which
+he had drawn out for her when she heard her name called. She turned.
+Miss Munch's cousin, Mrs. Richards, was sitting alone at the table just
+behind. Claire's first feeling was one of relief--she was glad to
+discover an acquaintance. She thanked the steward for his trouble and
+abandoned the proffered seat for the one opposite Mrs. Richards. Almost
+at once she regretted her impulsive decision.
+
+"I didn't know you intended staying at Flint's all night," Mrs. Richards
+began, fixing Claire with a challenging gaze.
+
+"I didn't intend to," returned Claire, her voice sharpened slightly.
+
+Mrs. Richards took the lid off the sugar-bowl and powdered her
+grapefruit sparingly. "Have they a nice home?" she questioned.
+
+"Yes, very nice."
+
+"They gave you an early start, didn't they?... It's almost impossible to
+get servants these days to consider such a thing as serving breakfast
+much before eight o'clock."
+
+Claire glanced at the bill of fare. Mrs. Richards's tone was a trifle
+too eager. "I suppose it is," Claire assented, placing the menu-card
+back in its place between the vinegar and oil cruets.
+
+Mrs. Richards remained unabashed at her vis-à-vis's palpable
+indirectness. "I guess I'm old-fashioned, but, servants or no servants,
+I don't believe I could let a guest of mine leave the house without
+breakfast. It seems to me that if I'd been Mrs. Flint I'd have gotten up
+and made you a cup of coffee myself."
+
+Claire's growing annoyance was swallowed up in a feeling of faint
+amusement. "Perhaps Mrs. Flint wasn't home," she said, beckoning the
+waiter.
+
+"Oh!" Mrs. Richards exclaimed with shocked brevity.
+
+It was not until the arrival of Claire's order of toast and coffee that
+Mrs. Richards found her voice again.
+
+"This business of wives staying from home all night gets me," Mrs.
+Richards hazarded, boldly. "Why, I never remember the time when my
+mother remained away overnight ... not under _any_ circumstances. My
+father expected her to be there, and she always _was_."
+
+Claire distributed bits of butter over the surface of her toast. She
+felt that in justice to the Flint family it was not right for her to
+give Mrs. Richards's dangerous tongue any further scope, however
+tempting was the prospect of leaving such venomous inquisitiveness
+ungratified.
+
+"I think you misunderstood me, Mrs. Richards. I didn't say that Mrs.
+Flint remained away from home last night. As a matter of fact I didn't
+stay at Yolanda, so I don't know anything about it."
+
+"Oh!" faintly escaped Mrs. Richards for the second time that morning,
+but Claire was conscious that there was more incredulity than surprise
+registered in the lady's tone.
+
+"As a matter of fact," Claire continued, stung to incautious
+exasperation, "I spent the night in Sausalito."
+
+Mrs. Richards met this information with a disarmingly bland smile. "I
+didn't know you had friends in Sausalito," she said, letting a spoonful
+of coffee trickle back into her cup.
+
+"I haven't. I spent the night in a lodging-house ... on the
+water-front...."
+
+"My dear Miss Robson, really I.... Why, I hope you don't think I was
+inquisitive!"
+
+It was the simplicity of the challenge that made it impossible to be
+ignored. Claire knew that she was trapped, but she was angry enough to
+decide on some reservation.
+
+"The storm put the track between Yolanda and Sausalito out of
+commission," Claire found herself snapping back too eagerly at her
+tormentor. "We tried to make the last boat by auto, but we got stalled
+and missed it. We had to walk a good half of the way."
+
+"I shouldn't think that would have done Mr. Flint's cold any good," Mrs.
+Richards said, drawlingly.
+
+"Mr. Flint's cold?... I don't quite see what that has to do with it."
+
+"Oh, you said 'we' I somehow got the impression...."
+
+"No, Mrs. Richards, you've misunderstood me again." Claire threw a
+cool, even glance at her antagonist. "I made the trip from Yolanda to
+Sausalito in Mr. Stillman's car."
+
+"Oh!" said Mrs. Richards for a third time, and in this instance her
+voice was warm with gratification.
+
+Claire directed her attention to her plate of buttered toast and her cup
+of coffee. She was chagrined to think that she had fallen so easily into
+Mrs. Richards's very obvious traps. Not that it mattered. She was quite
+sure that the truth could not harm Stillman, and she was equally sure
+that her position in life was too obscure to stand out conspicuously
+against the darts of Mrs. Richards's vindictive tongue. But she had the
+pride of her reticences and she did not like to surrender these
+privileges at the point of insolent curiosity. The two continued to eat
+in silence.
+
+It was Mrs. Richards who finished first, and she dipped her fingers
+hurriedly into the battered metal finger-bowl which the Japanese bus-boy
+thrust before her.
+
+"Do you mind if I go along?" she inquired of Claire, with an air of
+polite triumph. "I think I'll go forward where I can get a quick start
+... before the crowd gets too thick. I've got a million errands to do
+before nine o'clock. And I _do_ want to run into the office before
+Gertie settles down to work. I haven't seen her for a week and I've got
+_more_ things to tell her!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+"Why, Miss Claire, how could you! Where have you been? And your mother
+in such a bad way!" Mrs. Finnegan broke into sudden tears.
+
+Claire, fumbling in her bag for the front-door key, looked up. Mrs.
+Finnegan had swung open the door to the Robson flat and she stood like a
+vision of disaster upon the threshold.
+
+"What has happened?" Claire's voice rose with a note of swift
+apprehension.
+
+"Your mother ... she's paralyzed! She was taken last night. The doctor
+says it would have happened, anyway. But I say it was worry, that's what
+it was. With you away all night and never a word!"
+
+Claire climbed the stairs in silence, aware that Mrs. Finnegan was
+following at a discreet distance. Already the house seemed permeated
+with an atmosphere of tragedy and gloom in spite of the morning light
+pouring in unscreened at every window. Mrs. Robson's room was the only
+exception to this unusual excess of cold radiance--unusual, because it
+was one of Mrs. Robson's prides to keep her window-shades lowered to a
+uniform and genteel distance.
+
+Until Claire came face to face with her mother she almost had fancied
+that her neighbor was indulging in a crude and terrible joke, but one
+look sufficed. Mrs. Robson lay staring vacantly at the ceiling; she
+could not move, she could not speak, and her spirit showed through the
+veiled light in her eyes like a mysterious spot of sunshine in a shaded
+well. Above a swooning sense of calamity Claire felt the strength of a
+tender pretense struggling to communicate its vague hope to the stricken
+form. She raised the window-shade slightly and sat down upon the bed.
+
+"Why, mother, what's all this?" she began, in a tone of gentle banter,
+as she stroked the helpless hands. "Were you worried? I'm so sorry! I
+asked Miss Munch to let you know. Didn't she?... I went over to Mr.
+Flint's to take dictation. The storm washed out the track. I tried to
+make the boat in Mr. Stillman's car, but we broke down and missed it....
+I had to stay all night in Sausalito."
+
+Mrs. Robson, stirring faintly, attempted to speak. Claire turned
+helplessly to Mrs. Finnegan. "I can't make out what she is trying to
+say."
+
+Mrs. Finnegan bent an attentive ear. "It's about Stillman," she
+explained. "Your mother don't understand why...."
+
+The speaker stopped with significant discretion. It was plain to Claire
+that _nobody_ understood, and she felt a dreary futility as she answered
+both her mother and Mrs. Finnegan with:
+
+"It's a long story. Some other time, when ... when you're feeling
+better."
+
+A look of gray disappointment crossed Mrs. Robson's face. Mrs.
+Finnegan's upper lip seemed shaped suddenly with a suspicion that died
+almost as quickly as it began. There was a ring at the bell. "That's the
+doctor," said Mrs. Finnegan, and she left to open the door.
+
+The doctor chilled Claire with his steely nonchalance as she stood apart
+while he went through the usual forms of a professional visit that was
+obviously futile. She followed him to the front door. He answered her
+eager inquiries with the cold triumph of authority.
+
+"How long will she last?... Well, Miss Robson, that is hard to say. She
+might go off to-night. Then, again, she might live twenty years. She'll
+scarcely get any better, though. No, a nurse isn't essential, unless you
+can afford one. But you ought to have another woman about. If you have
+any relatives you'd better send for them and let them help out."
+
+Claire did not find the doctor's announcement that her mother might die
+at once nearly so brutal as his assurance that she had an equal chance
+for existing twenty years. _Twenty years!_ Claire closed the door and
+sank upon the steps overwhelmed.
+
+But there was scant leisure on this first dreadful day of Mrs. Robson's
+illness for theatrical exuberances. Claire, unaccustomed to the routine
+of household duties, took a thousand unnecessary steps. She tried to
+work calmly, to bring an acquired philosophy to her tasks, but she went
+through her paces with a feverish, though stolid, anxiety. The long
+night which followed was inconceivably a thing of horror. Her wakeful
+moments were dry-eyed with despair, and when she slept it was only to
+come back to a shivering consciousness.
+
+Mrs. Finnegan found her next morning fresh from an attempt to rouse her
+mother into accepting a few swallows of milk, which had ended in
+pathetic and miserable failure. She had thrown herself in an abandon of
+grief across the narrow kitchen table, and the coffee from an overturned
+cup was trickling in a warm, thick stream to the floor. But the paroxysm
+did her good. She rose to the kindly caresses of her neighbor like a
+flower beaten to earth but refreshed by a relentless torrent. After
+this, custom and habit began to reassert themselves in spite of the
+crushing weight of circumstance. She 'phoned to the office. Mr. Flint
+had returned, they told her. She explained her trouble to the cashier.
+"I'll try to be back the first of the week," she finished, in a burst of
+illogical hope.
+
+Later in the day Mrs. Robson's two sisters arrived in answer to Claire's
+summons. Claire's impulse to send for them had been purely
+instinctive--an atrophied survival of clan-spirit that persisted beyond
+any real faith in its significance. Perhaps she had a feeling that her
+mother wished it; certainly she had no illusions as to the manner in
+which the unwelcome news of Mrs. Robson's illness would be received by
+these two self-centered females.
+
+It was Mrs. Thomas Wynne who came in first, bundled mysteriously in her
+furs and holding a glass of wine jelly as a conventional symbol of the
+rôle of Lady Bountiful which she had for the moment assumed. Claire
+could almost fancy how conspicuously she had contrived to carry this
+overworked badge of the humanities, and the languid drawl of her voice
+as she explained to her friends _en route_:
+
+"So sorry I can't stop and chat. But, as you see, I'm running along to a
+sick-room.... Oh no, nothing serious, I hope! Just my sister.... Mrs.
+Ffinch-Brown? Oh, dear no! A younger sister. I don't think you know her.
+She's had a great deal of trouble and hasn't been about much for a
+number of years."
+
+Mrs. Thomas Wynne had the trick of intrenching a stubborn family pride
+by throwing back her head and daring all comers to uncover any of the
+Carrol clan's shortcomings. But her selfishness had at least the virtue
+of a live-and-let-live attitude that contrasted with the futile
+aggressiveness of Mrs. Edward Ffinch-Brown. She asked Claire no
+questions concerning her life or her prospects; she did not even pry
+very deeply into the chances that her sister had for an ultimate
+recovery. Her philosophy seemed to be founded on the knowledge that
+uncovered cesspools were bound to be unpleasant, and, since she had no
+desire to assist in their purification, she was quite content to keep
+them properly screened. She came and deposited her wine jelly and patted
+her sister's hand and went away again without leaving even a ripple in
+her wake. As she departed she gave further proof of her insolent
+insincerity by calling back at Claire:
+
+"Remember, Claire, if there is anything I can do, just let me know."
+
+Mrs. Ffinch-Brown's visit was scarcely more comforting, but decidedly
+more exciting. She had not the suavity of her indifferences. Mrs.
+Robson's untimely tilt with fate irritated her, and she took no pains to
+conceal this fact.
+
+"I suppose your mother is just as she's always been--a creature of
+nerves," she said, as she dropped into a seat for a preliminary session
+with Claire before venturing upon the unwelcome sight of her stricken
+sister. "I don't know why it is, but she seems to be one of those people
+who always has had something the matter with her. Poor Emily! Well, I
+suppose we are all made differently."
+
+When she entered the sick-room she found fault with the arrangement of
+the bed, the manner in which the covers slipped off, the uncovered glass
+of medicine on the bureau.
+
+"You should braid your mother's hair, too. And why don't you pull the
+window down from the top?"
+
+Claire stood in sullen silence while her aunt vented a personal
+annoyance on the nearest objects. But when Mrs. Ffinch-Brown's
+ill-natured ministrations brought a dumb but protesting misery to the
+sufferer's face, Claire found the courage to say, as gently as she
+could:
+
+"Why bother, Aunt Julia? Mother is really too sick now to care much
+about appearances?"
+
+This was just what Claire's aunt had hoped for. It gave her a chance for
+escape without any strain upon her conscience. She did not remain long
+after what she was pleased to consider a rebuff.
+
+"Well, Claire, I see I can't be of much help," she announced as she
+powdered her nose before the shabby hat-rack mirror and drew on her
+gloves.... After she was gone Claire found a five-dollar bill on the
+living-room table. She opened the gilt-edged copy of Tennyson that,
+together with a calf edition of Ouida's _Moths_, had stood for years as
+guard over the literary pretensions of the household, and thrust the
+money midway between its covers. Doubtless a time was coming when she
+would find it necessary to use this money, but the present moment was
+too charged with the giver's resentful benevolence to make such a
+compromise possible.
+
+For three consecutive days Mrs. Ffinch-Brown swooped down upon the
+Robson household and gave vent to her pique. She had been divorced so
+long from these melancholy relations of hers that she had really
+forgotten their existence, and she displayed all the rancor of a woman
+who discovers suddenly a moth hole in the long undisturbed folds of a
+treasured cashmere shawl. Her precisely timed visits had not the
+slightest suspicion of attentiveness back of them, and Claire guessed
+almost at once that they were more in the nature of assaults carried on
+in the hope that she would meet enough opposition to insure an honorable
+retreat. Unlike Mrs. Thomas Wynne, Aunt Julia inquired minutely into
+family matters, insisted on knowing Claire's plans, and was aggressively
+free with advice.
+
+"You ought to be making plans, Claire," she said, at the conclusion of
+her second visit. "You can't go on like this. I'd like to be able to do
+more, but of course I can't spare much time. And next week you'll have
+to be getting into harness again. You'd better think it over."
+
+And on the next day, finding that Claire obviously had _not_ thought it
+over, she threw out a hint that was little save a thinly veiled threat.
+She came in with a more genial manner than she was accustomed to waste
+upon the desert air of penury, and Claire, well schooled in reading the
+significance of proverbial calms, had a misgiving.
+
+"I've been talking to Miss Morton ... about your mother," Mrs.
+Ffinch-Brown began, without bothering to lead up to the subject. "You
+know Alice Morton.... Well, your mother does, anyway. I bumped into her
+yesterday, quite by accident ... at a Red Cross meeting. It seems she's
+one of the directors of The King's Daughters' Home for Incurables!"
+Claire was sitting opposite her aunt, nervously fingering a
+paper-cutter. Mrs. Ffinch-Brown eyed her niece sharply, and with an
+obvious determination to drive her thrusts home before her victim
+recovered from the first vicious stabs she continued: "It seems they
+haven't a great deal of room out there, but she thinks she could arrange
+things. They'll raise the price to two thousand dollars after the
+fifteenth of the month, so I thought that--"
+
+"Oh, not quite yet, Aunt Julia!... Mother has a chance. Surely...."
+
+"Now, Claire, don't get hysterical. You're a business woman and _you_
+ought to be practical if any of us are. The price to-day is one thousand
+dollars. Think of it! Care for life in a ward with only _three_ others!
+Now I can't ask your uncle for any more than is necessary in a case
+like this. If we make up our mind promptly we can save just one thousand
+dollars."
+
+For the moment Claire felt the harried desperation of a cornered animal.
+She had never seen anything more disagreeable than her aunt's sidelong
+glance. She felt herself rise from her seat with cold dignity.
+
+"I'm afraid, Aunt Julia, I can't make up my mind as quickly as you wish.
+It isn't so simple as it seems. I'm not above a plan like this if I'm
+convinced it's necessary. But somehow.... Oh, I know what you're
+thinking--you're thinking that beggars shouldn't be choosers. Well, I'm
+not quite a beggar yet. But when I am, I won't choose.... I'll promise
+you that."
+
+Mrs. Ffinch-Brown rose also. She was in a position to triumph in any
+case, and she was washing her hands of the situation with eager
+satisfaction. "Oh, indeed! I'm glad you can say that _now_. But you
+weren't always so independent. I suppose it never occurs to you to thank
+me for what I did when you were younger."
+
+Claire felt quite calm. The events of the past twenty-four hours had
+wrung her emotions dry. "Yes, Aunt Julia," she said, with an air of cool
+defiance, "it occurred to me many times.... Perhaps if I'd had any
+choice...."
+
+Mrs. Ffinch-Brown grew pale. "It's plain that I'm wasting my time here!"
+she sneered.
+
+Claire went with her aunt to the door....
+
+Mrs. Ffinch-Brown did not cross the threshold of the Robson home again,
+and when on the following day Claire saw the figure of Mrs. Thomas
+Wynne outlined against the lace-screened front door she let the bell
+ring unanswered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dismissal of the last of the Carrol clan from any participation in
+the Robson destinies gave Claire a feeling at once independent and
+solitary. There had been a vague hope that this crisis might germinate
+some stray seeds of kinship, shriveled by the drought of uneventful
+years. But the poisonous nettles of memory were the only harvest that
+had sprung from the presence of Mrs. Robson's sisters, and Claire was
+glad to uproot the arid product of their shallowness.
+
+The week came to a close with a rush of visitors. Suddenly it seemed as
+if everybody knew of Mrs. Robson's illness. Fellow church members, old
+school friends, casual acquaintances began to ring the front-door bell
+insistently. Knowing her mother's instinctive craving for recognition,
+it struck Claire that it was the height of irony to see this belated
+crowd come swarming in on the heels of calamity at the moment when Mrs.
+Robson was unable to so much as see them. Mrs. Robson would have so
+liked to sit in even a threadbare pomp and receive the homage of her
+visitors, but fate had been scurvy enough to withhold this scant
+triumph.
+
+Nellie Whitehead breezed in on Saturday afternoon just as Mrs.
+Finnegan's cuckoo clock cooed the stroke of three; immediately the air
+began to move out of adversity's tragic current. It was impossible to be
+wholly without hope under the impetus of Nellie Whitehead's flaming
+good humor.
+
+"I'm all out of breath," she began, as she flopped into the first chair
+that came handy. "I keep forgetting I ain't sweet sixteen any more and
+never been kissed. I hate to walk slow, though. Don't you? Say, but you
+_are_ up against it, ain't you! I saw that Munch dame on the street and
+she nearly broke her old neck trying to catch up with me. I wondered
+what was the matter, because she ain't usually so keen about flagging
+_me_. But, _you_ know, she never misses a trick at spilling out the
+calamity stuff, especially if it isn't on her.... 'Oh, Miss Whitehead,'
+she called out before I had a chance to beat it, 'have you heard about
+Miss Robson's mother?' ...When she got through I fixed her with that
+trusty old eye of mine and I said, 'I suppose you see her quite often.'
+And what do you think the old stiff said? 'Oh, I'd like to, Miss
+Whitehead, but I really haven't had time. You know I'm doing all Mr.
+Flint's dictation now.' And she had the nerve to try and slip me a hint
+that she was going to keep on doing it. But I just said to myself: 'You
+should kid yourself that way, old girl! When Flint picks a bloomer like
+you to ornament the back office it will be because his eyesight's failed
+him.' ...By the way, how do you manage to stand him off--with religious
+tracts or a hat-pin?"
+
+She hardly waited for Claire's reply, but plunged at once into another
+monologue.
+
+"Do you know what I'm up to? I got my eye on the swellest fur-lined coat
+you ever saw ... at Magnin's. But you can bet I'm going to keep my eye
+on it until after the holidays. They want a hundred and a quarter for it
+now, but they'll be glad to take sixty-five when the gay festivities are
+over, or I miss my guess. I go in every other day to have a look at it,
+and when the girl's back is turned I hang it back in the case
+myself--'way back where everybody else will overlook it. Oh, I know the
+game all right. I did the same thing with a three piece suit last
+summer. But I say, All is fair in war and the high cost of living. Maybe
+you think I haven't had a time scraping the wherewithal for that coat
+together. But I brought the total up to seventy the other day by getting
+Billy Holmes to slip me a ten in advance for Christmas. I never trust a
+man to invest in anything for me if I can help it. They usually run to
+manicure sets in satin-lined cases or cut-glass cologne-bottles. Billy
+Holmes?... Oh, you know him! He ran the reinsurance desk at the Royal
+for years. They put him on the road last week. He's _some_ live wire.
+And what's better, he has no incumbrances. I'll tell you what it is,
+Robson, I'm getting kind of tired of the goings. I'm just about ready to
+settle down by the old steam-radiator. And as long as I've got eyesight
+enough to look the field over, I've decided on a traveling-man or a
+sea-captain. They'll be sticking around home just about often enough to
+suit me.... Not that I'm a man-hater, but I've never had 'em for a
+steady diet and I'm not going to begin to get the habit this late day."
+
+Nellie Whitehead stayed about an hour, and, as Claire opened the front
+door upon her friend's departure the letter-man thrust an envelope into
+her hands. She opened it hastily and turned suddenly white.
+
+"Well, Robson, what's wrong now?" inquired Nellie.
+
+"Flint ... he's let me out ... Miss Munch was right!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+On the selfsame Saturday of Claire's dismissal from the office ranks of
+the Falcon Insurance Company Ned Stillman was the recipient of an early
+telephone message from Lily Condor. It appeared that Flora Menzies, the
+young woman who usually accompanied her in her vocal flights, had been
+laid low with pneumonia and she wanted Stillman to persuade Claire
+Robson to succeed to the honorary position.
+
+"She did so famously on that night of our musicale," Lily Condor had
+explained, "and Flora won't be in shape again for a good three months.
+Of course, there isn't anything in it but glory. I'm just one of those
+'sweet charity' artists. But I think she is a dear, and I know that
+_you_ have influence."
+
+Stillman pretended to be annoyed at Mrs. Condor's assumption that his
+word would carry any weight in the matter, but as a matter of fact he
+felt pleased in secret masculine fashion. Chancing to pass Flint's
+office at the noon hour, he dropped in. It happened that Miss Munch was
+standing near the counter, and she answered his inquiries with suave
+eagerness.
+
+"Oh, Miss Robson isn't with us any more. She hasn't been here for over
+a week--not since her mother was taken sick. Oh, I thought you knew.
+You're Mr. Stillman, aren't you? I've heard my cousin, Mrs. Richards,
+speak of you. Miss Robson went over to Mr. Flint's on that night of the
+storm and she missed the boat or something--_you_ know! And when she got
+home next morning she found that her mother had worried herself into a
+stroke. They say she is quite helpless.... I'm sure I don't know what
+she intends doing. We mailed her check yesterday. It's always hard to
+land another position when one is dismissed."
+
+Stillman escaped quickly. Miss Munch's venom was a thing too crude and
+unconcealed to face with indifference. Her emphatic "_you_ know" was
+pregnant with innuendo and malice. Still, it did not occur to Stillman
+that he had any part in Claire Robson's misfortune. But he did know from
+Miss Munch's tone that the unfortunate situation, growing out of the
+automobile ride from Yolanda to Sausalito, had received due recognition
+at the hands of those who made a business of blowing out bubbles of
+scandal from the suds of chance. It was useless for him to deny that
+Claire Robson from the first had been of more or less interest. She
+seemed to rise in such a detached fashion from her environment.
+
+He had to admit, as later he sat in the cloistered silences of his club
+library and blew contemplative smoke-rings into the air, that a certain
+idle curiosity had been the mainspring of his concern for her. He had
+been like a boy who captured a strange butterfly and clapped it under a
+glass tumbler where he could watch how easily it would adapt itself to
+its new surroundings. But, having caught the butterfly and held it a
+brief captive, the dust from its wings still lingered upon the hands
+that imprisoned it. He had made the mistake of imagining that one is
+always master of casual incidents. To meet a young woman by the most
+trivial chance, to extend a brief courtesy to her, these were matters
+which hold scarcely the germs of a menacing situation, not menacing to
+him, of course--they never could be menacing to him; he was still
+thinking of things from the viewpoint of Claire Robson.
+
+To tell the truth, he was annoyed at having been mixed up in Claire's
+flight from the Flint household. Had Flint been a complete stranger he
+would not have minded so much. He was still divided by the appeal to his
+chivalry and the sense of loyalty that a man feels to the masculine
+friends of his youth. In her telephone message Claire had put the matter
+very casually--the track was washed out and she was wondering whether he
+contemplated returning to town that evening. But he guessed at once what
+lay back of her matter-of-fact boldness. He had guessed so completely
+that he had decided not only to return to town, but to start at once.
+
+He wondered now whether he had answered the appeal because a woman was
+in a desperate situation or because that woman was Claire Robson. All
+through the dinner hour at the Tom Forsythes he had thought about her,
+had speculated vaguely what mischance or effrontery had been responsible
+for her ill-timed visit to Flint's. He remembered trying to decide
+whether the young woman was extraordinarily deep or extraordinarily
+simple and frank. He did not like to concede that he could be influenced
+by anything so transparently malicious as Mrs. Richards's statements
+regarding the absence of Mrs. Flint, but he was bound to admit that they
+did nothing to render the situation less innocent; what had particularly
+annoyed him was the fact that he should have given the matter a second
+thought. To begin with, it was none of his business and he was not a man
+who presumed to judge or even speculate on other people's indiscretions.
+Claire Robson was no sheltered schoolgirl. She was a full-grown woman,
+in the thick of business life. Such women were not taken unawares. He
+had just dismissed the whole affair from his mind on this basis when
+Claire's telephone message came to him. Even now he marveled at the
+sense of satisfaction that her appeal had given. But he had found no
+savor in a situation that compelled him to interfere in Flint's program.
+Such a move on his part was contrary to his standards, to his training
+in comradeship, to all his acquired philosophy. He had the well-bred
+man's distaste for getting into a mess. He abhorred scenes and
+conspicuous complications.
+
+He had come through the incident with steadily waning enthusiasm and a
+decision to wash his hands in the future of all such unprofitable
+trifling. But the sudden knowledge that the young woman was in desperate
+trouble revived his interest. He had no idea how serious Mrs. Robson's
+illness was or whether Claire had any hopes for a new position. But
+Miss Munch's words had been significant. Claire had been _dismissed_,
+and Stillman knew enough about present business stagnation to conclude
+that for the time, at least, Claire Robson faced a bleak outlook. He
+realized the indelicacy of any definite move on his part, but it
+occurred to him that it might be well to talk the situation over with
+some one--preferably a woman. As he tossed his cigar butt aside, Lily
+Condor appealed to him as just the person for the emergency. Therefore
+he looked her up without further ado.
+
+He found her at home, curled up among the cushions of a davenport that
+did service as a bed when the scenes were shifted. She was living in a
+tiny apartment consisting of one room and a kitchenette that gave
+Stillman the impression of a juggler's cabinet. Nothing in this room was
+ever by any chance what it seemed. Things that looked like doors led
+nowhere; bits of stationary furniture usually yielded to the slightest
+pressure and revealed strange secrets. He had seen Mrs. Condor deftly
+construct a card-table out of an easy-chair, and he had no doubt that
+the oak table in the center of the room could have been converted into a
+chiffonier or a chassis-lounge at a given signal.
+
+In repose, it struck Stillman that Mrs. Condor seemed very much like a
+purring cat. He had never seen her quite so frankly behind the scenes,
+robbed of both her physical and mental make-up. She was one of those
+women in middle age who adapt themselves to the tone of their background
+and while she contrived to strike a fairly vivid note, she took care not
+to be discordant. She was clever enough to realize that her talents
+were not sensational and that she could only hope for an indifferent
+success as a professional. But in the rôle of a gracious amateur she
+disarmed criticism and forced her way into circles that might otherwise
+have been at some pains to exclude her. For, if the truth were known,
+there had been certain phases of Mrs. Condor's earlier life which were
+rather vaguely, and at the same time aptly, covered by Mrs. Finnegan's
+term of "gay." A perfectly discreet woman, for instance, would have made
+an effort to live down her flaming hair and almost immorally dazzling
+complexion, but Mrs. Condor had been much more ready to live _up_ to
+these conspicuous charms. In fact, she had lived up to them pretty
+furiously, until time began to take a ruthless toll of her contrasting
+points. From the concert-platform she still seemed to discount, almost
+to flout, the years, but in secret she yielded unmistakably to their
+pressure.
+
+It was this yielding, pliant attitude that struck Stillman as he came
+upon her almost unawares on that early December afternoon, a yielding,
+pliant attitude which gave a curious sense of tenacity under the
+surface. And he thought, as he dropped into the chair she indicated,
+that she was a woman who gained strength in these moments of relaxation.
+
+"Fancy your catching me like this!" she said, "I thought when the bell
+rang that you were my dressmaker.... If you want a highball you'll have
+to wait on yourself. Phil Edington brought an awfully good bottle of
+Scotch last night. I declare I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have
+a youngster or two on my staff. Old men are such bores, anyway, and, as
+a matter of fact, they never waste time on any woman over thirty. Well,
+I don't blame them. We're a sorry, patched-up mess at best.... Tell me,
+did you get hold of Miss Robson?"
+
+"I dropped in, but she wasn't at the office," Stillman replied, tossing
+his hat on the center-table.
+
+Mrs. Condor withdrew to the relaxation of her innumerable sofa pillows
+again. "Wasn't at the office? How thrilling! Is she one of the Sultan's
+favorites?... I've heard Sawyer Flint was an easy mark if you know how
+to work him. Miss Robson didn't strike me that way, though. But I ought
+to have known that silent women are always cleverer than they appear."
+
+Stillman caught the barest suggestion of a sneer in Mrs. Condor's
+tone--the sneer of a woman relinquishing a stubborn hold upon the
+gaieties.
+
+"Well, I guess Miss Robson didn't know how to work him, as a matter of
+fact," Stillman said, quietly. "She lost her job to-day. I'm a little
+bit worried about her.... I came here on purpose to talk the situation
+over with you."
+
+His directness brought Lily Condor out of her languidness with a sharp
+turn. She wriggled up and sat erectly on the edge of the davenport, one
+slippered foot dangling just above the other. "Why, Ned Stillman, what
+an old fraud you are! I didn't fancy you were interested in _anybody_. I
+didn't think that you.... Oh, well, throw me a cigarette and let me hear
+the worst in comfort!"
+
+He opened his cigarette-case and leaned over toward her. She made her
+choice. He struck a match and she put her hand tightly on his wrist as
+she bent over the flame and slowly drew in her breath. Even after she
+had released her grasp his flesh still bore the imprint of the rings on
+her fingers. For a moment he had an impulse to bow himself out of her
+presence without further explanation, but already she seemed to have a
+proprietary interest in him. Her smile was full of friendly malice.
+
+He ended by telling her everything, in spite of the conviction that he
+had approached the wrong person.
+
+"Of course," she hazarded, boldly, when he had finished, "you mean to
+help her out."
+
+Her presumption annoyed but rather refreshed him. "I'd like to do
+something, but, hang it all, what can be done?"
+
+"What can be done? If that isn't like a man! Or I should say, a
+_gentleman_!... Why don't you plunge in boldly and damn the
+consequences?... It's just your sort that sends women into the arms of
+men like Flint. You're so busy keeping an eye on the proprieties that
+you miss all the danger signals."
+
+Her tone was extraordinarily familiar, and, to a man who rather prided
+himself upon his ability to keep people at arm's-length, it was not
+precisely agreeable. Yet he knew that it would be folly to give any hint
+of his irritation.
+
+"Well," he contrived to laugh back at her, "so far as I can see, Miss
+Robson's problems are quite too simple. After all, it's largely a
+question of money.... I can't go and throw gold in her lap as if she
+were some beggar on a street corner."
+
+"You mean, I suppose, that you are afraid to risk the outraged dignity
+of this ward of yours. I think that's a lovely name for her. Don't
+you?... You're acquiring such a benevolent old attitude. The only thing
+to be done, I fancy, is to adopt some transparent ruse--some
+sort of Daddy-Long-Leggish deception." She closed her eyes
+thoughtfully--"_Hiring_ her as my accompanist, for instance." She rose
+to dispense Scotch and soda. Stillman sat in thoughtful silence, while
+Mrs. Condor talked to very trivial purpose. She seemed suddenly to have
+grown tired of the subject of Claire Robson. The arrival of the expected
+dressmaker broke in upon the rather one-sided tête-à-tête.
+
+"You'll have to go," Lily Condor announced with an intimate air of
+dismissal to Stillman. "It would never do to let a mere man in on the
+secrets of the sewing-room."
+
+At the door he hesitated awkwardly over his good-by. "I was wondering,"
+he said, "whether you were serious about ... about hiring Miss Robson as
+your accompanist. You know I think the plan has possibilities."
+
+She threw back her head and smiled with hard satisfaction. "I've been
+trying to figure if you had killed your imagination. Think it over."
+
+She gave him the tips of her fingers. He returned their languid pressure
+and departed.
+
+As he drifted down the hall he heard her calling, half gaily, half
+derisively, after him:
+
+"Don't decide on anything rash now.... Sleep over it!..."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He thought it over for three days and when he called on Lily Condor
+again he found her divorced from her languishing mood. She was dressed
+for dinner down-town, and he had to confess she had made the most of
+what remained of her flaming hair and dazzling complexion.
+
+He felt that she guessed the reason for his visit, although she took
+care to let him force the issue.
+
+"About Miss Robson," he said, finally, "I've concluded to take you at
+your word."
+
+Lily Condor smoothed out her gloves and laid them aside. "Take me at
+_my_ word? You're welcome to the suggestion, if that is what you mean.
+As a matter of fact I wasn't serious."
+
+He was annoyed to feel that he was flushing. He could not fathom her,
+but he had a conviction that she _had_ been serious and that this
+attitude was a mere pose. "Nevertheless, I think it can be managed," he
+insisted. "And I want you to help me."
+
+She listened to his plan. "What you will call a Daddy-Long-Leggish
+pretense," he explained to her with an attempt at facetiousness. "You to
+do the hiring and ... and yours truly to provide the wherewithal. Until
+things look up a bit. Of course then ... why, naturally, when things
+look up a bit for her...."
+
+But Lily remained lukewarm. She wasn't quite sure that it would be ...
+oh, well, he knew what she meant! It seemed too absurd to think that he
+had given an ear to anything so extravagant. She would like to be of
+service to Miss Robson, of course, but, after all, she felt that it was
+taking an unfair advantage of the girl.
+
+"If she's everything you say she is, she'd resent it all tremendously,"
+she put forth as a final objection.
+
+"But she isn't to know! That's the point of the whole thing," he
+explained, with absurd simplicity.
+
+"Oh, my dear man, she isn't to know, but she _will_, ultimately. You
+don't suppose the secret of a woman's meal-ticket is hidden very long,
+do you? And, besides, you couldn't offer her enough to live on. That
+would be absurd on the very face of it."
+
+"Oh, well, I could offer her enough to help out a bit, anyway, and half
+a loaf you know...."
+
+He broke off, amazed at the determination her opposition had
+crystallized. She looked at him sharply and rose.
+
+"I must be running along," she commented as she drew on her gloves. "I
+tell you, I'll go call on Miss Robson--some day this week. A woman can
+always get a better side-light on a situation like this. There are so
+many angles to be considered. She must have relatives. You wouldn't want
+to make a false move, would you, now?"
+
+He was too grateful to be suspicious at this sudden compromise with her
+convictions.
+
+"You're tremendously good," he stammered. "It _will_ be a favor. And any
+time that I can...."
+
+"You can be of service to me right now," she interrupted, gaily. "Order
+me a taxi ... that's a good boy! I always do so like to pull up at a
+place in style."
+
+Stillman paid Lily Condor a third visit that week--this time in answer
+to the lady's telephone message. She had been to see Claire Robson and
+her report was anything but rosy.
+
+"Her mother's perfectly helpless and will be for the rest of her life,"
+Lily volunteered almost cheerfully. "And, frankly, I don't see what is
+going to become of them. It seems that Mrs. Robson is a sister of Mrs.
+Tom Wynne and that dreadful Ffinch-Brown woman. They both have about as
+much heart as a cast-iron stove. Miss Robson didn't say so in words, but
+I gathered that she had called both of them off the relief job. I almost
+cheered when I realized that fact. I threw out a hint about there being
+a possibility of my needing an accompanist. I said Miss Menzies was ill
+and perhaps ... and I intimated that there was something more than glory
+in it."
+
+"And what did Miss Robson say to that?"
+
+"Oh, she was more self-contained than one would imagine under the
+circumstances. She said she would like to think it over. She put it that
+way on the score of leaving her mother alone nights. But, believe me,
+that young lady is more calculating than she seems. Of course I didn't
+mention terms or anything like that. I left a good loophole in case you
+had changed your mind."
+
+For the moment Stillman was almost persuaded to tell Lily Condor that he
+_had_ changed his mind. Not that he had lost interest in Claire, but
+already he had another plan and there was something disagreeably
+presumptuous in Mrs. Condor's tone. He never remembered having taken
+anybody into his confidence regarding a personal matter. The trouble
+was that he had begun the whole affair under the misapprehension that it
+was a most _impersonal_ thing. He still tried to look at it from that
+angle, but Lily Condor's manner seemed bent on forcing home the rather
+disturbing conviction that he had a vital interest in the issue. She had
+cut in upon his reserve and he would never quite be able to recover the
+lost ground. He felt that she sensed his revulsion, for almost at once
+she adroitly changed the subject and it did not come to life again
+during the remainder of his call.
+
+But when he was leaving she thrust an idle finger into the lapel of his
+coat and said:
+
+"I think it's awfully good of you, Ned, to be human enough to want to do
+something for others. I watched you as a young man, and when you
+married...." His startled look must have halted her, for she released
+her hold upon him and finished with a shrug.
+
+He said good-by hastily and escaped. But he wondered, as he found his
+way out into the street, how long it would be before Mrs. Condor would
+acquire sufficient boldness to discuss with him what and whom she chose.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Christmas Day came and went with a host of bitter-sweet memories for
+Claire Robson. Not that she could look back on any holiday season with
+unalloyed happiness, but time had drawn the sting from the misfortune of
+the old days. Through the mist of the years outlines softened, and she
+was more prone to measure the results by the slight harvest that their
+efforts had brought. For instance, they had never been too poor to deny
+themselves the luxury of a tree. And a tree to Mrs. Robson meant none of
+the scant, indifferent affairs that most of the neighbors found
+acceptable strung with a few strands of dingy popcorn and pasteboard
+ornaments. No, the Robson tree was always an opulent work of art,
+freighted with bursting cornucopias and heavy glass balls and yards of
+quivering tinsel. The money for all this dazzling beauty usually came a
+fortnight or so before the eventful day in the shape of a ten-dollar
+bill tucked away in the folds of Gertrude Sinclair's annual letter to
+Mrs. Robson. As Claire had grown older she had grown also impatient of
+the memory of her mother squandering what should have gone for thick
+shoes and warm plaid dresses upon the ephemeral joys of a Christmas
+tree. But now she suddenly understood, and she felt glad for a mother
+courageous enough to lay hold upon the beautiful symbols of life at the
+expense of all that was hideously practical. Shoes wore out and plaid
+dresses finally found their way to the rag-bag, but the glories of the
+spirit burned forever in the splendor of all this truant magnificence,
+and the years stretched back in a glittering procession of light-ladened
+fir-trees.
+
+Then some time between Christmas and New-Year came the Christmas
+pantomime at the Tivoli, with its bewildering array of scantily clad
+fairies and dashing Amazons and languishing princes in pale-blue tights;
+to say nothing of the Queen Charlottes consumed between acts through
+faintly yellow straws. How Claire would mark off each day on the
+calendar which brought her nearer to this triumph! And what a hurry and
+bustle always ensued to get dinner over and be fully dressed and down to
+the box-office before even the doors were opened, so that they could get
+first choice of the unreserved seats which sold at twenty-five cents.
+Then there would ensue the long, tedious wait in the dimly lighted
+cavern of the playhouse, smelling with a curious fascination of stale
+cigars and staler beer, and the thrill that the appearance of the
+orchestra produced, followed by the arrival of all the important
+personages fortunate enough to afford fifty-cent seats, which gave them
+the security to put off their appearance until the curtain was almost
+ready to rise. And when the curtain really did rise upon the inevitable
+spectacle of villagers dancing upon the village green! And Mrs. Robson
+carefully picked out in the chorus the stout sister of a former servant
+who had worked for her mother! And the wicked old witch swept from the
+wings on the traditional broomstick! From that moment until the final
+transformation scene, when scintillating sea-shells yielded up one by
+one their dazzling burdens of female loveliness and a rather Hebraic
+Cupid descended from an invisible wire to wish everybody a happy
+New-Year in words appropriately rhymed, there was no halt to the wonders
+disclosed. With what sharp and exquisite reluctance did Claire remain
+glued to her seat, refusing to believe that it was all over! Even at
+this late date Claire had only to close her eyes to revive the delights
+of these rather covert excursions into the realm of fancy--covert,
+because a Tivoli pantomime had not precisely the sanction of such a
+respectable organization as the Second Presbyterian Church. Mrs. Robson,
+while not definitely encouraging Claire to wilful dishonesty, always
+managed to warn her daughter by saying:
+
+"I wouldn't tell any one about going to the Tivoli, Claire, if I were
+you ... unless, of course, they should ask about it."
+
+Claire, in mortal terror lest any indiscretion on her part would put a
+stop to this annual lapse into such delightful immoralities, held her
+peace in spite of her desire to spread abroad the beauties which she had
+beheld. She had a feeling that all the participants in the pantomime
+must of necessity be rather wicked and abandoned creatures, and half the
+pleasure she had felt in viewing them arose from a secret admiration at
+the courage which permitted human beings to be so perfectly and
+desperately sinful. Although she was almost persuaded that perhaps it
+did not take quite such bravado to be wicked in blue-spangled gauze and
+satin slippers as it did to lapse from the straight and narrow path in a
+gingham dress and resoled boots.
+
+The only thrill that the present Christmas Day produced came in the
+shape of a pot of flaming poinsettias bearing the card of Ned Stillman.
+These were the first flowers that Claire ever remembered having
+received. It pleased her also to realize that Stillman had been delicate
+to the point of this thoroughly unpractical gift, especially as he had
+every reason to assume that something more substantial would have been
+acceptable. She was confident that by this time he had heard through
+Mrs. Condor of her mother's illness and her loss of position. Claire was
+still puzzled at Mrs. Condor's visit. For all that lady's skill at
+subterfuge, there were implied evasions in her manner which Claire
+sensed instinctively. And then Claire was not yet inured to the novelty
+of being in demand. To have been forced by circumstance upon Mrs. Condor
+as an accompanist was one thing; to be desired by her in a moment of
+cold calculation was quite another; and there had been more uncertainty
+than caution in Claire's plea for time in which to consider the offer.
+But as the days flew by it became more and more apparent to Claire that
+she was in no position to indulge in idle speculation. She had long
+since given up the hope of fulfilling the demands of a regular office
+position, even if one had been open to her. Mrs. Finnegan's enthusiasm
+to be neighborly and helpful was more a matter of theory than practice,
+and it did not take Claire many days to decide that she had no right to
+impose upon a good nature which was made up largely of ignorance of a
+sick-room's demands. Claire's final check from Flint was dwindling with
+alarming rapidity; indeed, she was facing the first of the year with the
+realization that there would be barely enough to pay the next month's
+rent, let alone to settle the current bills. She had no idea what Mrs.
+Condor intended paying, but she fancied that it must be little enough.
+Surely Mrs. Condor did not receive any great sum for her singing and
+there must be any number of gratuitous performances. She decided quite
+suddenly, the day after Christmas, to take Mrs. Condor at her word, and
+she was a bit disturbed at both the lady's reply and the manner of it.
+
+"Oh," Mrs. Condor had drawled rather disagreeably, "I thought you'd
+given up the idea. I spoke to somebody else only this morning. But, of
+course, I'm not certain about how it will turn out. I'll keep you in
+mind and if the other falls through.... By the way, how is your mother?
+I keep asking Ned Stillman every day what the news is, but he never
+knows anything. All men are alike ... unless they've got some special
+interest. Sometimes I marvel that he looks me up so regularly, but then
+I've known him ever since.... But there, I'll be telling more than I
+should! Do come and see me. I'm always in in the morning.... Yes, I can
+imagine you do have a lot to do. I'm so sorry you didn't call up
+sooner. But one never can tell. Good-by.... I hope you'll have a happy
+New Year."
+
+Claire hung up the receiver. Well, she had lost an opportunity to turn
+an easy dollar or two and she had no one to thank but herself. Why had
+she delayed in accepting Mrs. Condor's offer?
+
+Fortunately the unexpected arrival of Nellie Whitehead cut short any
+further repinings. Claire was frankly glad to see her and at once she
+thought, "She has come to show me her new coat."
+
+But Nellie Whitehead was incased in a wrap that showed every evidence of
+a good six months' wear.
+
+"My new coat?" the lady echoed, in answer to Claire's question. "There
+ain't no such animal. Somebody else copped it. I didn't shove it back
+far enough the last time I took a look at it, I guess. Oh, well, I
+should worry! I can get along very well without it...."
+
+When Nellie Whitehead rose to leave, dusk had fallen and Claire was
+fumbling for matches to light the hall gas, when she felt her friend's
+hand close over hers. There followed the cold pressure of several coins
+against Claire's palm and the voice of her visitor sounding a bit
+tremulous in the dusk.
+
+"You'll need some extra money, Robson, or I miss my guess."
+
+Claire fell back with a gesture of protest. "Why, Nellie Whitehead, how
+could you? It's your coat money, too! Well, _I_ never!"
+
+And with that they both burst into tears.... When Claire recovered
+herself she found that Nellie Whitehead had escaped. She lit the gas
+and opened her palm. Four twenty-dollar gold pieces glistened in the
+light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning Claire received a telephone message from Mrs. Condor. The
+position of accompanist was hers at forty dollars a month if she desired
+it.
+
+"It won't be hard," Mrs. Condor had finished, reassuringly. "Some weeks
+I've something on nearly every night. And then again there won't be
+anything doing for days.... How can I afford to pay so much? Well, my
+dear, that is a secret. But don't worry, you'll earn it...."
+
+And toward the close of the week there came another surprise for Claire
+in the shape of a letter from Stillman, which ran:
+
+
+    MY DEAR MISS ROBSON.--I am going to take a little flier at the bean
+    market.
+
+    That was my father's business and I know a few things about it--at
+    least to the extent of recognizing the commodity when the sack is
+    opened. Do you fancy you could arrange to give me a few hours a week
+    at the typewriter? If so, we can get together and arrange terms.
+
+    Cordially,
+
+    EDWARD STILLMAN.
+
+
+"At last," flashed through Claire's mind, "he's going in for something
+worth while."
+
+This time she decided promptly. Over the telephone she made an
+appointment with Stillman, in his apartments, for beginning work on the
+second Wednesday in January.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Shortly after the first of the year Claire received her initial summons
+from Lily Condor--they were to appear at a concert in the Colonial
+Ballroom of the St. Francis for the Belgian relief. Mrs. Condor had
+intimated that the affair was to be smart, and so it proved. It was set
+at a very late and very fashionable hour, and all through the program
+groups of torpid, though rather audible, diners kept drifting in. Claire
+was not slow to discover that Lily Condor was first on the bill, and she
+remembered reading somewhere in a newspaper that among professionals the
+first and last place were always loathsome positions. Judging from the
+noise and confusion that accompanied their efforts, Claire could well
+understand why this was so, and she expected to find Lily Condor
+resentful. But to her surprise Mrs. Condor merely shrugged her shoulders
+and said:
+
+"What difference does it make? They don't come to listen, anyway.
+Besides, I always open the bill. I like to get it over quickly."
+
+But Claire had reason to suspect, as she followed the remainder of a
+very excellent program, that the choice of position did not rest with
+Mrs. Condor. Claire began to wonder how much money Mrs. Condor received
+for an effort like this. And she became more puzzled as she gathered
+from the conversation of the other artists about her that the talent had
+been furnished gratuitously.
+
+"I understand," she heard a woman in front of her whisper to her
+companion, "that Devincenzi, the 'cellist, is the only one in the crowd
+who is getting a red cent. But he has a rule, you know--or is it a
+contract? I'm sure I don't know. At any rate, they say that the
+Ffinch-Browns donated his fee.... The Ffinch-Browns? Don't you know
+them?... See, there they are ... over there by the Tom Forsythes. She
+has on turquoise pendant earrings.... Oh, they're ever so charitable!
+But they do say that she is something of a...."
+
+Claire lost the remainder of this stage whisper in a rather tremulous
+anxiety to catch a glimpse of her aunt before she moved. Claire had to
+acknowledge that at a distance her aunt gave a wonderful illusion of
+arrested youth as she stood with one hand grasping the collar of her
+gorgeous mandarin coat. But Claire was more interested in the turquoise
+pendants than in her aunt. She had never seen the jewels before, but she
+had heard about them almost from the time she was able to lisp.
+
+"They're mine," Mrs. Robson had repeated to Claire again and again. "My
+father bought them for me when I was sixteen years old. I remember the
+day distinctly, and how my mother said: 'Don't you think, John, that
+Emily is a little young for anything like this? I'll keep them for her
+until she is twenty.' I nearly cried myself sick, but of course mother
+was right, _then_.... But like everything else, I never got my hands on
+them again. And what is more, Julia Carrol Ffinch-Brown knows that they
+are mine as well as anybody, because she stood right alongside of me
+when I handed them over to mother. Not that I care.... It's the
+principle of the thing!"
+
+Claire felt disappointed in the pendants. They seemed so
+insignificant--to fall very far short of her mother's passionate
+description of them, and she began to wonder which was the more
+pathetic, Mrs. Robson's exaggerated notion of their worth or the
+pettiness that gave Aunt Julia the tenacity to hold fast to such trivial
+baubles.
+
+Ned Stillman was in the audience, also. Claire saw him sitting off at
+the side. Indeed, she spotted him on the very moment of her entrance
+upon the stage. She had been nervous until his friendly smile warmed her
+into easy confidence; and though, while she played, her back had been
+toward him, she felt the glow of his sympathy. As Lily Condor and she
+swept back upon the stage for their rather perfunctory applause, and
+still more perfunctory bouquets provided by the committee, Claire could
+see him gently tapping his hands in her direction, and she was surprised
+when the usher handed her a bouquet of dazzling orchids.
+
+"They must be for you," Claire said, innocently enough, to Mrs. Condor.
+"I don't find any name on them."
+
+"That shows that you've got a discreet admirer, at any rate," Lily
+Condor returned with that bantering sneer which Claire was just
+beginning to notice. And the thought struck her at once that Stillman
+had sent the flowers. She was pleased, but also a little annoyed to
+think he had so deliberately ignored Mrs. Condor.
+
+The Flints were there, too; Flint looked uncomfortable and warm in his
+scant full-dress suit and his wife frankly ridiculous in a low-cut gown
+that exhibited every angle of a hopelessly scrawny neck. Claire did not
+see them until she was leaving the stage, and she smiled as she saw
+Flint lean over and pick up the opera-glasses from his wife's lap. But
+this was not all. In a far corner sat Miss Munch and her cousin, Mrs.
+Richards, their ferret eyes darting busily about and their tongues
+clicking even more rapidly. Doubtless Flint had invested in a number of
+tickets at the office for business reasons and passed them around for
+any of the office force who felt a desire to see society at close range.
+
+Claire had not meant to stay beyond one or two numbers following her own
+appearance, but she kept yielding to Mrs. Condor's insistent suggestions
+that she "stay for just one more," until she discovered, to her dismay,
+that it was past midnight. The last artists were taking their places
+upon the stage. Claire resigned herself to the inevitable and sat out
+the remainder of the performance. She was making a quick exit into the
+dressing-room when she came face to face with her aunt. Mrs.
+Ffinch-Brown betrayed her confusion by the merest lift of the eyebrows,
+and she stepped back as if to get a clearer view of her niece, as she
+said with an air of polite surprise:
+
+"You--_here_?"
+
+Claire carried her head confidently. "I was on the program," she
+returned, consciously eying the turquoise pendants.
+
+Mrs. Ffinch-Brown rested a closed fan against her left ear as if to
+screen at least one of the earrings from Claire's frank stare. "Oh, how
+interesting! I must have missed you--I came in late. It's rather odd. I
+thought I knew everybody on the program.... I helped arrange it."
+
+"Well," Claire smiled, "I wasn't what you would call one of the
+head-liners. I played Mrs. Condor's accompaniments."
+
+"That accounts for it ... my not knowing, I mean. I dare say your mother
+is better, otherwise you wouldn't be here."
+
+Claire met her aunt's thrust calmly. "No, mother is worse, if anything.
+As a matter of fact, I'm here...."
+
+She broke off abruptly, realizing suddenly that she had left her orchids
+behind. She turned to discover Stillman making his leisurely way toward
+her. He had the orchids in his hand.
+
+"My dear Miss Robson," he said, gently, "Mrs. Condor came very near
+appropriating your flowers."
+
+She could feel the color rising to her forehead. "I see you came to my
+rescue again," she said, simply, taking them from him. "I think you know
+Mr. Stillman, Aunt Julia."
+
+Mrs. Ffinch-Brown forced a too-sweet smile as she gave Stillman a nod of
+recognition. "Fancy any girl forgetting so much gorgeousness!" she
+exclaimed with an attempt at lightness, but Claire caught the covert
+rancor in her voice, and as her aunt made a movement of escape she put
+out a restraining hand and said:
+
+"I wanted you to know, Aunt Julia, that I'm here merely as a matter of
+business. Mrs. Condor has hired me to play her accompaniments."
+
+Mrs. Ffinch-Brown shook off Claire impatiently. "_Hired_ you!" she
+sneered. "How extraordinary!"
+
+And with that she swept past, giving Stillman a glance of farewell.
+
+Claire turned to Stillman. "What must you think of me? Leaving my
+flowers behind. Confess--it was you who sent them.... I was in such a
+rush to get away, though. I shouldn't have stayed so long. My mother is
+alone.... Of course there are neighbors just below and they will look in
+on her, but just the same...."
+
+His smile reassured her. "Are you forgetting about to-morrow?" he asked.
+"Remember we are to begin business promptly at two o'clock. I hired a
+typewriting-machine yesterday. I'm really thrilled at the idea of--of
+going into business."
+
+She looked at him steadily as she gave him her hand: "My dear Mr.
+Stillman," she said, quite frankly, "you are very kind."
+
+He answered by pressing her hand warmly and she covered her face with
+the purple orchids. They were interrupted by Lily Condor sweeping rather
+arrogantly toward them.
+
+"Haven't you gone yet?" she asked Claire. "I thought you were in a
+hurry! I hope you've persuaded Ned to get us a taxi. I hate street-cars
+at this hour." And in answer to Claire's embarrassed protest that she
+had never given such a thing a thought, Mrs. Condor finished: "Well,
+I've given it a thought, and don't you forget it. Come, Ned, is it a
+go?"
+
+Claire fancied that a flicker of annoyance passed over Stillman's face
+as he answered, with a dry laugh:
+
+"You might at least have given me time to prove my gallantry."
+
+"I'm not taking any chances," was the prompt reply.
+
+Claire turned away. What had contrived to give Mrs. Condor this
+disagreeable air of assurance toward Ned Stillman, she found herself
+wondering. It had not been apparent at the Condor-Stillman musicale....
+
+She arrived home dismayed to find the front room illuminated, but the
+rattle of the departing taxi brought Mrs. Finnegan to the top of the
+stairs with a laughing apology.
+
+"I just looked in to see how your mother was, Miss Claire, and I found a
+book on the front-room table"--Mrs. Finnegan held up Ouida's
+_Moths_--"and I got so interested in it that I just naturally forgot to
+go home. Finnegan's out, anyway. I was telling him about your good
+fortune. And all he said was: 'Well, it beats me how an old crow like
+Mrs. Condor gets paid for singing. I remember five years ago, when she
+wasn't so uppish, we had her for a benefit performance of the Native
+Sons, and she didn't get paid then. Her singing may be over my head.
+Anyway, it didn't get to my ears.' But Finnegan is always like that. He
+just likes to contradict. I got back at him. I said, 'Well, if she can
+afford to pay Miss Claire forty a month for playing the piano, she must
+get a good piece of money every time she opens her mouth.' ...Mercy,
+look at the orchids! Well, you must have had a swell time. I'll bet you
+wouldn't like to tell who sent them.... There wasn't any card? That's
+not saying you don't know, Miss Claire.... I hope you won't think I'm a
+meddler, but I'm an older woman and.... Well, just you keep a sharp eye
+on the feller that sends you orchids, Miss Claire."
+
+She went down-stairs without further ado. Claire put the orchids in
+water and set them on a sill near an open window. She did not feel in
+the least resentful of Mrs. Finnegan's warnings. She was too confident
+to be anything but faintly amused at her neighbor's middle-class
+anxiety. But Finnegan's skepticism concerning Mrs. Condor annoyed her
+and she remembered the disagreeable words of her aunt:
+
+"_Hired_ you? How extraordinary!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Two o'clock _sharp_!" The memory of Stillman's air of delicate banter
+as he emphasized the hour for beginning his business venture struck
+Claire ironically the more she pondered his words. She had a feeling
+that there was something farcical in the prospect, and yet there seemed
+nothing to do but to go through with the preliminaries. She presented
+herself, therefore, at the appointed time at the Stanford Court
+apartments.
+
+She found Stillman quite alone, his hands blue-black with the smudge
+from a refractory typewriter ribbon which he was vainly endeavoring to
+adjust. It took some time for him to get his hands clean again, and
+Claire sharpened her pencils while she waited. But there really proved
+to be nothing to do.
+
+"I'm all up in the air over this bean business," Stillman confessed,
+nonchalantly. "The government, you know ... they're taking over all that
+sort of thing ... regulating food and prices. Of course, in that
+case...."
+
+Claire felt an enormous and illogical relief. "Then you really won't
+need me," she ventured.
+
+"Oh, quite the contrary.... I have a certain amount of business, of a
+sort. And I'm tired of dropping checks along the trail of public
+stenographers.... Suppose we talk terms. We haven't fixed on any salary,
+yet."
+
+Claire felt a rising impatience. His subterfuge seemed too childish and
+obvious. "That will depend on how much of my time you expect, Mr.
+Stillman."
+
+"Well, three times a week, anyway ... to start with. Say Mondays,
+Wednesdays, and Fridays from two to five.... I was thinking that
+something in the neighborhood of fifteen dollars a week would be fair."
+
+He turned a very frank gaze in her direction and she quizzically
+returned his glance.
+
+"That's rather ridiculous, don't you think?" she said, trying to
+disguise her furtive annoyance. "You can hire a substitute through any
+typewriting agency on the basis of three dollars a day."
+
+"Yes, and I can buy two cigars for a nickel, but I shouldn't want to
+smoke them."
+
+She clicked the keys of her machine idly. "That is hardly a fair
+comparison. You can get any number of competent girls for three
+dollars."
+
+He rested his chin on his upturned palm. "But, my dear Miss Robson, I
+happen to want _you_."
+
+She thought of any number of cheap, obvious retorts that might have been
+flung back at his straightforward admission, but instead she said, with
+equal frankness:
+
+"That's just what I don't understand."
+
+He threw her a puzzled look and the usual placid light in his eyes
+quickened to resentful impatience.
+
+"Is that a necessary part of the contract, Miss Robson?"
+
+She caught her breath. His tone of annoyance was sharp and unexpected.
+There was a suggestion of Flint's masculine arrogance in his voice. She
+felt how absurd was her cross-examination of him, of how absurd, under
+the circumstances, would have been her cross-examination of anybody
+ready and willing to give her work to do and an ample wage in the
+bargain, and yet, for all the force of his reply, she knew it to be a
+well-bred if not a deliberate evasion.
+
+"You mean it is none of my business, don't you?" she contrived to laugh
+back at him.
+
+His reply was a further surprise. "Yes, precisely," he said, with an
+ominous thinning of the lips.
+
+She rose instinctively to meet this thrust and she was conscious that
+even Flint had never managed so to disturb her. She glanced about
+hastily as if measuring the room in a swift impulse toward escape.
+Stillman had chosen the dining-room for a temporary office, and upon the
+polished surface of the antique walnut table the typewriter struck an
+incongruous note; indeed, it was all incongruous, particularly Stillman
+and his assumed business airs. Yes, it was absurd for her to either
+cross-examine or protest, but it was equally absurd for him to pay her
+such an outlandish sum for nine hours a week.
+
+"He's doing it for me," she thought, not without a sense of triumph.
+Then, turning to him, she said, a bit awkwardly:
+
+"I guess there isn't any use to dissuade you, Mr. Stillman. If you say
+fifteen dollars a week, I sha'n't argue with you."
+
+He smiled back at her, all his former suavity regained. She slid into
+her seat again. Her mind was recalling vividly the one other time in her
+life when she had grappled vigorously with the masculine spirit of
+domination, and come away victorious. This time she had been defeated
+and she had impulses toward relief and fear. She looked up suddenly and
+trapped a solicitous glance from Stillman that rather annoyed her. And
+it struck her, as she mentally compared Stillman with most of the men of
+her acquaintance, how far he could have loomed above them if he had had
+the will for such a performance. As it was he fell somewhat beneath them
+in a curious, indefinable way. Had he been too finely tempered by
+circumstances or had the flame of life lacked the proper heat for fusing
+his virtues effectively? For the moment she found Flint's forthright
+insolence more tolerable than Stillman's sterile deference. Suddenly she
+began to think of home, not with any sense of security, but as something
+unpleasant, dark, disquieting....
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Toward six o'clock one afternoon in late February Ned Stillman, making
+his way from the business district at California and Montgomery Streets
+toward his club, suddenly remembered a forgotten luncheon engagement for
+that day with Lily Condor.
+
+"Well," he muttered at once, "I'm in for it now! I guess I might as well
+swing out and see her and get the thing over with."
+
+It was curious of late how often he was given to muttering. Previously,
+petty annoyances had not moved him to these half-audible and solitary
+comments which he had always found contemptuously amusing in others. He
+wondered whether this new trick was the result of his business ventures,
+his sly charities, or his approach toward the suggestive age of forty.
+Associating the name of Lily Condor with his covert charities, he was
+almost persuaded that they lay back of this preposterous habit. And the
+more he thought about it the more he muttered and became convinced that
+Lily Condor was usually the topic of these vocal self-communings.
+
+Ned Stillman had always prided himself upon his sense of personal
+freedom concerning the trivial circumstances of life. Of course, like
+any man of sensibility, he was bound by the chains that deeper impulses
+forge, but he had never been hampered by any restraints directed at his
+ordinary uprisings and downsittings. In short, he had answered the beck
+and nod of no man, much less a woman, and he was not finding Lily
+Condor's growing presumptions along this line altogether agreeable.
+
+He would not have minded so much if there was any personal gratification
+in yielding to the lady's whip-hand commands. There are certain delights
+in self-surrender which give a zest to slavery, but there is no joy in
+being held a hostage. Looking back, Stillman marveled at the
+indiscretion he had committed when he handed over not only his reserve,
+but Claire Robson's reputation into the safekeeping of Lily Condor. Had
+he ever had the simplicity to imagine that a woman of Mrs. Condor's
+stamp would constitute herself a safe-deposit vault for hoarding secrets
+without exacting a price? Well, perhaps he had expected to pay, but a
+little less publicly. He had not looked to have the lady in question
+ring every coin audibly in full view and hearing of the entire
+market-place, and yet, if his experience had stood him in good stead, he
+must have known that this was precisely what she would do. Stillman's
+hidden gratitude, his private beneficences, did not serve her purpose,
+but the spectacle of him in the rôle of her debtor was a sight that went
+a long way to establishing a social credit impoverished by no end of
+false ventures.
+
+Her command for him to take her to luncheon--and it had been a command,
+however suavely she had managed to veil it--bore also the stamp of
+urgency. Usually she was content to lay all her positive requests to the
+charge of mere caprice, but on this occasion she took the trouble to
+intimate that there was a particular reason for wanting to see him. It
+did not take him long to conclude that this particular reason had to do
+with Claire Robson. That was why he yielded with a better grace than he
+had been giving to his troublesome friend's disagreeable pressure.
+
+Stillman knew that while Lily Condor was not precisely jealous of the
+younger woman, she was distinctly envious--with the impersonal but acrid
+envy of middle age for youth. The episode of the orchids still rankled.
+He had to admit that in this instance his course had been tactless, but
+he had ignored Mrs. Condor as a challenge to the presumption which he
+had already begun to sense. She, while seeming definitely to evade the
+real issue, had answered the challenge and he had paid for his temerity
+a hundredfold. She had reminded him again and again in deft but none the
+less positive terms that she was keeping a finger on the mainspring of
+any advantage that came her way. Sometimes Stillman wondered whether she
+would really be cattish enough to betray his confidence and bring Claire
+Robson crashing down under the weight of the questionable position into
+which his indiscretion had forced her. Would she really have the face to
+publish abroad the pregnant fact that Ned Stillman was providing what
+she had been pleased to designate as a meal-ticket for a young woman in
+difficulty? For himself he cared little, except that he always shrank
+instinctively from appearing ridiculous.
+
+He had been thinking a great deal of late as to the best course to
+pursue in ridding himself and Claire of this menacing incubus. He had a
+feeling that Claire, having exhausted the novelties of her position as
+accompanist to Lily Condor, was beginning to find the affair irksome.
+
+The business venture had progressed in quite another direction from his
+original intention. Suddenly, without knowing how it had all come about,
+he found his plans clearly defined. The government needed him. Somehow,
+it had never occurred to him that he could be of service at a point so
+far from the center of war activities. He had been a good deal of an
+idler, it was true, but the seeds of achievement were merely lying in
+fallow soil.
+
+At first, he had been stung into action more by Claire's accusing
+attitude than anything else. She used to come every other afternoon at
+the appointed time and almost challenge him by her reproachful silence
+to do something, if only to provide her with an illusion. It was as if
+she said:
+
+"See, I have given in to you. I know that you are doing this for me, and
+I am deeply grateful. But won't you please make the situation a little
+less transparent? Won't you at least justify me in the eyes of those who
+are watching our little performance?..."
+
+It had all ended by his offering his services to the Food
+Administration. He knew something of his father's business. He felt that
+he had a fair knowledge of beans, and he could learn more. He merely
+asked a trial, and it surprised him to find what a sense of humility
+suddenly possessed him. He was really overjoyed when a place was assured
+him. But he had to admit that his acceptance was not accorded any great
+enthusiasm. The newspapers mentioned it in a scant paragraph that was
+not even given a prominent place. He had received greater recognition
+for a brilliant play upon the golf-links! Well, in such stirring times
+he was nobody. He did not complain, even to himself, but the knowledge
+subconsciously rankled.
+
+He hired an office down-town, joined the Commercial Club, religiously
+attended every meeting that had to do with food conservation, hunted
+out, absorbed, appropriated all the economic secrets that served his
+purpose.... Suddenly he found himself engrossed, enthusiastic, _busy_!
+Finally Claire said to him one day:
+
+"Don't you think I ought to come to you every afternoon?"
+
+"If you can arrange it," he almost snapped back at her.
+
+She did arrange it, how he took no pains to inquire, and a little later
+she said again:
+
+"You ought to have some one here all day. I guess you will have to look
+for another stenographer."
+
+He remembered how menacingly he had darted at her. She was dressed for
+the street, on her way home, and she had halted at the door.
+
+"Do you want to desert the work that you've inspired?" he demanded.
+
+"Inspired?... By _me_?" Her voice took on a note of triumph.
+
+"You didn't fancy that _I_ inspired it, did you?" he sneered at her.
+
+His vehemence confused her. "I hadn't thought.... Really, you know....
+Well, as you say.... But, of course, it is absurd when you can get any
+number of girls to...."
+
+"But suppose I want _you_?" he demanded of her for a second time.
+
+She left without further reply.
+
+When she was gone he found himself in a nasty panic. It was as if the
+lady who had called him to her lists had suddenly decided upon a new
+defender.
+
+"Is she tired of it all ... or is there some one else? Can it be
+possible that Flint...."
+
+He had stopped short, amazed to find his mind descending to such a
+vulgar level. What had come over him? And he began to fancy things as
+they once had been--empty, purposeless days, and nights that found him
+too bored to even sleep. It seemed incredible that he could go back to
+them again. What lay at the bottom of his sudden deep-breathed
+satisfaction with life? For an instant, the truth which he had kept at
+bay with his old trick of evasion swept toward him.
+
+"No ... no," he muttered. "Oh no!... That would be too absurd!"
+
+But when he had gone to the mirror to brush his hair before venturing on
+the street he found thick beads of perspiration on his forehead and his
+hand shook as he lifted the comb.
+
+The next day he told Claire that in the future her salary would be
+twenty dollars a week. He stood expecting her to rail against the
+increase, to try to put him to rout by explaining that she had received
+less for a full day's work at Flint's. But to his surprise she thanked
+him and went on with her work.
+
+It was shortly after this that he began to haunt the various
+performances in which Lily Condor and Claire appeared. He always
+contrived to slip in during the first number, which as a rule happened
+to be Mrs. Condor's offering, and he sat in a far corner where nobody
+but that lady could have chanced upon him. But he never knew her to fail
+in locating him, or to miss the opportunity to sit out the remainder of
+the program at his side, or to suggest crab-legs Louis at Tait's,
+particularly if Claire were determined upon an early leave-taking. The
+effect of all this was not lost upon the general public, and it was not
+long before men of Stillman's acquaintance used to remark facetiously to
+him over the lunch-table:
+
+"What's new in beans to-day?... Are _reds_ still a favorite?"
+
+Stillman would throw back an equally cryptic answer, thinking as he did
+so:
+
+"What a wigging I must be getting over the teacups! I guess I'll cut it
+all out in the future."
+
+But he usually went no farther than his impulsive resolves.
+
+Sometimes he wondered what Claire thought of his faithful appearance.
+Did she fancy that he came to bask in the smiling impertinences of Lily
+Condor?
+
+As he made his way to a street-car on this vivid February afternoon, he
+called to mind that of late Claire had been bringing a fagged look to
+her daily tasks. He hoped again that Mrs. Condor's desire to see him had
+to do with Claire--more particularly with her dismissal as accompanist.
+Miss Menzies had quite recovered and there was really no reason for
+Claire to continue in her service. It struck him as he pondered all
+these matters how strange it was to find him concerned about these
+feminine adjustments--he who had always stared down upon trivial
+circumstances with cold scorn.
+
+He arrived at Lily Condor's apartments almost upon the lady's heels. Her
+hat was still ornamenting the center-table and her wrap lay upon a
+wicker rocker, where, with a quick movement of irritation, it had been
+cast aside.
+
+Her greeting was not reassuring. "Oh...." she began coldly. "Isn't this
+rather late for lunch?"
+
+"I'm really very sorry," Stillman returned as he took a chair, "but to
+be frank, I quite forgot about you."
+
+"Well," she tried to laugh back at him, "there isn't any virtue as
+disagreeable as the truth. I expected you would at least attempt to be
+polite enough to lie."
+
+"I hope you were not too greatly inconvenienced," he said, in a
+deliberate attempt to ignore her irritation.
+
+"I waited two hours, if that is what you mean. But then, _my_ time isn't
+particularly valuable."
+
+He rose suddenly. "I've told you that I was sorry," he began coldly,
+reaching for his hat. "But evidently you are determined to be
+disagreeable. I fancied you wanted to see me about something urgent, so
+I came almost as soon as I remembered."
+
+She snatched the discarded wrap from its place on the wicker rocker as
+she glared at him. "You're in something of a hurry, it seems.... Well, I
+sha'n't detain you. The truth is there's a pretty kettle of fish stewed
+up over this young woman, Claire Robson.... I want you to tell her that
+she can't play at the Café Chantant next Friday night."
+
+"Want _me_ to tell her? I don't see where I come in.... Why don't you
+tell her yourself?"
+
+"Because I don't choose to.... Besides, I think you might do it a little
+more delicately. I can't tell her brutally that she isn't wanted."
+
+"Isn't wanted? Why, what do you mean?"
+
+"The committee informs me that she isn't the sort of person they are
+accustomed to have featured in their entertainments. It seems that Mrs.
+Flint...."
+
+"Mrs. Sawyer Flint?"
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"What is her objection?"
+
+"Do you really want me to tell you?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It appears that some time last fall Miss Robson tried to get her
+husband into a compromising position. She came over to the house one
+night when Mrs. Flint was away. Flint promptly ordered her out. It seems
+she went ... to be quite frank ... with _you_. And what is more,
+she...."
+
+"It isn't necessary for you to go any farther. Tell me, do you mean to
+say that you believe this thing? Didn't you lift a hand to defend her?"
+
+Lily Condor narrowed her eyes. "Oh, come now, Ned Stillman, don't be a
+fool! You know as well as I do that I'm hanging on to my own reputation
+by my finger-nails. I'm not taking any chances. As to whether it is so
+... well, if I were to tell the committee everything I know it wouldn't
+help her cause any. I could wreck her reputation like that," she snapped
+her fingers, "with one solitary fact. If she hasn't wrecked it already
+with her senseless chatter.... Only last week her aunt, Mrs.
+Ffinch-Brown, said to me: 'So you're hiring my niece! I must say that is
+handsome of you!' You were sitting talking to Claire and she looked
+deliberately at you when she said it. Remember how I warned you, last
+December. I told you then that the secret of a woman's meal-ticket was
+never hidden very long."
+
+During this speech Mrs. Condor's voice had dropped from its original
+tone of petty rancor to one of petulant self-justification. Stillman
+knew at once that her ill-temper had caught her off-guard and she was
+already trying to crawl slowly back into his favor. She had meant, no
+doubt, to soften her news over a glass or two of chilled white wine
+which she had counted on sipping during the noon hour. She might even
+then have gone farther and decided to cast her fortunes with Stillman
+and Claire if she had seen that her advantage lay in that direction. He
+was not sure but that she still had some such notion in her mind. But he
+felt suddenly sick of her past all hope of compromise, and he was
+determined to be rid of her once and for all.
+
+"No doubt," he said, frigidly, "you will be glad to be relieved of Miss
+Robson's presence permanently. I take it that you don't consider her
+association exactly ... well ... shall we say discreet?"
+
+Her eyes took on a yellow tinge as she faced him. She must have sensed
+the finality of his tone, the well-bred insolence that his query
+suggested.
+
+"Discreet?" she echoed. "Well, I wouldn't say that that was quite what I
+meant. Desirable--that would be better. I don't find her association
+desirable.... I don't _want_ her, in other words."
+
+He had never been so angry in his life. Had she been a man he would have
+struck her. He felt himself choking. "My dear Mrs. Condor," he warned,
+"will you be good enough to take a little more respectful tone when you
+speak of Miss Robson?"
+
+"Oh, indeed! And just what are your rights in the matter? You're not her
+brother ... you're surely not her husband. And I didn't know that it was
+the fashion for a...." His look stopped her. She trembled a moment,
+tossed back her head, and finished, defiantly, "Yes, that is what I want
+to know, what _are_ your rights?"
+
+He took a step toward her. Instinctively she retreated.
+
+"A woman like you wouldn't understand even if I were to tell you," he
+flung at her.
+
+She covered her face with both hands.
+
+He left the room.
+
+He himself was trembling as he reached the street--trembling for the
+first time in years. As a child he had been given to these fits of
+emotional tremors, but he had long since lost the faculty for recording
+physically his intense moments. Or had he lost the faculty for the
+intense moments themselves, he found himself wondering, as he walked
+rapidly toward his home. The evening was warm with the perfume of a bit
+of truant summer that had somehow escaped before its time to hearten a
+winter-weary world against the bitter assaults of March. Birds of
+passage sang among the hedges, the sun still cast a faint greenish glow
+in the extreme west.
+
+His first thought was of the cowering woman he had just left. He had
+meant to lash her keenly with his verbal whipcords, but he had not
+expected to find her quite so sensitive to his cutting scorn. He
+remembered the gesture with which she had lifted her hand as if to
+screen herself from his insults. There was a whole life of futile
+compromise in just the manner of that gesture, a growing helplessness to
+give straightforward thrusts, a pitiful admission of defeat. But he knew
+that this surrender was temporary--a quick lifting of the mask under a
+relentless pressure. To-morrow, in an hour, in ten minutes, Lily Condor
+would be her dangerous self again, lashed into the fury of a woman
+scorned. For a moment he did not know whether to be relieved or dismayed
+at the prospect of Mrs. Condor for an enemy. How much would she really
+dare?
+
+He thought with a lowering anger of Flint. He had been ready to concede
+everything but this former friend in the rôle of a cheap and nasty
+gossip. No--gossip was a pale, sickly term. Flint was a malignant toad,
+a nauseous mud-slinger, a deliberate liar. He had heard of men who had
+justified themselves with vile tales to their insipid, disgustingly
+virtuous wives, but he had not counted such among his acquaintances. By
+the side of Flint, Lily Condor loomed a very paragon of the social
+amenities.
+
+Stillman was conscious that his mental process was keyed to the highest
+pitch of melodrama. It was not usual for him to indulge in mental abuse.
+He had never quite understood the dark and moving processes of red-eyed
+anger. There had been something absurd in the theatrical hauteur of his
+manner in this last scene with Mrs. Condor--that is, if it were measured
+by his own standards. His growing detachments from life had claimed him
+almost to the point of complete indifference. But now, suddenly, as if
+Fate had dealt him an insulting blow upon the face with her bare palm,
+he felt not only rage, but a sense of its futility, its impotence.
+
+"Flint!" he thought again. And immediately he spewed forth the memory of
+this man in a flood of indiscriminate epithets.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later, in the refuge of his own four walls and under the brooding solace
+of an after-dinner cigar, he lost some of the intensiveness of his
+former humor. But the force of the vehemence which had shaken him filled
+him with much wonder and some apprehension. He was too much a man of
+experience to deny questions when they were put to him squarely by
+circumstances.
+
+"You're not her brother ... you're surely not her husband. And I didn't
+know it was the fashion for a...."
+
+Lily Condor's clipped question struck him squarely now. Just what were
+his expectations concerning Claire Robson? The thought turned him cold.
+Essentially he was of Puritan mold, but he had always had a theory that
+love of illicit pleasures must have been uncommonly strong in a people
+who found it necessary to fight the flesh so uncompromisingly. Battling
+with the elements upon the bleak shores of New England contributed, no
+doubt, to the gray and chastened spirits that these grim folks had won
+for themselves; spirits that colored and sometimes seeded swiftly under
+the softer skies of California. San Francisco was full of these forced
+blooms consumed and withered by the sudden heat of a free and
+traditionless life. He knew scores of old-timers--his father's
+friends--who had been gloriously wrecked by the passion with which they
+met freedom's kiss. They had pursued pleasure with an energy overtrained
+in wrestling with the devil and had paid the penalty of all ardent souls
+lacking the prudence of weakness. There was at once something fine and
+unlawful about the spirit of adventure: it implied courage, impatience
+of restraint, wilfulness--in short, all the virtues and vices of
+strength. He had felt at times the heritage of this strength, shorn of
+its power by the softness of a wilderness that had been wooed instead
+of conquered. His forefathers had found California a waiting, gracious
+bride, but there had been almost a suggestion of the courtezan in the
+lavishness of this land's response to the caresses of the invaders.
+
+There was something fantastic in the memory of his father, fresh from
+the austere dawns of the little fishing village of Gloucester,
+transplanted suddenly to the wine-red sunsets of the Golden Gate. He
+felt that his father must have had the courage for substance-wasting
+without the temptation. Most men in those early days had plunged unyoked
+into the race--Ezra Stillman brought his bride, and therefore his
+household goods, with him, and unconsciously custom drew its restraining
+rein tight. Ezra Stillman came from a long line of salt-seasoned
+tempters of the sea; their virtues had been rugged and their vices
+equally robust; sin with them had been gaunt, sinewy, unlovely; there
+was nothing insinuating and soft about the lure of pleasure in that
+silver-nooned environment. Ezra had been the first of this long line to
+turn his back upon the sea, and the land had rewarded him lavishly as if
+determined to make his capture complete. Yet, he was not landsman enough
+to wrest a living direct from the soil; instead, he set up his booth in
+the market-place of the town and tr
+
+
+
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