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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59565 ***
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      https://archive.org/details/mebookofremembra00wataiala
+
+
+
+
+
+ME
+
+A Book of Remembrance
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+The Century Co.
+1915
+
+Copyright, 1915, by
+The Century Co.
+
+Published, August, 1915
+
+
+
+
+To
+"LOLLY" my friend who was
+and to JEAN my friend who is
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The writing of this book seems to me one of the most astounding
+literary feats I have ever known. It is one hundred thousand words
+long; it was started on Thanksgiving day and finished before New
+Year's. The actual writing occupied two weeks, the revision another
+two. The reason for this amazing celerity lies in the fact that it is
+pure reporting; the author has not branched out into any byways of
+style, but has merely told in the simplest language possible what she
+actually remembered. The circumstances in which the book was written
+are interesting.
+
+The author had been wrenched from her feverishly busy life to undergo
+an operation in a hospital; four days later she began the writing of
+this book. I will quote her own words:
+
+"It seems to me as though these two weeks I have just passed in the
+hospital have been the first time in which I have had a chance to think
+in thirteen years. As I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling,
+the events of my girlhood came before me, rushed back with such
+overwhelming vividness that I picked up a pencil and began to write."
+
+I cannot imagine just what the general reader's attitude toward this
+work will be. I myself, reading it in the light of the knowledge
+I possess of the life of the author, look upon it not only as an
+intensely interesting human document, but as a suggestive sociological
+study. It is an illuminative picture of what may befall a working-girl
+who, at the age of seventeen, gaily ventures forth to conquer life with
+ten dollars in her pocket. You may object that many of her difficulties
+were brought about through her own initiative; that she ran to meet
+them open armed. This is, no doubt, true, but you must consider her
+ignorance and her temperament. It was her naïveté and generosity
+and kindly impulses that left her unarmed. She was unique in many
+respects--in her peculiar heredity, her extreme ability, and her total
+unacquaintedness with the world.
+
+I have known the author for a number of years, and I know that the
+main outline of everything she says is true, though the names of
+people and places have necessarily been changed in order to hide their
+identity. The author has written a number of books that have had a wide
+circulation. The aspirations of the little girl of seventeen have been
+realized!
+
+JEAN WEBSTER.
+
+
+
+
+ME
+
+
+It was a cold, blizzardy day in the month of March when I left Quebec,
+and my weeping, shivering relatives made an anxious, melancholy group
+about my departing train. I myself cried a bit, with my face pressed
+against the window; but I was seventeen, my heart was light, and I had
+not been happy at home.
+
+My father was an artist, and we were very poor. My mother had been
+a tight-rope dancer in her early youth. She was an excitable,
+temperamental creature from whose life all romance had been squeezed by
+the torturing experience of bearing sixteen children. Moreover, she was
+a native of a far-distant land, and I do not think she ever got over
+the feeling of being a stranger in Canada.
+
+Time was when my father, a young and ardent adventurer (an
+English-Irishman) had wandered far and wide over the face of the earth.
+The son of rich parents, he had sojourned in China and Japan and India
+in the days when few white men ventured into the Orient. But that was
+long ago.
+
+This story is frankly of myself, and I mention these few facts merely
+in the possibility of their proving of some psychological interest
+later; also they may explain why it was possible for a parent to allow
+a young girl of seventeen to leave her home with exactly ten dollars
+in her purse (I do not think my father knew just how much money I did
+have) to start upon a voyage to the West Indies!
+
+In any event, the fact remains that I had overruled my father's weak
+and absentminded objections and my mother's exclamatory ones, and I had
+accepted a position in Jamaica, West Indies, to work for a little local
+newspaper called _The Lantern_.
+
+It all came about through my having written at the age of sixteen a
+crude, but exciting, story which a kindly friend, the editor of a
+Quebec weekly paper, actually accepted and published.
+
+I had always secretly believed there were the strains of genius
+somewhere hidden in me; I had always lived in a little dream world of
+my own, wherein, beautiful and courted, I moved among the elect of the
+earth. Now I had given vivid proof of some unusual power! I walked on
+air. The world was rose-colored; nay, it was golden.
+
+With my story in my hand, I went to the office of a family friend. I
+had expected to be smiled upon and approved, but also lectured and
+advised. My friend, however, regarded me speculatively.
+
+"I wonder," said he, "whether _you_ couldn't take the place of a
+girl out in Jamaica who is anxious to return to Canada, but is under
+contract to remain there for three years."
+
+The West Indies! I _had_ heard of the land somewhere, probably in my
+school geography. I think it was associated in my mind in some way with
+the fairy-stories I read. Nevertheless, with the alacrity and assurance
+of youth I cried out that _of course_ I would go.
+
+"It's a long way off," said my friend, dubiously, "and you are very
+young."
+
+I assured him earnestly that I should grow, and as for the distance, I
+airily dismissed that objection as something too trivial to consider.
+Was I not the daughter of a man who had been back and forth to China no
+fewer than eighteen times, and that during the perilous period of the
+Tai-ping Rebellion? Had not my father made journeys from the Orient in
+the old-fashioned sailing-vessels, being at sea a hundred-odd days at a
+time? What could not his daughter do?
+
+Whatever impression I made upon this agent of the West Indian newspaper
+must have been fairly good, for he said he would write immediately to
+Mr. Campbell, the owner of _The Lantern_, who, by the way, was also a
+Canadian, and recommend me.
+
+I am not much of a hand at keeping secrets, but I did not tell my
+parents. I had been studying shorthand for some time, and now I plunged
+into that harder than ever, for the position was one in which I could
+utilize stenography.
+
+It was less than two weeks later when our friend came to the house to
+report that the West Indian editor had cabled for me to be sent at once.
+
+I was the fifth girl in our family to leave home. I suppose my father
+and mother had become sadly accustomed to the departing of the older
+children to try their fortunes in more promising cities than Quebec;
+but I was the first to leave home for a land as distant as the West
+Indies, though two of my sisters had gone to the United States. Still,
+there remained a hungry, crushing brood of little ones younger than
+I. With what fierce joy did I not now look forward to getting away at
+last from that same noisy, tormenting brood, for whom it had been my
+particular and detested task to care! So my father and mother put no
+obstacle in the way of my going. I remember passionately threatening to
+"run away" if they did.
+
+My clothes were thick and woolen. I wore a red knitted toque, with a
+tassel that wagged against my cheek. My coat was rough and hopelessly
+Canadian. My dress a shapeless bag belted in at the waist. I was not
+beautiful to look at, but I had a bright, eager face, black and shining
+eyes, and black and shining hair. My cheeks were as red as a Canadian
+apple. I was a little thing, and, like my mother, foreign-looking. I
+think I had the most acute, inquiring, and eager mind of any girl of my
+age in the world.
+
+A man on the train who had promised my father to see me as far as
+my boat did so. When we arrived in New York he took me there in a
+carriage--the first carriage in which I had ever ridden in my life!
+
+I had a letter to the captain, in whose special charge I was to be,
+that my Jamaica employer had written. So I climbed on board the
+_Atlas_. It was about six in the morning, and there were not many
+people about--just a few sailors washing the decks. I saw, however, a
+round-faced man in a white cap, who smiled at me broadly. I decided
+that he was the captain. So I went up to him and presented my letter,
+addressing him as "Captain Hollowell." He held his sides and laughed
+at me, and another man--this one was young and blond and very
+good-looking; at least so he seemed to the eyes of seventeen--came over
+to inquire the cause of the merriment. Greatly to my mortification, I
+learned from the new arrival that the man I had spoken to was not the
+captain, but the cook. He himself was Mr. Marsden, the purser, and he
+was prepared to take care of me until Captain Hollowell arrived.
+
+The boat would not sail for two hours, so I told Mr. Marsden that I
+guessed I'd take a walk in New York. He advised me strenuously not to,
+saying that I might "get lost." I scorned his suggestion. What, _I_ get
+lost? I laughed at the idea. So I went for my "walk in New York."
+
+I kept to one street, the one at the end of which my boat lay. It was
+an ugly, dirty, noisy street,--noisy even at that early hour,--for
+horrible-looking trucks rattled over the cobblestoned road, and there
+were scores of people hurrying in every direction. Of the streets of
+New York I had heard strange, wonderful, and beautiful tales; but as
+I trotted along, I confess I was deeply disappointed and astonished.
+I think I was on Canal Street, or another of the streets of lower New
+York.
+
+I was not going to leave the United States, however, without dropping a
+bit of my ten dollars behind me. So I found a store, in which I bought
+some postcards, a lace collar, and some ribbon--pink. When I returned
+to the boat I possessed, instead of ten dollars, just seven. However,
+this seemed a considerable sum to me, and I assured myself that on the
+boat itself, of course, one could not spend money.
+
+I was standing by the rail watching the crowds on the wharf below.
+Every one on board was saying good-by to some one else, and people were
+waving and calling to one another. Everybody seemed happy and excited
+and gay. I felt suddenly very little and forlorn. I alone had no one to
+bid me good-by, to wave to me, and to bring me flowers. I deeply pitied
+myself, and I suppose my eyes were full of tears when I turned away
+from the rail as the boat pulled out.
+
+The blond young purser was watching me, and now he came up cheerfully
+and began to talk, pointing out things to me in the harbor as the boat
+moved along. He had such nice blue eyes and shining white teeth, and
+his smile was quite the most winning that I had ever seen. Moreover, he
+wore a most attractive uniform. I forgot my temporary woes. He brought
+me his "own special" deck chair,--at least he said it was his,--and
+soon I was comfortably ensconced in it, my feet wrapped about with a
+warm rug produced from somewhere--also his. I felt a sense of being
+under his personal charge. A good part of the morning he managed to
+remain near me, and when he did go off among the other passengers, he
+took the trouble to explain to me that it was to attend to his duties.
+
+I decided that he must have fallen in love with me. The thought
+delightfully warmed me. True, nobody had ever been in love with
+me before. I was the Ugly Duckling of an otherwise astonishingly
+good-looking family. Still, I was sure I recognized the true signs of
+love (had I not in dreams and fancies already been the heroine in a
+hundred princely romances?), and I forthwith began to wonder what life
+as the wife of a sailor might be like.
+
+At dinner-time, however, he delivered me, with one of his charming
+smiles, to a portly and important personage who proved to be the
+real captain. My place at table was to be at his right side. He was
+a red-faced, jovial, mighty-voiced Scotchman. He called me a "puir
+little lassie" as soon as he looked at me. He explained that my West
+Indian employer (also a Scotch-Canadian) was his particular friend,
+and that he had promised to take personal care of me upon the voyage.
+He hoped Marsden, in his place, had looked after me properly, as he had
+been especially assigned by him to do. I, with a stifling lump of hurt
+vanity and pride in my throat, admitted that he had.
+
+Then he was _not_ in love with me, after all!
+
+I felt cruelly unhappy as I stole out on deck after dinner. I disdained
+to look for that special deck chair my sailor had said I could have all
+for my own, and instead I sat down in the first one at hand.
+
+Ugh! how miserable I felt! I suppose, said I to myself, that it was I
+who was the one to fall in love, fool that I was! But I had no idea one
+felt so wretched even when in love. Besides, with all my warm Canadian
+clothes, I felt chilly and shivery.
+
+A hateful, sharp-nosed little man came poking around me. He looked at
+me with his eyes snapping, and coughed and rumbled in his throat as if
+getting ready to say something disagreeable to me. I turned my back
+toward him, pulled the rug about my feet, closed my eyes, and pretended
+to go to sleep. Then he said:
+
+"Say, excuse me, but you've got my chair and rug."
+
+I sat up. I was about to retort that "first come, first served" should
+be the rule, when out on deck came my friend Marsden. In a twinkling he
+appeared to take in the situation, for he strode quickly over to me,
+and, much to my indignation, took me by the arm and helped me to rise,
+saying that my chair was "over here."
+
+I was about to reply in as haughty and rebuking a tone as I could
+command when I was suddenly seized with a most frightful surge of
+nausea. With my good-looking blond sailor still holding me by the arm,
+and murmuring something that sounded both laughing and soothing, I fled
+over to the side of the boat.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+For four days I never left my state-room. "A sea-voyage is an inch of
+hell," says an old proverb of my mother's land, and to this proverb I
+most heartily assented.
+
+An American girl occupied the "bunk" over mine, and shared with me the
+diminutive state-room. She was even sicker than I, and being sisters in
+great misery, a sweet sympathy grew up between us, so that under her
+direction I chewed and sucked on the sourest of lemons, and under mine
+she swallowed lumps of ice, a suggestion made by my father.
+
+On the second day I had recovered somewhat, and so was able to wait
+upon and assist her a bit. Also, I found in her a patient and silent
+listener (Heaven knows she could not be otherwise, penned up as she was
+in that narrow bunk), and I told her all about the glorious plans and
+schemes I had made for my famous future; also I brought forth from my
+bag numerous poems and stories, and these I poured into her deaf ears
+in a voluble stream as she lay shaking and moaning in her bunk.
+
+It had been growing steadily warmer--so warm, indeed, that I felt about
+the room to ascertain whether there were some heating-pipes running
+through it.
+
+On the fourth day my new friend sat up in her bunk and passionately
+went "on strike." She said:
+
+"Say, I wish you'd quit reading me all that stuff. I know it's lovely,
+but I've got a headache, and honestly I can't for the life of me take
+an interest in your poems and stories."
+
+Deeply hurt, I folded my manuscripts. She leaned out of her berth and
+caught at my arm.
+
+"Don't be angry," she said. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
+
+I retorted with dignity that I was not in the slightest degree hurt.
+Also I quoted a proverb about casting one's pearls before swine, which
+sent her into such a peal of laughter that I think it effectually cured
+her of her lingering remnants of seasickness. She jumped out of her
+bunk, squeezed me about the waist, and said:
+
+"You're the funniest girl I've ever met--a whole vaudeville act." She
+added, however, that she liked me, and as she had her arm about me,
+I came down from my high horse, and averred that her affection was
+reciprocated. She then told me her name and learned mine. She was
+bookkeeper in a large department store. Her health had been bad, and
+she had been saving for a long time for this trip to the West Indies.
+
+We decided that we were now well enough to go on deck. As I dressed, I
+saw her watching me with a rather wondering and curious expression. My
+navy-blue serge dress was new, and although it was a shapeless article,
+the color at least was becoming, and with the collar purchased in New
+York, I felt that I looked very well. I asked her what she thought of
+my dress. She said evasively:
+
+"Did you make it yourself?"
+
+I said:
+
+"No; mama did."
+
+"Oh," said she.
+
+I didn't just like the sound of that "Oh," so I asked her aggressively
+if she didn't think my dress was nice. She answered:
+
+"I think you've got the prettiest hair of any girl I ever knew."
+
+My hair _did_ look attractive, and I was otherwise quite satisfied with
+my appearance. What is more, I was too polite to let her know what I
+thought of _her_ appearance. Although it was March, she, poor thing,
+had put on a flimsy little muslin dress. Of course it was suffocatingly
+hot in our close little state-room, but, still, that seemed an absurd
+dress to wear on a boat. I offered to lend her a knitted woolen scarf
+that mama had made me to throw over her shoulders, but she shook her
+head, and we went up on deck.
+
+To my unutterable surprise, I found a metamorphosis had taken place on
+deck during my four days' absence. Every one appeared to be dressed in
+thin white clothes; even the officers were all in white duck. Moreover,
+the very atmosphere had changed. It was as warm and sultry as
+midsummer, and people were sipping iced drinks and fanning themselves!
+
+Slowly it dawned upon me that we were sailing toward a tropical land.
+In a hazy sort of way I had known that the West Indies was a warm
+country, but I had not given the matter much thought. My father, who
+had been all over the world, had left my outfitting to mama and me (we
+had so little with which to buy the few extra things mama, who was more
+of a child than I, got me!), and I had come away with clothes fit for a
+land which often registered as low as twenty-four degrees below zero!
+
+My clothes scorched me; so did my burning shame. I felt that every
+one's eyes were bent upon me.
+
+Both Captain Hollowell and Mr. Marsden greeted me cordially, expressing
+delight at seeing me again, but although the captain said (in a big,
+booming voice that every one on deck could hear) that I looked like a
+nice, blooming peony, I sensitively fancied I detected a laugh beneath
+his words.
+
+Tragedies should be measured according to their effects. Trifles prick
+us in youth as sharply as the things that ought to count. I sensitively
+suffered in my pride as much from the humiliation of wearing my heavy
+woolen clothes as I physically did from the burden of their weight and
+heat. I was sure that I presented a ridiculous and hideous spectacle.
+I felt that every one was laughing at me. It was insufferable; it was
+torture.
+
+As soon as I could get away from that joking captain, who _would_ keep
+patting me on the head, and that purser, who was always smiling and
+showing his white teeth, I ran down to my room, which I had hoped to
+see as little of as possible for the rest of the voyage.
+
+I sat down on the only chair and began to cry. The ugly little room,
+with its one miserable window, seemed a wretched, intolerable prison. I
+could hear the soughing of the waves outside, and a wide streak of blue
+sky was visible through my port-hole window. The moving of the boat and
+the thud of the machinery brought home to me strongly the fact that I
+was being carried resistlessly farther and farther away from the only
+home I had ever known, and which, alas! I had yearned to leave.
+
+It was unbearably hot, and I took off my woolen dress. I felt that I
+would never go on deck again; yet how was I going to endure it down
+here in this little hole? I was thinking miserably about that when my
+room-mate came back.
+
+"Well, here you are!" she exclaimed. "I've been looking for you
+everywhere! Now what's the matter?"
+
+"N-nothing," I said; but despite myself the sob would come.
+
+"You poor kid!" she said. "I know what's the matter with you. I don't
+know what your folks were thinking of when they sent you off to the
+West Indies in Canadian clothes. Are they all as simple as you there?
+But now don't you worry. Here, I've got six pretty nice-looking
+shirt-waists, besides my dresses, and you're welcome to any of them you
+want. You're just about my size. I'm thirty-four."
+
+"Thirty-four!" I exclaimed, astonished even in the midst of my grief.
+"Why, I thought you were only about twenty."
+
+"Bust! Bust!" she cried, laughing, and got her waists out and told me
+to try them on. I gave her a kiss, a big one, I was so delighted; but I
+insisted that I could not borrow her waists. I would, however, buy some
+of them if she would sell them.
+
+She said that was all right, and she sold me three of them at a
+dollar-fifty each. They fitted me finely. I never felt happier in my
+life than when I put on one of those American-made shirt-waists. They
+were made sailor-fashion, with wide turnover collars and elbow sleeves;
+with a red silk tie in front, and with my blue cloth skirt, I really
+did look astonishingly nice, and, anyway, cool and neat. The fact that
+I now possessed only two dollars and fifty cents in the world gave me
+not the slightest worry, and when I ran out of my room, humming, and up
+the stairs and bang into the arms of Captain Hollowell, he did not say
+this time that I looked like a peony, but that, "By George!" I looked
+like a nice Canadian rose.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+"Do you know," said my room-mate on the night before we reached
+Jamaica, "that that four-fifty you paid me for those waists just about
+covers my tips."
+
+"Tips?" I repeated innocently. "What are tips?"
+
+She gave me a long, amazed look, her mouth wide-open.
+
+"Good heavens!" at last she said, "where _have_ you lived all of your
+life?"
+
+"In Quebec," I said honestly.
+
+"And you never heard of tips--people giving tips to waiters and
+servants?"
+
+I grew uncomfortably red under her amused and amazed glance. In the
+seven days of that voyage my own extraordinary ignorance had been daily
+brought home to me. I now said lamely:
+
+"Well, we had only one servant that I can ever remember, a woman named
+Sung-Sung whom papa brought from China; but she was more like one of
+our family, a sort of slave. We never gave her tips, or whatever you
+call it."
+
+Did I not know, pursued my American friend, that people gave extra
+money--that is, "tips"--to waiters at restaurants and hotels when they
+got through eating a meal?
+
+I told her crossly and truthfully that I had never been in a hotel or
+restaurant in all my life. She threw up her hands, and pronounced me
+a vast object of pity. She then fully enlightened me as to the exact
+meaning of the word "tips," and left me to calculate painfully upon a
+bit of paper the division of two dollars and fifty cents among five
+people; to wit, stewardesses, cabin boys, waiters, etc.
+
+I didn't tell her that that was the last of my money--that two-fifty.
+However, I did not expend any thought upon the subject of what was to
+become of me when I arrived in Jamaica _sans_ a single cent.
+
+We brought our bags and belongings out on deck before the boat docked
+next day. Every one was crowded against the rails, watching the
+approaching land.
+
+A crowd seemed to be swarming on the wharves, awaiting our boat. As we
+came nearer, I was amazed to find that this crowd was made up almost
+entirely of negroes. We have few negroes in Canada, and I had seen only
+one in all my life. I remember an older sister had shown him to me in
+church--he was pure black--and told me he was the "Bogy man," and that
+he'd probably come around to see me that night. I was six. I never
+took my eyes once from his face during the service, and I have never
+forgotten that face.
+
+It was, therefore, with a genuine thrill of excitement and fear that I
+looked down upon that vast sea of upturned black and brown faces. Never
+will I forget that first impression of Jamaica. Everywhere I looked
+were negroes--men and women and children, some half naked, some with
+bright handkerchiefs knotted about their heads, some gaudily attired,
+some dressed in immaculate white duck, just like the people on the boat.
+
+People were saying good-by, and many had already gone down the
+gang-plank. Several women asked me for my address, and said they did
+not want to lose me. I told them I did not know just where I was going.
+I expected Mr. Campbell to meet me.
+
+As Mr. Campbell had not come on board, however, and as Captain
+Hollowell and Mr. Marsden seemed to have forgotten my existence in
+the great rush of arrival, I, too, at last descended the gang-plank.
+I found myself one of that miscellaneous throng of colored and white
+people.
+
+A number of white men and women were hurrying about meeting and
+welcoming expected passengers, who were soon disposed of in various
+vehicles. Soon not one of the boat's passengers remained, even my
+room-mate being one of a party that climbed aboard a bus marked, "The
+Crystal Springs Hotel."
+
+I was alone on that Jamaica wharf, and no one had come to claim me!
+
+It was getting toward evening, and the sky in the west was as red as
+blood. I sat down on my bag and waited. Most of the people left on the
+dock were laborers who were engaged in unloading the ship's cargo.
+Women with heavy loads on their heads, their hands on their shaking
+hips, and chattering in a high singsong dialect (I didn't recognize it
+for English at first!), passed me. Some of them looked at me curiously,
+and one, a terrifying, pock-marked crone, said something to me that I
+could not understand.
+
+I saw the sun slipping down in the sky, but it was still as bright and
+clear as mid-day. Sitting alone on that Jamaica wharf, I scarcely saw
+the shadows deepening as I looked out across the Caribbean Sea, which
+shone like a jewel under the fading light. I forgot my surroundings and
+my anxiety at the failure of my employer to meet me; I felt no fear,
+just a vague sort of enchantment and interest in this new land I had
+discovered.
+
+But I started up screaming when I felt a hand on my shoulder, and
+looking up in the steadily deepening twilight, I saw a smiling face
+approach my own, and the face was black!
+
+I fled toward the boat, crying out wildly:
+
+"Captain Hollowell! O Captain Hollowell!"
+
+I left my little bag behind me. Fear lent wings to my feet, and I kept
+crying out to Captain Hollowell as I ran up that gang-plank, mercifully
+still down. At the end of it was my dear blond purser, and right into
+his arms unhesitatingly I ran. He kept saying: "Well! well! well!" and
+he took me to Captain Hollowell, who swore dreadfully when he learned
+that Mr. Campbell had not met me. Then my purser went to the dock wharf
+to get my bag, and to "skin the hide off that damned black baboon" who
+had frightened me.
+
+I ate dinner with Captain Hollowell and the officers of the _Atlas_
+that night, the last remaining passenger on the boat. After dinner,
+accompanied by the captain and the purser, I was taken by carriage to
+the office of _The Lantern_.
+
+I don't know what Captain Hollowell said to Mr. Campbell before I was
+finally called in, for I had been left in the outer office. Their
+voices were loud and angry, and I thought they were quarreling. I
+devoutly hoped it was not over me. I was tired and sleepy. In fact,
+when Captain Hollowell motioned to me to come in, I remember rubbing my
+eyes, and he put his arm about me and told me not to cry.
+
+In a dingy office, with papers and books scattered about in the most
+bewildering disorder, at a long desk-table, likewise piled with books
+and journals and papers, sat an old man who looked exactly like the
+pictures of Ibsen. He was sitting all crumpled up, as it were, in a big
+arm-chair; but as I came forward he sat up straight. He stared at me so
+long, and with such an expression of amazement, that I became uneasy
+and embarrassed. I remember holding on tight to Captain Hollowell's
+sleeve on one side and Mr. Marsden's on the other. And then at last a
+single sentence came from the lips of my employer. It came explosively,
+despairingly:
+
+"My God!" said the owner of _The Lantern_.
+
+It seems that our Quebec friend had been assigned to obtain for _The
+Lantern_ a mature and experienced journalist. Mr. Campbell had expected
+a woman of the then approved, if feared, type of bluestocking, and
+behold a baby had been dropped into his lap!
+
+The captain and Marsden had departed. I sat alone with that old man
+who looked like Ibsen, and who stared at me as if I were some freak of
+nature. He had his elbows upon his desk, and his chin propped up in the
+cup of his hands. He began to ask me questions, after he had literally
+stared me down and out of countenance, and I sat there before him,
+twisting my handkerchief in my hand.
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Seventeen. I mean--I'm going on eighteen." Eighteen was, in fact,
+eleven months off.
+
+"Have you ever worked before?"
+
+"I've written things."
+
+After a silent moment, during which he glared at me more angrily than
+ever, he demanded:
+
+"What have you written?"
+
+"Poetry," I said, and stopped because he said again in that lost voice,
+"My God!"
+
+"What else?"
+
+"I had a story published in _The Star_," I said. "I've got it here, if
+you'd like to see it."
+
+He made a motion of emphatic dissent.
+
+"What else have you done?"
+
+"I taught myself shorthand," I said, "and I can take dictation as fast
+as you can talk."
+
+He looked frankly skeptical and in no wise impressed.
+
+"How can you do that if you've had no experience as a stenographer?"
+
+"I got a shorthand book," I said eagerly. "It's not at all hard to
+teach yourself after you learn the rudiments. My sister showed me
+that. She's secretary to the Premier of Canada. As soon as I had
+learned shorthand, I acquired practice and speed by going to church and
+prayer-meetings and taking down sermons."
+
+After a moment he said grudgingly:
+
+"Not a bad idea." And then added, "What do you think you are going to
+do here?"
+
+"Write for your paper," I said as conciliatingly as I could.
+
+"What?" he inquired curiously.
+
+"Why--anything--poetry--"
+
+He waved his hand in such a dismissing manner that I got up, though it
+was my poetry, not I, he wished to be rid of just then. I went nearer
+to him.
+
+"I know you don't want me," I said, "and I don't want to stay. I'm
+sorry I came. I wouldn't if I had known that this was a hot, beastly
+old country where nearly everybody is black. If you'll just get me back
+to the boat, I know Captain Hollowell will let me go back with him,
+even if I haven't the money for my fare."
+
+"What about the money I paid for you to come here?" he snarled. "Think
+I'm going to lose that?"
+
+I did not answer him. I felt enervated, homesick, miserable, and
+tired. He got up presently, limped over to another table,--he was
+lame,--poured a glass of water, brought it to me with a big fan, and
+said gruffly, "Sit!"
+
+The act, I don't know why, touched me. In a dim way I began to
+appreciate his position. He was a lame old man running a fiery,
+two-sheet little newspaper in this tropical land far from his native
+Canada. There was no staff, and, indeed, none of the ordinary
+appurtenances of a newspaper office. He employed only one able
+assistant, and as he could not get such a person in Jamaica and could
+not afford to pay a man's salary, being very loyal to Canada, he
+had been accustomed to send there for bright and expert young women
+reporters to do virtually all the work of running his newspaper.
+Newspaper women are not plentiful in Canada. The fare to Jamaica is,
+or was then, about $55. Mr. Campbell must have turned all these things
+over in his mind as he looked at this latest product of his native
+land, a green, green girl of seventeen, whose promise that she would
+"look older next day," when her "hair was done up," carried little
+reassurance as to her intelligence or ability.
+
+He did a lot of "cussing" of our common friend in Canada. Finally
+he said that he would take me over to the Myrtle Bank Hotel, where
+accommodations had been arranged for me, and we could talk the matter
+over in the morning.
+
+While he was getting his stick and hat, the latter a green-lined
+helmet, I couldn't resist looking at some of his books. He caught me
+doing this, and asked me gruffly if I had ever read anything. I said:
+
+"Yes, Dickens, George Eliot, and Sir Walter Scott; and I've read
+Huxley and Darwin, and lots of books on astronomy to my father, who is
+very fond of that subject." As he made no comment, nor seemed at all
+impressed by my erudition, I added proudly: "My father's an Oxford man,
+and a descendant of the family of Sir Isaac Newton."
+
+There was some legend to this effect in our family. In fact, the
+greatness of my father's people had been a sort of fairy-story with us
+all, and we knew that it was his marriage with mama that had cut him
+off from his kindred. My Jamaica employer, however, showed no interest
+in my distinguished ancestry. He took me roughly by the arm, and half
+leaning upon, half leading me, hobbled with me out into the dark street.
+
+It was about nine o'clock. As we approached the hotel, which was only
+a short distance from the office of _The Lantern_, it pleased me as a
+happy omen that somewhere within those fragrant, moonlit gardens a
+band began to play most beautifully.
+
+Mr. Campbell took me to the room of the girl whose place I was to take,
+and who was also from Quebec. She had already gone to bed, but she rose
+to let me in. Mr. Campbell merely knocked hard on the door and said:
+
+"Here's Miss Ascough. You should have met her," and angrily shoved me
+in, so it seemed to me.
+
+Miss Foster, her hair screwed up in curl-papers, after looking at me
+only a moment, said in a tired, complaining voice, like that of a sick
+person, that I had better get to bed right away; and then she got into
+bed, and turned her face to the wall. I tried to draw her out a bit
+while undressing, but to all my questions she returned monosyllabic
+answers. I put out the light, and crept into bed beside her. The last
+thing she said to me, and very irritably, was:
+
+"Keep to your own side of the bed."
+
+I slept fairly well, considering the oppressiveness of the heat, but I
+awoke once when something buzzed against my face.
+
+"What's that?" I cried, sitting up in bed.
+
+She murmured crossly:
+
+"Oh, for heaven's sake lie down! I haven't slept a wink for a century.
+You'll have to get used to Jamaica bugs and scorpions. They ought to
+have screens in the windows!"
+
+After that I slept with the sheet over my head.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+I was awakened at six the following morning. A strange, singsong voice
+called into the room:
+
+"Marnin', missee! Heah's your coffee."
+
+I found Miss Foster up and dressed. She was sitting at a table drinking
+coffee. She put up the shade and let the light in. Then she came over
+to the bed, where the maid had set the tray. I was looking at what I
+supposed to be my breakfast. It consisted of a cup of black coffee and
+a single piece of dry toast.
+
+"You'd better drink your coffee," said Miss Foster, wearily. "It will
+sustain you for a while."
+
+I got a good look at her, standing by my bed. The yellowness of her
+skin startled me, and I wondered whether it could be possible that
+she, too, was "colored." Then I remembered that she was from my home.
+Moreover, her eyes were a pale blue, and her hair a light, nondescript
+brown. She had a peevish expression, even now while she made an effort
+at friendliness. She sat down on the side of my bed, and while I drank
+my coffee and nibbled my piece of toast she told me a few things about
+the country.
+
+Jamaica, she said, was the beastliest country on the face of the
+earth. Though for a few months its climate was tolerable, the rest
+of the year it was almost unbearable. What with the crushing heat and
+the dirty, drizzling rain that followed, and fell without ceasing for
+months at a time, all ambition, all strength, all hope were slowly
+knocked out of one. There were a score of fevers, each one as bad as
+the others. She was suffering from one now. That was why she was going
+home. She was young, so she said, but she felt like an old woman. She
+pitied me, she declared, for what was before me, and said Campbell had
+no right to bring healthy young girls from Canada without first telling
+them what they were coming up against.
+
+I put in here that perhaps I should fare better. I said:
+
+"I'm almost abnormally healthy and strong, you know, even if I look
+thin. I'm the wiry kind."
+
+She sniffed at that, and then said, with a shrug:
+
+"Oh, well, maybe you will escape. I'm sure I wish you better luck than
+mine. But one thing's certain: you'll lose that Canadian complexion of
+yours all right."
+
+My duties, she said, would be explained to me by Mr. Campbell himself,
+though she was going to stay over a day or two to help break me in. My
+salary would be ten dollars a week and free board and lodging at the
+Myrtle Bank Hotel. I told her of the slighting reception I had received
+at the hands of Mr. Campbell, and she said:
+
+"Oh, well, he's a crank. You couldn't please him, no matter what you
+did." Then she added: "I don't see, anyhow, why he objected to you.
+Brains aren't so much needed in a position like this as legs and a
+constitution of iron."
+
+As the day advanced, the heat encroached. Miss Foster sat fanning
+herself languidly by the window, looking out with a far-away
+expression. I told her about my clothes, and how mortified I was to
+find them so different from those of the others on the boat. She said:
+
+"You can have all my clothes, if you want. They won't do for Canada."
+
+That suggested a brilliant solution of my problem of how I was to
+secure immediately suitable clothes for Jamaica. I suggested that as
+she was going to Canada, she could have mine, and I would take hers.
+The proposition seemed to give her a sort of grim amusement. She looked
+over my clothes. She took the woolen underwear and heavy, hand-knitted
+stockings (that Sung-Sung had made for an older brother, and which had
+descended to me after two sisters had had them!), two woolen skirts, my
+heavy overcoat, and several other pieces.
+
+She gave me a number of white muslin dresses,--they seemed lovely to
+me,--an evening gown with a real low neck, cotton underwear, hose, etc.
+
+I put my hair up for the first time that morning. As I curled it a bit,
+this was not difficult to do. I simply rolled it up at the back and
+held the chignon in place with four bone hair-pins that she gave me. I
+put on one of her white muslin dresses but it was so long for me that
+we had to make a wide tuck in it. Then I wore a wide Leghorn hat, the
+only trimming of which was a piece of cream-colored mull twisted like a
+scarf about the crown.
+
+I asked Miss Foster if I looked all right, and was suitably dressed,
+and she said grudgingly:
+
+"Yes, you'll do. You're quite pretty. You'd better look out."
+
+Asked to explain, she merely shrugged her shoulders and said:
+
+"There's only a handful of white women here, you know. We don't count
+the tourists. You'll have all you can do to hold the men here at
+arm's-length."
+
+This last prospect by no means bothered me. I had the most decided and
+instinctive liking for the opposite sex.
+
+The hotel was beautiful, built somewhat in the Spanish style, with a
+great inner court, and an arcade that ran under the building. Long
+verandas ran out like piers on each side of the court, which was part
+of the wonderful garden that extended to the shores of the Caribbean.
+
+The first thing I saw as we came out from our room upon one of the
+long-pier verandas was an enormous bird. It was sitting on the branch
+of a fantastic and incredibly tall tree that was all trunk, and then
+burst into great fan-like foliage at the top. Subsequently I learned
+that this was a cocoanut tree.
+
+The proprietor of the hotel, who was dark, smiling, and deferential,
+came up to be introduced to me, and I said, meaning to pay a compliment
+to his country:
+
+"You have fine-looking birds here."
+
+He looked at me sharply and then snickered, as if he thought I were
+joking about something.
+
+"That's a scavenger," he said. "There are hundreds, thousands of them
+here in Jamaica. Glad you like them."
+
+I thought it an ugly name for a bird, but I said:
+
+"It's a very interesting bird, I think."
+
+Miss Foster pulled me along and said sharply that the birds were
+vultures. They called them scavengers in Jamaica because they really
+acted as such. Every bit of dirt and filth and refuse, she declared
+with disgust, was thrown into the streets, and devoured shortly by
+the scavengers. If a horse or animal died or was killed, it was put
+into the street. Within a few minutes it had completely disappeared,
+the scavengers having descended like flies upon its body. She darkly
+hinted, moreover, that many a human corpse had met a similar fate.
+I acquired a shuddering horror for that "interesting bird" then and
+there, I can tell you, and I thought of the unscreened windows, and
+asked Miss Foster if they ever had been known to touch living things.
+She shrugged her shoulders, which was not reassuring.
+
+Miss Foster took me into the hotel's great dining-room, which was like
+a pleasant open conservatory, with great palms and plants everywhere.
+There we had breakfast, for it seems coffee and toast were just an
+appetizer. I never became used to Jamaica cooking. It was mushy, hot,
+and sweet.
+
+After breakfast we reported at _The Lantern_, where Mr. Campbell,
+looking even fiercer in the day, impatiently awaited us. He wished
+Miss Foster to take me directly out to Government House and teach
+me my duties there, as the Legislative Council was then in session.
+He mumbled off a lot of instructions to Miss Foster, ignoring me
+completely. His apparent contempt for me, and his evident belief
+that there was no good to be expected from me, whetted my desire to
+prove to him that I was not such a fool as I looked, or, rather, as
+he seemed to think I looked. I listened intently to everything he
+said to Miss Foster, but even so I received only a confused medley of
+"Bills--attorney-general--Representative So and So--Hon. Mr. So and
+So," etc.
+
+I carried away with me, however, one vivid instruction, and that
+was that it was absolutely necessary for _The Lantern_ to have the
+good-will of the Hon. Mr. Burbank, whom we must support in everything.
+It seemed, according to Mr. Campbell, that there was some newspaper
+libel law that was being pressed in the House that, if passed, would
+bring the Jamaica press down to a pusillanimous condition.
+
+Mr. Burbank was to fight this bill for the newspapers. He was, in fact,
+our representative and champion. _The Lantern_, in return, was prepared
+to support him in other measures that he was fathering. Miss Foster
+and I were to remember to treat him with more than common attention. I
+did not know, of course, that this meant in our newspaper references
+to him, and I made a fervent vow personally to win the favor of said
+Burbank.
+
+We got into a splendid little equipage, upholstered in tan cloth and
+with a large tan umbrella top, which was lined with green.
+
+We drove for several miles through a country remarkable for its
+beautiful scenery. It was a land of color. It was like a land of
+perpetual spring--a spring that was ever green. I saw not a single
+shade that was dull. Even the trunks of the gigantic trees seemed to
+have a warm tone. The flowers were startlingly bright--yellow, scarlet,
+and purple.
+
+We passed many country people along the road. They moved with a sort
+of languid, swinging amble, as if they dragged, not lifted, their flat
+feet. Women carried on their heads enormous bundles and sometimes
+trays. How they balanced them so firmly was always a mystery to me,
+especially as most of them either had their hands on their hips, or,
+more extraordinary, carried or led children, and even ran at times.
+Asses, loaded on each side with produce, ambled along as draggingly as
+the natives.
+
+Miss Foster made only three or four remarks during the entire journey.
+These are her remarks. They are curious taken altogether:
+
+"This carriage belongs to Mr. Burbank. He supplies all the vehicles, by
+the way, for the press."
+
+"Those are the botanical gardens. Jamaica has Mr. Burbank to thank for
+their present excellent condition. Remember that."
+
+"We are going by the Burbank plantation now. He has a place in
+Kingston, too, and a summer home in the mountains."
+
+"If we beat that newspaper libel law, you'll have a chance to write
+all the funny things and rhymes you want about the mean sneaks who are
+trying to push it through."
+
+Even during the long drive through the green country I had been
+insensibly affected by the ever-growing heat. In the long chamber of
+Government House, where the session was to be held, there seemed not a
+breath of air stirring. It was insufferably hot, though the place was
+virtually empty when we arrived. I had a shuddering notion of what it
+would be like when full.
+
+Miss Foster was hustling about, getting "papers" and "literature" of
+various kinds, and as the legislators arrived, she chatted with some of
+them. She had left me to my own devices, and I did not know what to do
+with myself. I was much embarrassed, as every one who passed into the
+place took a look at me. We were the only two girls in the House.
+
+There was a long table in the middle of the room, at which the members
+of Parliament and the elected members had their seats, and there was a
+smaller table at one side for the press. I had remained by the door,
+awaiting Miss Foster's instructions. The room was rapidly beginning
+to fill. A file of black soldiers spread themselves about the room,
+standing very fine and erect against the walls. At the council table,
+on one side, were the Parliament members, Englishmen, every one of
+whom wore the conventional monocle. On the other side were the elected
+members, who were, without an exception, colored men. I was musing
+over this when a very large, stout, and handsome personage (he was
+a personage!) entered ponderously, followed by several younger men.
+Every one in the room rose, and until he took his seat (in a big chair
+on a little elevated platform at the end of the room) they remained
+standing. This was his Excellency Sir Henry Drake, the Governor-General
+of Jamaica. The House was now in session.
+
+By this time I experienced a natural anxiety to know what was to
+become of me. Surely I was not supposed to stand there by the door.
+Glancing across at the press table, I presently saw Miss Foster among
+the reporters. She was half standing, and beckoning to me to join her.
+Confused and embarrassed, I passed along at the back of one end of the
+council table, and was proceeding in the direction of the press table,
+when suddenly the room reverberated with loud cries from the soldiers
+of, "Order! order! order!"
+
+I hesitated only a moment, ignorant of the fact that that call was
+directed against me, and, as I paused, I looked directly into the
+purpling face of the Governor of Jamaica. He had put on his monocle.
+His face was long and preternaturally solemn, but there was a queer,
+twisted smile about his mouth, and I swear that he winked at me through
+that monocle, which fell into his hand. I proceeded to my seat, red as
+a beet.
+
+"Great guns!" whispered Miss Foster, dragging me down beside her, "you
+walked in _front_ of the governor! You should have gone behind his
+chair. What will Mr. Campbell say when he knows you were called to
+order the first day! A fine reflection on _The Lantern_!" She added the
+last sentence almost bitterly.
+
+What went on at that session I never in the world could have told. It
+was all like an incomprehensible dream. Black men, the elected members,
+rose, and long and eloquently talked in regard to some bill. White men
+(government) rose and languidly responded, sometimes with a sort of
+drawling good humor, sometimes satirically. I began to feel the effect
+of the oppressive atmosphere in a way I had not yet experienced. An
+unconquerable impulse to lay my head down upon the table and go to
+sleep seized upon me, and I could scarcely keep my eyes open. At last
+my head did fall back against the chair; my eyes closed. I did not
+exactly faint, but I succumbed slightly to the heat. I heard a voice
+whispering at my ear, for the proceedings went on, as if it were a
+common thing for a woman to faint in Government House.
+
+"Drink this!" said the voice, and I opened my eyes and looked up into a
+fair, boyish face that was bending over mine. I drank that cool Jamaica
+kola, and recovered myself sufficiently to sit up again. Said my new
+friend:
+
+"It'll be cooler soon. You'll get used to the climate, and if I were
+you, I wouldn't try to do _any_ work to-day."
+
+I said:
+
+"I've got to _learn_. Miss Foster sails to-morrow, and after that--"
+
+"I'll show you after that," he said, and smiled reassuringly.
+
+At one there was an adjournment for luncheon. I then became the center
+of interest, and was introduced by Miss Foster to the members of
+the press. Jamaica boasted three papers beside ours, and there were
+representatives at the Parliament's sessions from other West Indian
+islands. I was also introduced to several of the members, both black
+and white.
+
+I went to luncheon with Miss Foster and two members of Parliament
+(white) and three reporters, one of them the young man who had given me
+the kola, and whose name was Verley Marchmont. He was an Englishman,
+the younger son in a poor, but titled, family. We had luncheon at a
+little inn hard by, and while there I made three engagements for the
+week. With one of the men I was to go to a polo match (Jamaica had a
+native regiment whose officers were English), with another I was to
+attend a ball in a lighthouse, and young Marchmont, who was only about
+eighteen, was to call upon me that evening.
+
+At the end of the afternoon session, which was not quite so wearing, as
+it had grown cooler, I was introduced by Miss Foster to the governor's
+secretary, Lord George Fitzpatrick, who had been smiling at me from
+behind the governor's back most of the day. By him I was introduced
+to the governor, who seemed to regard me as a more or less funny
+curiosity, if I am to judge from his humorous expression. Lord George
+also introduced me to other government members, and he asked me if
+I liked candies. I said I did. He asked me if I played golf or rode
+horseback. I said I didn't, but I could learn, and he said he was a
+great teacher.
+
+By this time I thought I had met every one connected with the
+House, when suddenly I heard some one--I think it was one of the
+reporters--call out:
+
+"Oh, all right, Mr. Burbank. I'll see to it."
+
+Miss Foster was drawing me along toward the door. It was time to go.
+Our carriage was waiting for us. As we were going out, I asked her
+whether I had yet met Mr. Burbank, and she said she supposed so.
+
+"I don't remember meeting him," I persisted, "and I want very specially
+to meet Mr. Burbank."
+
+On the steps below us a man somewhat dudishly attired in immaculate
+white duck, and wearing a green-lined helmet, turned around and looked
+up at us. His face was almost pure black. His nose was large and
+somewhat hooked. I have subsequently learned that he was partly Hebrew.
+He had an enormous mouth, and teeth thickly set with gold. He wore
+gold-rimmed glasses with a chain, and these and his fine clothes gave a
+touch of distinction to his appearance. At least it made him stand out
+from the average colored man. As I spoke, I saw him look at me with a
+curious expression; then smiling, he held out his big hand.
+
+"I am the Hon. Mr. Burbank," he said.
+
+I was startled to find that this man I had been planning to
+cultivate was black. I do not know why, but as I looked down into
+that ingratiating face, I was filled with a sudden panic of almost
+instinctive fear, and although he held out his hand to me, I did not
+take it. For that I was severely lectured by Miss Foster all the way
+back. She reminded me that I could not afford to snub so powerful a
+Jamaican as Burbank, and that if I had the slightest feeling of race
+prejudice, I had better either kill it at once or clear out of Jamaica.
+She said that socially there was absolutely no difference between the
+white and colored people in Jamaica.
+
+As a matter of fact, I had literally never even heard the expression
+"race prejudice" before, and I was as far from feeling it as any person
+in the world. It must be remembered that in Canada we do not encounter
+the problem of race. One color there is as good as another. Certainly
+people of Indian extraction are well thought of and esteemed, and my
+own mother was a foreigner. What should I, a girl who had never before
+been outside Quebec, and whose experience had been within the narrow
+confines of home and a small circle, know of race prejudice?
+
+Vaguely I had a feeling that all men were equal as men. I do not
+believe it was in me to turn from a man merely because of his race, so
+long as he himself was not personally repugnant to me. I myself was
+dark and foreign-looking, but the blond type I adored. In all my most
+fanciful imaginings and dreams I had always been golden-haired and
+blue-eyed.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+I got on better with Mr. Campbell after Miss Foster went. He told me
+it was necessary for us to keep on the right side of Mr. Burbank, who
+was one of the greatest magnates and philanthropists of Jamaica, but
+he took occasion to contradict some of Miss Foster's statements. It
+was not true, he said, that there was no social distinction between
+black and white in Jamaica. That was the general opinion of tourists
+in Jamaica, who saw only the surface of things, but as a matter of
+fact, though the richest people and planters were of colored blood;
+though they were invited to all the governor's parties and the various
+official functions; though they were in vast evidence at polo and
+cricket matches; though many of them were talented and cultivated,
+nevertheless, there was a fine line drawn between them and the native
+white people who counted for anything. This he wished me to bear in
+mind, so that while I should always act in such a way as never in the
+slightest to hurt or offend the feelings of the colored element, whose
+good-will was essential to _The Lantern_, I must retain my dignity
+and stoop to no familiarity which would bring me and _The Lantern_
+into disrepute with the white element, whose good-will was equally
+essential.
+
+I think in less than a week my employer began grudgingly to approve of
+me; in about two weeks we were friends. His eyes no longer glared at
+me through his thick glasses. Once when I timidly proffered one of my
+"poems," those same fierce eyes actually beamed upon me. What is more,
+he published the poem!
+
+Of course it was chiefly my work that won me favor with Mr. Campbell. I
+came back every day from Government House with accurate and intelligent
+reports of the debates. I wonder what Mr. Campbell would have said
+to me had he known that nearly all my first reports were written for
+me by young Verley Marchmont of _The Daily Call_, _The Lantern's_
+deadliest rival! For the life of me, I never could grasp the details
+of the debates clearly enough to report them coherently, and so young
+Marchmont obligingly "helped" me. However, these debates were only a
+part of my work, though at this time they constituted the chief of my
+duties.
+
+For a young person in a hot country I was kept extremely busy. Even
+after my day's work was over I had to bustle about the hotel and dig up
+society notes and stories, or I had to attend meetings, functions, and
+parties of various kinds.
+
+One morning after I had been on _The Lantern_ about a week, Mr.
+Campbell handed me a list of my duties as an employee of _The
+Lantern_. Perhaps you would like to know exactly what they were:
+
+1. To attend and report the debates of the Legislative Council when in
+session.
+
+2. To report City Council proceedings.
+
+3. To report court cases of interest to the public.
+
+4. To keep posted on all matters of interest to Great Britain and
+Jamaica.
+
+5. To make calls upon and interview at intervals His Excellency the
+Governor-General, the Colonial Secretary, the Commander of the Forces,
+the Attorney-General, and other Government officials.
+
+6. To interview elected members when matters of interest demand it.
+
+7. To interview prominent Americans or those who are conspicuous on
+account of great wealth.
+
+8. To report political speeches.
+
+9. To report races, cricket matches, polo, etc.
+
+10. To represent _The Lantern_ at social functions.
+
+11. To visit stores, factories, etc., and to write a weekly advertising
+column.
+
+12. To prepare semi-weekly a bright and entertaining woman's column,
+into which must be skilfully woven the names of Jamaica's society women.
+
+13. To review books and answer correspondence.
+
+14. To correct proof in the absence of the proofreader.
+
+15. To edit the entire paper when sickness or absence of the editor
+prevents him from attending.
+
+Mr. Campbell watched my face keenly as I read that list, and finally,
+when I made no comment, he prompted me with a gruff, "Well?" To which I
+replied, with a smile:
+
+"I think what you want, Mr. Campbell, is a mental and physical acrobat."
+
+"Do I understand from that," he thundered, "that you cannot perform
+these necessary duties?"
+
+"On the contrary," I returned coolly, "I think that I can perform them
+all, one at a time; but you have left out one important item."
+
+"Well, what?"
+
+"Poetry," I said.
+
+My answer tickled him immensely, and he burst into loud laughter.
+
+"Got any about you?" he demanded. "I believe you have it secreted all
+over you."
+
+I said:
+
+"I've none of my own this morning, but here's a fine little verse I
+wish you'd top our editorial page with," and I handed him the following:
+
+
+     For the cause that lacks assistance;
+     For the wrong that needs resistance;
+     For the future in the distance,
+     And the good that we can do!
+
+
+With such a motto, we felt called upon to be pugnacious and virtuous,
+and all of that session of Parliament our little sheet kept up a
+peppery fight for the rights of the people.
+
+Mr. Campbell said that I looked strong and impudent enough to do
+anything, and when I retorted that I was not the least bit impudent,
+but, on the contrary, a dreamer, he said crossly:
+
+"If that's the case, you'll be incompetent."
+
+But I was a dreamer, and I was not incompetent.
+
+It was all very well, however, to joke with Mr. Campbell about these
+duties. They were pretty hard just the same, and I was kept rushing
+from morning till night. There was always a pile of work waiting me
+upon my return from Government House, and I could see that Mr. Campbell
+intended gradually to shift the major part of the work entirely upon me.
+
+The unaccustomed climate, the intense heat, and the work, which I
+really loved--all contributed to make me very tired by evening, when my
+duties were by no means ended.
+
+Miss Foster's warning that I should have to keep the men at
+arm's-length occasionally recurred to me, but I dare say she
+exaggerated the matter. It is true that considerable attention was
+directed at me when I first came to Jamaica, and I received no end of
+flowers and candies and other little gifts; but my work was so exacting
+and ceaseless that it occupied all of my time. I could do little more
+than pause a moment or two to exchange a word or joke with this or that
+man who sought flirtations with me. I was always in a hurry. Rushing
+along through the hotel lobby or parlors or verandas, I scarcely had
+time to get more than a confused impression of various faces.
+
+There was a ball nearly every night, and I always had to attend, for
+a little while, anyway; but I did not exactly mingle with the guests.
+I never danced, though lots of men asked me. I would get my list of
+guests and the description of the women's dresses, etc., write my
+column, and despatch it by boy to _The Lantern_, and I would go to bed
+while the music was still throbbing through the hotel. Often the guests
+were dancing till dawn.
+
+Now I come to Dr. Manning. He was the one man in the hotel who
+persistently sought me and endeavored to make love to me. He was an
+American, one of a yachting party cruising in the Caribbean. I was not
+attracted to him at all, and as far as I could, I avoided him; but
+I could not come out upon the verandas or appear anywhere about the
+hotel without his seeming to arise from somewhere, and come with his
+flattering smiles and jokes. His hair was gray, and he had a pointed,
+grizzled beard. He was tall, and carried himself like a German officer.
+
+He was always begging me to go to places with him, for walks, drives,
+or boat-trips, etc., and finally I did accept an invitation to walk
+with him in the botanical gardens, which adjoined, and were almost part
+of our own grounds.
+
+That evening was a lovely one, with a great moon overhead, and the
+sea like a vast glittering sheet of quicksilver. The Marine Band was
+playing. People were dancing in the ball-room and on the verandas and
+out in a large pagoda in the gardens. Down along the sanded paths we
+passed numerous couples strolling, the bare shoulders of the women
+gleaming like ivory under the moonlight. The farther we strolled from
+the hotel, the darker grew the paths. Across the white backs of many
+of the women a black sleeve was passed. Insensibly I felt that in the
+darkness my companion was trying to see my face, and note the effect
+upon me of these "spooners." But he was not the first man I had walked
+with in the Jamaica moonlight. Verley Marchmont and I had spent a few
+brief hours from our labors in the gardens of the hotel.
+
+Dr. Manning kept pressing nearer to me. Officiously and continuously,
+he would take my arm, and finally he put his about my waist. I tried to
+pull it away, but he held me firmly. Then I said:
+
+"There are lots of people all around us, you know. If you don't take
+your arm down, I shall scream for help."
+
+He took his arm down.
+
+After a space, during which we walked along in silence, I not exactly
+angry, but irritated, he began to reproach me, accusing me of disliking
+him. He said he noticed that I was friendly with every one else, but
+that when he approached me my face always stiffened. He asked if I
+disliked him, and I replied that I did not, but that other men did not
+look at or speak to me as he did. He laughed unbelievingly at that,
+and exclaimed:
+
+"Come, now, are you trying to make me believe that the young men who
+come to see you do not make love to you?"
+
+I said thoughtfully:
+
+"Well, only one or two come to see me, and--no--none of them has yet.
+I suppose it's because I'm always so busy; and then I'm not pretty and
+rich like the other girls here."
+
+"You are pretty," he declared, "and far more interesting than any other
+girl in the hotel. I think you exceedingly captivating."
+
+For that compliment I was truly grateful, and I thanked him for saying
+it. Then he said:
+
+"Let me kiss you just once, won't you?" Again he put his arm about me,
+and this time I had to struggle considerably to release myself. When he
+let me go, he said almost testily:
+
+"Don't make such a fuss. I'm not going to force you," and then after a
+moment, "By the way, why do you object to being kissed?" just as if it
+were unusual for a girl to object to that.
+
+"I'll tell you why," I said tremulously, for it is impossible for a
+young girl to be unmoved when a man tries to kiss her, "because I want
+to be in love with the first man who kisses me."
+
+"And you cannot care for me?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you are an old man," I blurted out.
+
+He stopped in the path, and I could feel him bristling with amazement
+and anger. Somewhat of a fop in dress, he had always carried himself in
+the gay manner of a man much younger than he probably was. His voice
+was very nasty:
+
+"What?"
+
+I repeated what I had said:
+
+"You are an old man."
+
+"What on earth makes you think that?" he demanded.
+
+"Because your hair is gray," I stammered, "and because you look at
+least forty."
+
+At that he broke into a loud chuckle.
+
+"And you think forty old?"
+
+I nodded. For a long moment he was silent, and then suddenly he took my
+arm, and we moved briskly down the path. We came to one of the piers,
+and he assisted me up the little stone steps. In silence we went out
+to the end of the pier. There was a little rustic inclosure at the
+end, covered with ivy from some sort of tree that seemed to grow out
+of the water. We sat down for a while and looked out across the sea.
+Everything was very dark and still. Presently he said:
+
+"What would you do if I were to take you into my arms by force now?"
+
+"I would scream," I said childishly.
+
+"That wouldn't do you much good, for I could easily overpower you. You
+see, there is not a soul anywhere near us here."
+
+I experienced a moment's fear, and stood up, when he said in a kind and
+humorous way:
+
+"Sit down, child; I'm not going to touch you. I merely said that to see
+what you would do. As a matter of fact, I want to be your friend, your
+very particular friend, and I am not going to jeopardize my chances by
+doing something that would make you hate me. Do sit down."
+
+Then as I obeyed, he asked me to tell him all about myself. It was
+not that I either trusted or liked him, but I was very lonely, and
+something in the quiet beauty of our surroundings affected me, I
+suppose. So long as he did not make love to me, I found him rather
+attractive. So I told him what there was to tell of my simple history
+up to this time, and of my ambitions.
+
+He said a girl like me deserved a better fate than to be shut up in
+this country; that in a few weeks the hot season would set in, and
+then I would probably find life unbearable, and surely have some
+fever. He advised me very earnestly, therefore, not to remain here,
+but suggested that I go to America. There, he said, I would soon
+succeed, and probably become both famous and rich. His description of
+America quickened my fancy, and I told him I should love to go there,
+but, unfortunately, even if I could get away from this position, and
+managed to pay my fare to America, I did not know what I would do after
+arriving there virtually penniless.
+
+When I said that, he turned and took both my hands impulsively and in a
+nice fatherly way in his, and said:
+
+"Why, look here, little girl, what's the matter with your coming to
+work for me? I have a huge practice, and will need a secretary upon my
+return. Now, what do you say?"
+
+I said:
+
+"I say, 'Thank you,' and I'll remember."
+
+At the hotel he bade me good night rather perfunctorily for a man who
+had recently tried to kiss a girl, but I lay awake some time thinking
+about what he had said to me.
+
+I suppose every girl tosses over in her mind the thought of that first
+kiss that shall come to her. In imagination, at least, I had already
+been kissed many many times, but the ones who had kissed me were not
+men or boys. They were strange and bewildering heroes, princes, kings,
+knights, and great nobles. Now, here was a real man who had wanted to
+kiss me. I experienced no aversion to him at the thought; only a cool
+sort of wonder and a flattering sense of pride.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+It was a cruel coincidence that the dreadful thing that befell me next
+day should have followed at a time when my young mind was thus dreamily
+engrossed.
+
+The day had been a hard one, and I know not why, but I could not
+concentrate my mind upon the proceedings. I felt inexpressibly stupid,
+and the voices of the legislators droned meaninglessly in my ears. As I
+could not follow the debates intelligently, I decided that I would stay
+a while after the council had adjourned, borrow one of the reporters'
+notes, and patch up my own from them.
+
+So, with a glass of kola at my elbow, and Verley Marchmont's notes
+before me, I sat at work in the empty chamber after every one, I
+supposed, had gone, though I heard the attendants and janitors of the
+place at work in the gallery above. Young Marchmont waited for me
+outside.
+
+A quiet had settled down over the place, and for a time I scribbled
+away upon my pad. I do not know how long I had worked--not more than
+ten or fifteen minutes--when I felt some one come up behind me, and a
+voice that I recognized from having heard it often in the House during
+the session said:
+
+"May I speak to you a moment, Miss Ascough?"
+
+I looked up, surprised, but not alarmed. Mr. Burbank was standing by
+my chair. There was something in his expression that made me move my
+chair back a little, and I began gathering up my papers rapidly. I said
+politely, however:
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Burbank. What can _The Lantern_ do for you?"
+
+I sat facing the table, but I had moved around so that my shoulder
+was turned toward him. In the little silence that followed I felt his
+breath against my ear as he leaned on the table and propped his chin
+upon his hand, so that his face came fairly close to mine. Before he
+spoke I had shrunk farther back in my chair.
+
+He said, with a laugh that was an odd mixture of embarrassment and
+assurance:
+
+"I want nothing of _The Lantern_, but I do want something of you. I
+want to ask you to--er--marry me. God! how I love you!"
+
+If some one had struck me hard and suddenly upon the head, I could not
+have experienced a greater shock than the words of that negro gave me.
+All through the dreaming days of my young girlhood one lovely moment
+had stood out like a golden beam in my imagination--my first proposal.
+Perhaps all girls do not think of this; but _I_ did, I who lived
+upon my fancies. How many gods and heroes had I not created who had
+whispered to me that magical question? And now out of that shining,
+beautiful throng of imaginary suitors, what was this that had come? A
+great black man, the "bogy man" of my childhood days!
+
+Had I been older, perhaps I might have managed that situation in
+some way. I might even have spoken gently to him; he believed he was
+honoring me. But youth revolts like some whipped thing before stings
+like this, and I--I was so hurt, so terribly wounded, that I remember
+I gasped out a single sob of rage. Covering my face with my hands, I
+stood up. Then something happened that for a moment robbed me of all my
+physical and mental powers.
+
+Suddenly I felt myself seized in a pair of powerful arms. A face came
+against my own, and lips were pressed hard upon mine.
+
+I screamed like one gone mad. I fought for my freedom from his arms
+like a possessed person. Then blindly, with blood and fire before my
+eyes and burning in my heart, I fled from that terrible chamber. I
+think I banged both my head and hands against the door, for later I
+found that my forehead and hands were swollen and bruised. Out into the
+street I rushed.
+
+I heard Verley Marchmont call to me. I saw him like a blur rise up in
+my path, but behind him I fancied was that other--that great _animal_
+who had kissed me.
+
+On and on I ran, my first impulse being to escape from something
+dreadful that was pursuing me. I remember I had both my hands over my
+mouth. I felt that it was unclean, and that rivers and rivers could
+not wash away that stain that was on me.
+
+I think it was Marchmont's jerking hold upon my arm that brought me to
+a sense of partial awakening.
+
+"Miss Ascough, what is the matter? What is the matter?" he was saying.
+
+I looked up at him, and I started to speak, to tell him what had
+happened to me, and then suddenly I knew it was something I could tell
+no one. It loomed up in my child's imagination as something filthy.
+
+"I can't tell you," I said.
+
+"Did something frighten you? What is it, dear?"
+
+I remember, in all my pain and excitement, that he called me "dear,"
+that fair-haired young Englishman; and like a child unexpectedly
+comforted, it brought the sobs stranglingly to my throat.
+
+"Come and get into the carriage, then," he said. "You are ill. Your
+hands and face are burning. I'm afraid you have fever. You'd better get
+home as quickly as possible."
+
+The driver of our carriage, who had followed, drew up beside us; but
+even as I turned to step into the carriage, suddenly I remembered what
+Miss Foster had said that first day:
+
+"This carriage is owned by Mr. Burbank. He supplies all the carriages
+for the press."
+
+"I can't ride in _that_!" I cried.
+
+"You've got to," said Marchmont. "It's the last one left except Mr.
+Burbank's own."
+
+"I'm going to walk home," I said.
+
+I was slowly recovering a certain degree of self-possession.
+Nevertheless, my temples were throbbing; my head ached splittingly.
+I was not crying, but gasping sobs kept seizing me, such as attack
+children after a tempestuous storm of tears.
+
+"You can't possibly walk home," declared Marchmont. "It is at least
+four and a half miles, if not more."
+
+"I am going to walk just the same," I said. "I would rather die than
+ride in that carriage."
+
+He said something to the driver. The latter started up his horses, and
+drove slowly down the road. Then Marchmont took my arm, and we started.
+
+That interminable walk in the fearful Jamaica heat and sun recurs
+sometimes to me still, like a hectic breath of hateful remembrance.
+The penetrating sun beat its hot breath down upon our backs. The sand
+beneath our feet seemed like living coals, and even when we got into
+the cooler paths of the wooded country, the closeness and oppressive
+heaviness of the atmosphere stifled and crushed me.
+
+At intervals the driver of that Burbank carriage would draw up beside
+us on the road, and Marchmont would entreat me to get in; but always I
+refused, and a strength came to me with each refusal.
+
+Once he said:
+
+"If you would let me, I could carry you."
+
+I looked up at his anxious young face. His clothes were thicker than
+mine, and he had a number of books under his arm. He must have been
+suffering from the heat even as I was, but he was ready to sacrifice
+himself for what he must have thought was a sick whim on my part. He
+was nothing but a boy, very little older than I; but he was of that
+plugging English type which sticks at a task until it is accomplished.
+The thought of his carrying me made me laugh hysterically, and he,
+thinking I was feeling better, again urged me to get into the carriage,
+but in vain.
+
+We met many country people on the road, and he bought from one a huge
+native umbrella. This he hoisted over my head; I think it did relieve
+us somewhat. But the whole of me, even to my fingers, now seemed to be
+tingling and aching. There was a buzzing and ringing in my head. I was
+thirsty. We stopped at a wayside spring, and an old woman lent me her
+tin cup for a drink. Marchmont gave her a coin, and she said in a high,
+whining voice:
+
+"Give me another tuppence, Marster, and I'll tell missee a secret."
+
+He gave her the coin, and then she said:
+
+"Missee got the fever. She better stand off'n dat ground."
+
+"For God's sake!" he said to me, "let me put you in the carriage!"
+
+"You would not want to, if you knew," I said, and my voice sounded in
+my own ears as if it came from some distance.
+
+On and on we tramped. Never were there five such miles as those.
+
+Many a time since I have walked far greater distances. I have covered
+five and six miles of links, carrying my own golf-clubs. I've climbed
+up and down hills and valleys, five, ten, and more miles, and arrived
+at my destination merely healthily tired and hungry.
+
+But five miles under a West Indian sun, in a land where even the worms
+and insects seemed to wither and dry in the sand!
+
+It was about four-forty when we left Government House; it was seven
+when we reached the hotel. I was staggering as we at last passed under
+the great arcade of the Myrtle Bank. Though my eyes were endowed with
+sight, I saw nothing but a blurred confusion of shadows and shapes.
+
+Mr. Marchmont and another man--I think the manager of the hotel--took
+me to my room, and some one--I suppose the maid--put me to bed. I
+dropped into a heavy sleep, or, rather, stupor, almost immediately.
+
+The following day a maid told me that every one in the hotel was
+talking about me and the sick condition in which I had returned to the
+hotel, walking! Every one believed I was down with some bad fever and
+had lost my mind, and there was talk of quarantining me somewhere until
+my case was properly diagnosed. I sent a boy for Mr. Campbell.
+
+He came over at once. Grumbling and muttering something under his
+breath, he stumped into my room, and when he saw I was not sick in bed,
+as report had made me, he seemed to become angry rather than pleased.
+He cleared his throat, ran his hand through his hair till it stood up
+straight on his head, and glared at me savagely.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" he demanded. "Why did you not report at
+the office last evening? Are you sick or is this some prank? What's
+this I've been hearing about you and that young cub of _The Call_?"
+
+"I don't know what you've been hearing," I said, "but I want to tell
+you that I'm not going to stay here any longer. I'm going home."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" he shouted at me.
+
+"You asked me what happened to me?" I said excitedly. "I'll tell you."
+
+And I did. When I was through, and sat sobbingly picking and twisting
+my handkerchief in my hands, he said explosively:
+
+"Why in the name of common sense did you remain behind in that place?"
+
+"I told you I wanted to go over my notes. I had not been able to report
+intelligently the proceedings, as I felt ill."
+
+"Don't you know better than to stay alone in _any_ building where there
+are likely to be black men?"
+
+No, I did not know better than that.
+
+And now began a heated quarrel and duel between us. I wanted to leave
+Jamaica at once, and this old Scotchman desired to keep me there. I had
+become a valuable asset to _The Lantern_. But I was determined to go.
+After Mr. Campbell left I sought out Dr. Manning. He had offered to
+help me if I went to America. To America, then, I would go.
+
+Dr. Manning watched my face narrowly as I talked to him. I told him of
+the experience I had had, and he said:
+
+"Now, you see, I warned you that this was no place for a girl like you."
+
+"I know it isn't," I said eagerly, "and so I'm going to leave. I want
+to take the first boat that sails from Jamaica. One leaves for Boston
+next Friday, and I can get passage on that. I want to know whether you
+meant what you said the other night about giving me a position after I
+get there."
+
+"I certainly did," he replied. "I live in Richmond, and when you get to
+Boston, telegraph me, and I will arrange for you to come right on. I
+myself am leaving to-night. Have you enough money?"
+
+I said I had, though I had only my fare and a little over.
+
+"Well," he said, "if you need more when you reach Boston, telegraph me,
+and I'll see that you get it at once."
+
+"This relieves me of much anxiety," I said. "And I'm sure I don't know
+how to thank you."
+
+He stood up, took my hand, and said:
+
+"Perhaps you won't thank me when you see what a hard-worked little
+secretary you are to be."
+
+Then he smiled again in a very fatherly way, patted my hand, and wished
+me good-by.
+
+I now felt extremely happy and excited. Assured of a position in
+America, I felt stronger and more resolved. I put on my hat and went
+over to _The Lantern_ office. After another quarrel with Mr. Campbell,
+I emerged triumphant. He released me from my contract.
+
+That evening Verley Marchmont called upon me, and of course I had to
+tell him I was leaving Jamaica, a piece of information that greatly
+disheartened him. We were on one of the large verandas of the hotel.
+The great Caribbean Sea was below us, and above, in that marvelous,
+tropical sky, a sublime moon looked down upon us.
+
+"Nora," said Verley, "I think I know what happened to you yesterday in
+Government House, and if I were sure that I was right, I'd go straight
+out and half kill that black hound."
+
+I said nothing, but I felt the tears running down my face, so sweet
+was it to feel that this fine young Englishman cared. He came over and
+knelt down beside my chair, like a boy, and he took one of my hands in
+his. All the time he talked to me he never let go my hand.
+
+"Did that nigger insult you?" he asked.
+
+I said:
+
+"He asked me to marry him."
+
+Verley snorted.
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+A lump came up stranglingly in my throat.
+
+"He--kissed--me!" The words came with difficulty.
+
+"Damn him!" cried young Verley Marchmont, clenching his hands.
+
+There was a long silence between us after that. He had been kneeling
+all this time by my chair, and at last he said:
+
+"I don't blame you for leaving this accursed hole, and I wish I were
+going with you. I wish I were not so desperately poor. Hang it all!" he
+added, with a poor little laugh. "I don't get much more than you do."
+
+"I don't care anything about money," I said. "I like people for
+themselves."
+
+"Do you like me, Nora?" He had never called me Nora till this night.
+
+I nodded, and he kissed my hand.
+
+"Well, some day then I'll go to America, too, and I'll find you,
+wherever you may be."
+
+I said chokingly, for although I was not in love with this boy, still I
+liked him tremendously, and I was sentimental:
+
+"I don't believe we'll ever meet again. We're just 'Little ships
+passing in the night.'"
+
+Marchmont was the only person to see me off. He called for me at the
+hotel, arranged all the details of the moving of my baggage, and
+then got a hack and took me to the boat. He had a large basket with
+him, which I noticed he carried very carefully. When we went to my
+state-room, he set it down on a chair, and said with his bright, boyish
+laugh:
+
+"Here's a companion for you. Every time you hear him, I want you to
+think of me."
+
+I heard him almost immediately; a high, questioning bark came out that
+package of mystery. I was delighted. A dear little dog--fox terrier,
+the whitest, prettiest dog I had ever seen. Never before in my life had
+I had a pet of any kind; never have I had one since. I lifted up this
+darling soft little dog--he was nothing but a puppy--and as I caressed
+him, he joyfully licked my face and hands. Marchmont said he was a fine
+little thoroughbred of a certain West Indian breed. His name, he said,
+was to be "Verley," after my poor big "dog" that I was leaving behind.
+
+"Are you pleased with him?" he asked.
+
+"I'm crazy about him," I replied.
+
+"Don't you think I deserve some reward, then?" he demanded softly.
+
+I said:
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"This," he said, and, stooping, kissed me.
+
+I like to think always that that was my first real kiss.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The trip home was uneventful, and, on account of Verley, spent for the
+most part in my state-room. The minute I left the room he would start
+to whine and bark so piercingly and piteously that of course I got into
+trouble, and was obliged either to take him with me or stay with him.
+
+I used to eat my meals with Verley cuddled in my lap, thrusting up his
+funny, inquiring little nose, and eating the morsels I surreptitiously
+gave him from my plate, much to the disgust of some of the passengers
+and the amusement of others.
+
+Once they tried to take Verley from me,--some of the ship's
+people,--but I went to the captain, a friend of Captain Hollowell,
+about whom I talked, and I pleaded so fervently and made such promises
+that when I reached the tearful stage he relented, and let me keep my
+little dog.
+
+I had an address of a Boston lodging-house, given me by a woman guest
+of the Myrtle Bank. A cab took me to this place, and I was fortunate
+in securing a little hall room for three dollars a week. There was
+a dining-room in the basement of a house next door where for three
+dollars and fifty cents I could get meal-tickets enough for a week.
+My landlady made no objection to Verley, but she warned me that if
+the other lodgers objected, or if Verley made any noise, I'd have to
+get rid of him. She gave me a large wooden box with straw in it. This
+was to be his bed. I didn't dare tell her that Verley slept with me.
+He used to press up as closely to my back as it was possible to get,
+and with his fore paws and his nose resting against my neck, he slept
+finely. So did I. I kept him as clean as fresh snow. I had tar soap,
+and I scrubbed him every day in warm water, and I also combed his
+little white coat. If I found one flea on him, I killed it.
+
+The first day I went into the dining-room next door with little Verley
+at my heels, every one turned round and looked at him, he was such a
+pretty, tiny little fellow, and so friendly and clean. The men whistled
+and snapped their fingers at him. He ran about from table to table,
+making friends with every one, and being fed by every one.
+
+I was given a seat at a table where there was just one other girl.
+Now here occurred one of the coincidences in my life that seem almost
+stranger than fiction. The girl at the table was reading a newspaper
+when I sat down, and I did not like to look at her at once; but
+presently I became aware that she had lowered her paper, and then I
+glanced up. An exclamation escaped us simultaneously, and we jumped to
+our feet.
+
+"Nora!" she screamed.
+
+"Marion!" I cried.
+
+She was one of my older sisters!
+
+As soon as we recognized each other, we burst out hysterically laughing
+and crying. Excited words of explanation came tumbling from our lips.
+
+"What are you doing here?"
+
+"What are you?"
+
+"Why aren't you in Jamaica?"
+
+"Why aren't you in Quebec?"
+
+I soon explained to Marion how I came to be in Boston, and then, crying
+and eating at the same time, she told me of her adventures. They were
+less exciting, but more romantic, than mine. She had left Quebec on
+account of an unhappy love-affair. She had quarreled with the young
+man to whom she was engaged, and "to teach him a lesson, and because,
+anyway, I hate him," she had run away. She had been in Boston only one
+day longer than I. She said she had been looking for work for two days,
+but only one kind had been offered her thus far. I asked her what that
+was. Her eyes filled with tears, and she said bitterly, that of an
+artist's model.
+
+Marion could paint well, and papa had taught her considerably. It was
+her ambition, of course, to be an artist. In Quebec she had actually
+had pupils, and made a fair living teaching children to draw and paint
+on china. But here in Boston she stood little chance of getting work
+like that. Nevertheless, she had gone the rounds of the studios,
+hoping to find something to do as assistant and pupil. Nearly every
+artist she had approached, however, had offered to engage her as a
+model.
+
+Marion was an unusually pretty girl of about twenty-two, with an almost
+perfect figure, large, luminous eyes, which, though fringed with black
+lashes, were a golden-yellow in color; hair, black, long, and glossy;
+small and charmingly shaped hands and feet; and a perfectly radiant
+complexion. In fact, she had all the qualities desirable in a model. I
+did not wonder that the artists of Boston wanted to paint her. I urged
+her to do the work, but poor Marion felt as if her best dreams were
+about to be shattered. She, who had cherished the hope of being an
+artist, shrank from the thought of being merely a model. However, she
+had scarcely any money. She said she would not mind posing in costume;
+but only one of the artists had asked her to do that, a man who wanted
+to use her in "Oriental studies."
+
+In her peregrinations among the studios she had come across other girls
+who were making a profession of posing, and one of them had taken her
+to a large art school, so that she could see exactly what the work was.
+This girl, Marion said, simply stripped herself "stark naked," and then
+went on before a large roomful of men and women. Marion was horrified
+and ashamed, but her friend, a French girl, had laughed and said:
+
+"Que voulez-vous? It ees nutting."
+
+She told Marion that she had felt just as she did at first; that all
+models experienced shame and embarrassment the first time. The plunge
+was a hard thing; and to brace the girl up for the ordeal, the model
+was accustomed to take a drink of whisky before going on. After that it
+was easy. Marion was advised to do this.
+
+"Just tek wan good dreenk," said the French girl; "then you get liddle
+stupid. After zat it doan' matter."
+
+Marion remarked hysterically that whisky might not make _her_ stupid.
+She might be disposed to be hilarious, and in that event what would the
+scandalized class do?
+
+However, Marion was hopeful, and she expected to get the costume work
+with the artist mentioned before.
+
+As for me, just as I advised Marion to take this easy work that was
+offered her, so she most strenuously advised me not to waste my time
+looking for work in Boston, but to go on to Richmond, where a real
+position awaited me.
+
+It is curious how natural it is for poor girls to slip along the path
+of least resistance. We wanted to help each other, and yet each advised
+the other to do something that upon more mature thought might have been
+inadvisable; for both courses held pitfalls of which neither of us was
+aware. However, we seized what was nearest to our hand.
+
+Marion got the work to pose in Oriental studies next day, and I, who
+had telegraphed Dr. Manning, received by telegraph order money for my
+fare. I at once set out for Richmond, and I did not see my sister again
+for nearly five years. I left her crying at the station.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+They would not let me keep my little dog with me on the train, although
+I had smuggled him into my Pullman in a piece of hand baggage; but in
+the morning he betrayed us. Naughty, excitable, lonely little Verley!
+The conductor's heart, unlike that sea-captain's, was made of stone.
+Verley was banished to the baggage-car. However, I went with him, and I
+spent all of that day with my dog among the baggage, not even leaving
+him to get something to eat; for I had brought sandwiches.
+
+There were a number of other dogs there besides Verley, and they kept
+up an incessant barking. One of the trainmen got me a box to sit on,
+and I took my little pet on my lap. The trainmen were very kind to me.
+They told me they'd feed Verley well and see that he got plenty of
+water; but I would not leave him. I said I thought it was shameful of
+that conductor to make me keep my little dog there. The men assured
+me it was one of the rules of the road, and that they could make no
+exception in my case. They pointed out several other dogs, remarkable
+and savage-looking hounds, which belonged to a multi-millionaire, so
+they said, and I could see for myself that even he was obliged to have
+them travel this way.
+
+While the men were reassuring me, a very tall man came into the car and
+went over to these hounds. They were making the most deafening noises.
+They were tied, of course, but kept leaping out on their chains, and
+I was afraid they would break loose, and perhaps attack and rend my
+little Verley.
+
+The tall man gave some instructions to a man who seemed to be in charge
+of the hounds, and after patting the dogs' heads and scratching their
+ears, he started to leave the car, when he chanced to see me, and
+stopped to look at Verley.
+
+Before I even saw his face there was something about his personality
+that affected me strangely, for though I had been talking freely with
+the men in the baggage-car, I suddenly felt unconscionably shy. He
+had a curious, drawling voice that I have since learned to know as
+Southern. He said:
+
+"Is that your little dog?"
+
+I nodded, and looked up at him.
+
+I saw a man of between thirty-five and forty. (I have since learned
+he was forty-one.) His face was clean-shaven, and while not exactly
+wrinkled, was lined on the forehead and about the mouth. It was lean
+and rather haggard-looking. His lips were thin, and his steel-gray eyes
+were, I think, the weariest and bitterest eyes I have ever seen, though
+when he smiled I felt strangely drawn to him, even that first time.
+He was dressed in a light gray suit, and it looked well on him, as his
+hair at the temples was of the same color. As my glance met his curious
+smile, I remember that, embarrassed and blushing, I dropped my eyes to
+his hands, and found that they impressed me almost as much as his face.
+It is strange how one may be so moved by another at the first meeting!
+At once I had a feeling, a sort of subtle premonition, you might call
+it, that this man was to loom large in my life for all the rest of my
+days.
+
+Stooping down, he patted Verley as he lay on my lap, but as he did so,
+he kept looking at me with a half-teasing, half-searching glance. I
+felt flustered, embarrassed, ashamed, and angry with myself for feeling
+so much confusion.
+
+"What's your dog's name?" he asked.
+
+He was opening and shutting his hand over Verley's mouth. The dog was
+licking his hand as if he liked him.
+
+"Verley," I replied.
+
+"Verley! That's a pretty name. Who's he named for?"
+
+"The young Englishman who gave him to me," I said.
+
+"I see!"
+
+He laughed as if I had confided something to him. I said ingenuously:
+
+"He's a real thoroughbred," and that caused him to smile again.
+
+He had turned Verley over on my lap, and was dancing his fingers over
+the dog's gaping mouth, but he still kept looking at me, with, I
+thought, a half-interested, half-amused expression.
+
+"He's a fine little fellow," he said. "Where is he going?"
+
+"To Richmond."
+
+"To Richmond!"
+
+That seemed greatly to surprise him, and he asked why I was going
+to that city, and if I knew any one there. I said that I knew Dr.
+Manning; that I had met him in the West Indies, and he had promised me
+a position as his secretary.
+
+By this time he had let Verley alone, and was staring at me hard. After
+a moment he said:
+
+"Do you know Dr. Manning well?"
+
+"No; but he has been kind enough to offer me the position," I replied.
+He seemed to turn this over in his mind, and then he said:
+
+"Put your little dog back in his box, and suppose you come along and
+have dinner with me."
+
+I did not even think of refusing. Heedless of the frantic cries of my
+poor little dog, I followed this stranger into the dining-car.
+
+I don't know what we ate. I do know it was the first time I had ever
+had clams. I did not like them at all, and asked him what they were. He
+seemed highly amused. He had a way of smiling reluctantly. It was just
+as if one stirred or interested him against his will, and a moment
+after his face would somehow resume its curiously tired expression.
+Also I had something to drink,--I don't know what,--and it came before
+dinner in a very little glass. Needless to say, it affected me almost
+immediately, though I only took two mouthfuls, and then made such a
+face that again he laughed, and told me I'd better let it alone.
+
+It may have been because I was lonely and eager for some one I could
+talk to, but I think it was simply that I fell under the impelling
+fascination of this man from the first. Anyhow, I found myself telling
+him all of my poor little history: where I had come from; the penniless
+condition in which I had arrived in Jamaica; my work there; the people
+I had met; and then, yes, I told _him_ that very first day I met him,
+of that horrible experience I had had in the Government House.
+
+While I talked to him, he kept studying me in a musing sort of way,
+and his face, which perhaps might have been called a hard or cold one,
+softened rather beautifully, I thought, as he looked at me. He did not
+say a word as I talked, but when I came to my experience with Burbank,
+he leaned across the table and watched me, almost excitedly. When I was
+through, he said softly:
+
+"Down South we lynch a nigger for less than that," and one of his long
+hands, lying on the table, clenched.
+
+Although we were now through dinner, and I had finished my story,
+he made no move to leave the table, but sat there watching me and
+smoking, with neither of us saying anything. Finally I thought to
+myself:
+
+"I suppose he is thinking of me as Mr. Campbell and Sir Henry Drake and
+other people have--as something queer and amusing, and perhaps he is
+laughing inside at me." I regretted that I had told him about myself
+one minute, and the next I was glad that I had. Then suddenly I had
+an eloquent desire to prove to him that really there was a great deal
+more to me than he supposed. Down in my heart there was the deep-rooted
+conviction, which nothing in the world could shake, that I was one of
+the exceptional human beings of the world, that I was destined to do
+things worth while. People were going to hear of _me_ some day. I was
+not one of the commonplace creatures of the earth, and I intended to
+prove that vividly to the world. But at that particular moment my one
+desire was to prove it to this man, this stranger with the brooding,
+weary face. So at last, awkwardly and timidly, and blushing to my
+temples and ears, and daring scarcely to look at him, I said:
+
+"If you like, I'll read you one of my poems."
+
+The gravity of his face softened. He started to smile, and then he said
+very gravely:
+
+"So you write poetry, do you?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Go ahead," he said.
+
+I dipped into my pocket-book, and brought forth my last effusion.
+As I read, he brought his hand to his face, shading it in such a way
+that I could not see it, and when I had finished, he was silent for
+so long that I did not know whether I had made an impression upon him
+or whether he was amused, as most people were when I read my poems to
+them. I tremblingly folded my paper and replaced it in my bag; then I
+waited for him to speak. After a while he took his hand down. His face
+was still grave, but away back in his eyes there was the kindliest
+gleam of interest. I felt happy and warmed by that look. Then he said
+something that sent my heart thudding down low again.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to go to school?" said he.
+
+"I did go to school," I said.
+
+"Well, I mean to--er--school to prepare you for college."
+
+The question hurt me. It was a visible criticism of my precious poem.
+Had that, then, revealed my pathetic condition of ignorance? I said
+roughly, for I felt like crying:
+
+"Of course college is out of the question for me. I have to earn my
+living; but I expect to acquire an education gradually. One can educate
+herself by reading and thinking. My father often said that, and he's a
+college man--an Oxford graduate."
+
+"That's true," said the man rather hurriedly, and as if he regretted
+what he had just said, and wished to dismiss the subject abruptly: "Now
+I'm going to take you back to your seat. We'll be in Richmond very
+shortly now."
+
+We got up, but he stopped a minute, and took a card from his pocket. He
+wrote something on it, and then gave it to me.
+
+"There, little girl, is my name and address," he said. "If there ever
+comes a time when you--er--need help of any kind, will you promise to
+come to me?"
+
+I nodded, and then he gave me a big, warm smile.
+
+When I was quite alone, and sure no one was watching me, I took out his
+card and examined it. "Roger Avery Hamilton" was his name. Judge of my
+surprise, when I found the address he had written under his name was in
+the very city to which I was going--Richmond!
+
+I arrived about eight-thirty that evening. Dr. Manning was at the train
+to meet me. He greeted me rather formally, I thought, for a man who had
+been so pronounced in his attentions in Jamaica.
+
+As he was helping me into his carriage, Mr. Hamilton passed us, with
+other men.
+
+"You forgot your dog," he said to me, smiling, and handed me a basket,
+in which, apparently, he had put my Verley. I had indeed forgotten my
+poor little dog! I thanked Mr. Hamilton, and he lifted his hat, and
+bade us good night.
+
+Dr. Manning turned around sharply and looked after him. They had
+exchanged nods.
+
+"How did you get acquainted with that chap?" he asked me. I was now in
+the carriage, and was settling Verley in his basket at my feet.
+
+"Why, he spoke to me on the train," I said.
+
+"Spoke to you on the train!" repeated the doctor, sharply. "Are you
+accustomed to make acquaintances in that way?"
+
+My face burned with mortification, but I managed to stammer:
+
+"No, I never spoke to any one before without an introduction."
+
+He had climbed in now and was about to take up the reins when Verley,
+at our feet, let out a long, wailing cry.
+
+"I'll have to throw that beast out, you know," he said unpleasantly.
+
+"Oh, no! Please, please don't throw my little dog out!" I begged as he
+stooped down. "It's a beautiful little dog, a real thoroughbred. It's
+worth a lot of money."
+
+My distress apparently moved him, for he sat up and patted me on the
+arm and said:
+
+"It's all right, then. It's all right."
+
+The doctor again began to question me about Mr. Hamilton, and I
+explained how he became interested in my dog; but I did not tell him
+about my dining with him.
+
+"You ought to be more careful to whom you speak," he said. "For
+instance, this man in particular happens to be one of the fastest men
+in Richmond. He has a notorious reputation."
+
+I felt very miserable when I heard that, especially when I recalled how
+I had talked intimately about myself to this man; and then suddenly I
+found myself disbelieving the doctor. I felt sure that he had slandered
+Mr. Hamilton, and my dislike for him deepened. I wished that I had not
+come to Richmond.
+
+Dr. Manning's house was large and imposing. It stood at a corner on a
+very fine street. A black girl opened the door.
+
+"You will meet Mrs. Manning in the morning," said the doctor to me, and
+then, turning to the girl: "'Mandy, this is Miss Ascough. She is coming
+to live with us here. Take her up to her room." To me he said, "_Good_
+night." With a perfunctory bow, he was turning away, when he seemed to
+recall something, and said: "By the way, 'Mandy, tell Toby to put the
+dog he'll find in the buggy in the stable."
+
+I started to plead for Verley, but the doctor had disappeared into his
+office. A lump rose in my throat as I thought of my little dog, and
+again I wished that I had not come to this place. The doctor seemed a
+different man to the one I had known in the West Indies, and although I
+had resented his flattery of me there, the curt, authoritative tone he
+had used to me here hurt me as much.
+
+Curiously enough, though I had not thought about the matter
+previously, nor had he told me, I was not surprised to find that he was
+married.
+
+My room was on the top floor. It was a very large and pretty chamber,
+quite the best room I had ever had, for even the hotel room, which had
+seemed to me splendid, was bare and plain in comparison.
+
+'Mandy was a round-faced, smiling, strong-looking girl of about
+eighteen. Her hair was screwed up into funny little braids that stuck
+up for all the world like rat-tails on her head. She had shiny black
+eyes, and big white teeth. She called me "chile," and said:
+
+"I hopes you sleep well, honey chile."
+
+She said her room was just across the hall, and if I wanted anything in
+the night, I was to call her.
+
+My own room was very large, and it was mostly in shadow. Now, all my
+life I've had the most unreasonable and childish fear of "being in the
+dark alone." I seldom went to bed without looking under it, behind
+bureaus, doors, etc., and I experienced a slight sense of fear as
+'Mandy was about to depart.
+
+"Isn't there any one on this floor but us?" I asked.
+
+"No; no one else sleeps up here, chile," said 'Mandy; "but Dr. Manning
+he hab he labriterry there, and some time he work all night."
+
+The laboratory was apparently adjoining my room, and there was a door
+leading into it. I went over and tried it after 'Mandy went. It was
+locked.
+
+I took my hair down, brushed and plaited it, and then I undressed and
+said my prayers (I still said them in those days), and got into bed. I
+was tired after the long journey, and I fell asleep at once.
+
+I am a light sleeper, and the slightest stir or movement awakens me.
+That night I awoke suddenly, and the first thing I saw was a light
+that came into the room from the partly opened door of the doctor's
+laboratory, and standing in my room, by the doorway, was a man. I
+recognized him, though he was only a silhouette against the light.
+
+The shock of the awakening, and the horrible realization that he was
+already crossing the room, held me for a moment spellbound. Then my
+powers returned to me, and just as I had fled from that negro in
+Jamaica, so now I ran from this white man.
+
+My bed was close to the door that opened into the hall. That was
+pitch-dark, but I ran blindly across it, found 'Mandy's door, and by
+some merciful providence my hand grasped the knob. I called to her:
+
+"'Mandy!"
+
+She started up in bed, and I rushed to her.
+
+"Wha' 's matter, chile?" she cried.
+
+I was sobbing with fright and rage.
+
+"I'm afraid," I told her.
+
+"What you 'fraid of?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I'm afraid to sleep alone," I said. "Please, please,
+let me stay with you."
+
+"Ah'll come and sleep on the couch in your room," she said.
+
+"No, no, I won't go back to that room."
+
+"It ain't ha'nted, chile," declared 'Mandy.
+
+"Oh, I know it isn't," I sobbed; "but, O 'Mandy, I'm afraid!"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Next morning 'Mandy went back with me to my room. There was no one in
+it. For a moment the thought came to me that perhaps I had suffered
+from a nightmare. My clothes, everything, I found exactly as I had left
+them. I went over to the door opening from my room into the laboratory,
+and then I knew that I had not erred: the door was unlocked. I saw
+'Mandy watching me, and I think she guessed the truth, for she said:
+
+"You needn't be 'fraid no more, chile. I goin' to sleep with you every
+night now."
+
+"No, 'Mandy," I said; "I can't stay here now. I've got to get away
+somehow."
+
+"Dat's all right, chile," she said. "Jus' you tek you li'l' bag and
+slip out right now. No one's stirring in dis house yet. You won't be
+missed till after you sure am gone."
+
+I was sitting on the side of the bed, feverishly turning the matter
+over in my mind.
+
+"I wish I could do that," I said, "but I have no place to go, and I
+have no money."
+
+'Mandy comforted me as best she could, and told me to wait till after
+breakfast, when I'd feel better; then I could talk to the doctor about
+it, and perhaps he'd give me some money; and if he wouldn't, said the
+colored girl, shrewdly, "you tell him you goin' ask his wife."
+
+I felt I could not do that. I would have to find some other solution.
+One thing was certain, however, I could no more stay here than I could
+in Jamaica. There are times in my life when I have been whipped and
+scorched, and nothing has healed me save to get away quickly from the
+place where I have suffered. I felt like that in Jamaica. I felt like
+that now. There came another time in my life when I uprooted my whole
+being from a place I loved, and yet where it would have killed me to
+remain.
+
+The doctor met me in the lower hall as I came down-stairs. His manner
+was affable and formal, and he said he would take me to his wife. I
+found myself unable to look him in the face, for I felt his glance
+would be hateful.
+
+Mrs. Manning was in bed, propped up with pillows. At first glance she
+seemed an old woman. Her pale, parched face lay like a shadow among her
+pillows, and her fine, silvery hair was like an exquisite aureole. She
+had dark, restless, seeking eyes, and her expression was peevish, like
+that of a complaining child. As I came in, she raised herself to her
+elbow, and looked curiously at me and then at the doctor, who said:
+
+"This is Miss Ascough, dear. She is to be my new secretary."
+
+She put out a thin little hand, which I took impetuously in my
+own, and, I know not why, I suddenly wanted to cry again. There
+was something in her glance that hurt me. I had for her that same
+overwhelming pity that I had felt for Miss Foster in Jamaica--a pity
+such as one involuntarily feels toward one who is doomed. She murmured
+something, and I said, "Thank you," though I did not understand what
+she had said. Then the doctor shook up her pillows and settled her back
+very carefully among them, and he kissed her, and she clung to him. I
+realized that, incredible as it seemed, here where I had expected it
+least there was love.
+
+After breakfast, which I had with the doctor, who read the morning
+paper throughout the meal, waited on by 'Mandy, he took me down to his
+offices, two large adjoining rooms on the ground floor, in one wing
+of the house. One room was used as a reception-room, the other as the
+doctor's own. Showing me through the offices, he had indicated the
+desk at which I was to sit in the reception-room before I summoned the
+courage to tell him I had decided to go. When I faltered this out,
+he turned clear around, and although an exclamation of astonishment
+escaped him, I knew that he was acting. I felt sure that he had been
+waiting for me to say something about the previous night.
+
+"You certainly cannot realize what you are saying, Miss Ascough. Why
+should you leave a position before trying it?"
+
+I looked steadily in his face now, and I was no longer afraid of him.
+I was only an ignorant girl of seventeen, and he was a man of the
+world past forty. I was friendless, had no money, and was in a strange
+country. He was a man of power, and, I suppose, even wealth. This was
+the city where he was respected and known. Nevertheless, I said to him:
+
+"If I work for a man, I expect to be paid for my actual labor. That's a
+contract between us. After that, I have my personal rights, and no man
+can step over these without my consent."
+
+They were pretty big words for a young girl, and I am proud of them
+even now. I can see myself as I faced that man defiantly, though I knew
+I had barely enough money in my purse upstairs to buy a few meals.
+
+"I do not understand you," said the doctor, pulling at his beard. "I
+shall be obliged if you will make yourself clearer."
+
+"I will, then," I said. "Last night you came into my room."
+
+For a long time he did not say a word, but appeared to be considering
+the matter.
+
+"I beg your pardon for that," he said at last, "but I think my
+explanation will satisfy you. I did not know that that room was the one
+my wife had assigned to you. I had been accustomed to occupy it myself
+when engaged at night upon laboratory work. I was as mortified as you
+when I discovered my unfortunate mistake last night, and I very much
+regret the distress it gave you."
+
+No explanation could have been clearer than that, but looking at the
+man, I felt a deep-rooted conviction that he lied.
+
+"Come now," he said cheerfully, "suppose we dismiss this painful
+subject. Let us both forget it." He held out his hand, with one of his
+"fatherly" smiles. I reluctantly let him take mine, and I did not know
+what to do or say. He took out his watch and looked at it.
+
+"I have a number of calls to make before my noon hour," he said, "but I
+think I can spare an hour to explain your duties to you."
+
+They were simple enough, and in other circumstances I should have liked
+such a position. I was to receive the patients, send out bills, and
+answer the correspondence, which was light. I had one other duty, and
+that he asked me to do now. There was something wrong with his eyes,
+and it was a strain upon them for him to read. So part of my work was
+to read to him an hour in the morning and one or two in the evening.
+
+There was a long couch in the inner office, and after he had selected
+a book and brought it to me, he lay down on the couch, with a green
+shade over his eyes, and bade me proceed. The book was Rousseau's
+"Confessions."
+
+In ordinary circumstances the book would have held my interest at
+once, but now I read it without the slightest sense of understanding,
+and the powerful sentences came forth from my lips, but passed through
+heedless ears. I had read only two chapters when he said that that
+would do for to-day. He asked me to bring from the top of his desk a
+glass in which was some fluid and an eye-dropper. He requested me to
+put two drops in each of his eyes.
+
+As he was lying on his back on the couch, I had to lean over him to do
+this. I was so nervous that the glass shook in my hand. Judge of my
+horror when, in squeezing the little rubber bulb, the glass part fell
+off and dropped down upon his face.
+
+I burst out crying, and before I knew it, he was sitting up on the
+couch and comforting me, with his arms about my waist. I freed myself
+and stood up. He said:
+
+"There, there, you are a bit hysterical this morning. You'll feel
+better later."
+
+He began moving about the office, collecting some things, and putting
+them into a little black bag. Toby knocked, and called that the buggy
+was ready. As the doctor was drawing on his gloves he said:
+
+"Now, Miss Ascough, suppose you make an effort to--er accustom yourself
+to things as they are here. I'm really not such a bad sort as you
+imagine, and I will try to make you very comfortable and happy if you
+will let me."
+
+I did not answer him. I sat there twisting my handkerchief in my
+hands, and feeling dully that I was truly the most miserable girl in
+the world. As the doctor was going out, he said:
+
+"Do cheer up! Things are not nearly as bad as they seem."
+
+Maybe they were not, but, nevertheless, the stubborn obsession
+persisted in my mind that I must somehow get away from that place. How
+I was going to do that without money or friends, I did not know. And if
+I did leave this place, where could I go?
+
+I thought of writing home, and then, even in my distress, I thought of
+papa, absent-minded, impractical dreamer. Could I make him understand
+the situation I was in without telling him my actual experience? I felt
+a reluctance to tell my father or mother that. It's a fact that a young
+girl will often talk with strangers about things that she will hesitate
+to confide to her own parents. My parents were of the sort difficult to
+approach in such a matter. You see, I was one of many, and my father
+and mother were in a way even more helpless than their children. It was
+almost pathetic the way in which they looked to us, as we grew up, to
+take care of ourselves and them. Besides, it would take two days for a
+letter to reach my home, and another two days for the reply to reach
+me, and where could my poor father raise the money for my fare? No, I
+would not add to their distresses.
+
+I went up to my room, after the doctor was gone, and I aimlessly
+counted my money. I had less than three dollars. I was putting it back
+into my bag, with the papers, trinkets, cards, and the other queer
+things that congregate in a girl's pocketbook, when Mr. Hamilton's card
+turned up on my lap.
+
+I began to think of him. I sat there on the side of my bed in a sort
+of dreaming trance, recalling to my mind that charmed little journey
+in the company of this man. Every word he had said to me, the musing
+expression of his face, and his curious, grudging smile--I thought of
+all this. It was queer how in the midst of my trouble I could occupy
+my mind like this with thoughts of a stranger. I remembered that Dr.
+Manning had said he was a notorious man. I did not believe that. I
+thought of that kindly look of interest in his tired face when he had
+asked me if I wanted to go to school, and then electrically recurred to
+me his last words on the train when he had given to me his card,--that
+if I ever needed help, would I come to him?
+
+I needed help now. I needed it more than any girl ever needed it
+before. Of that I felt truly convinced. This doctor was a villain.
+There was something bad and covetous about his very glance. I had felt
+that in Jamaica. It was impossible for me to remain alone with him
+in his house; for I should be virtually alone, since his wife was a
+paralytic.
+
+Hurriedly I packed my things, shoving everything back into my
+suitcase, and then I put on my hat. In the doctor's office I found the
+telephone-book. I looked up the name of Hamilton. Yes, it was there.
+It seemed to me a miraculous thing that he really was there in that
+telephone-book and that he actually was in this city.
+
+I called the number, and somebody, answering, asked whom I wished to
+speak to, and I said Mr. Roger Avery Hamilton.
+
+"Who is it wants him?" I was asked.
+
+"Just a friend," I replied.
+
+"You will have to give your name. Mr. Hamilton is in a conference, and
+if it is not important, he cannot speak to you just now."
+
+"It is important," I said. "He would want to speak to me, I know."
+
+There was a long pause, and central asked me if I was through, and I
+said frantically:
+
+"No, no; don't ring off."
+
+Then a moment later I heard his voice, and even over the telephone it
+thrilled me so that I could have wept with relief and joy.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Mr. Hamilton, this is Miss Ascough."
+
+"Miss Ascough?"
+
+"Yes; I met you on the train coming from Boston."
+
+"Oh, yes, the little girl with the dog," he said.
+
+His voice, more than his words, warmed me with the thought that he had
+not forgotten me, and was even pleased to hear from me again.
+
+"You said if I ever needed help--"
+
+I broke off there, and he said slowly:
+
+"I--see. Where are you?"
+
+I told him.
+
+"Can you leave there right away?"
+
+I said I could, but that I did not know my way about the city.
+
+He asked me to meet him in half an hour at the St. R---- Hotel, and
+directed me explicitly what car to take to get there, telling me to
+write it down. I was to have 'Mandy put me on this car, and I must be
+sure to tell the conductor to let me off at this hotel. The car stopped
+in front of it.
+
+I wrote a note to Dr. Manning before going. I said I was sorry to leave
+in this way, but despite what he had said, I could not trust him. I
+added that I was so unhappy I had decided the best thing for me to do
+was to go at once. I left the note with 'Mandy, whom I kissed good-by,
+something I had never dreamed I could do, kiss a black girl! All the
+way on the car I was desperately afraid the conductor would not let
+me off at the right place, and I asked him so often that finally, in
+exasperation, he refused to answer me. When we at last reached there,
+he wrathfully shouted the name of the hotel into the car, though he did
+not need to cry, "Step lively!"
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Mr. Hamilton was waiting for me outside the hotel. He gave my bag to
+a boy, who produced it later, and then took me to a corner of the
+drawing-room. Almost at once he said:
+
+"I expected to hear from you, but not so soon."
+
+"You were expecting?" I said. "Why?"
+
+"Well," he said rather reluctantly, "I had a hunch you would not stay
+there long. Just what happened?"
+
+I told him.
+
+He kept tapping with his fingers on the table beside him and looking at
+me curiously. When I was through, he said:
+
+"Well, we're a pretty bad lot, aren't we?"
+
+I said earnestly:
+
+"_You're_ not!" which remark made him laugh in a rather mirthless sort
+of way, and he said:
+
+"You don't know me, my child." Then, as if to change the subject: "But
+now, what do you want to do? Where do you want to go?"
+
+"I'd like to go to some big city in America," I said. "I think, if I
+got a chance, I'd succeed as a poet or author."
+
+"Oh, that's your idea, is it?" he asked half good-humoredly, half
+rather cynically. I nodded.
+
+"Well, what big city have you decided upon?"
+
+"I don't know. You see, I know very little about the States."
+
+"How about New York or Chicago?"
+
+"Which is the nearest to you?" I asked, timidly.
+
+He laughed outright at that.
+
+"Oh, so you expect to see _me_, do you?"
+
+"I _want_ to," I said. "You _will_ come to see me, won't you?"
+
+"We'll see about it," he said slowly. "Then it's Chicago? I have
+interests there." I nodded.
+
+"And now," he went on, "how much money do you need?"
+
+That question hurt me more than I suppose he would have believed.
+Certainly I would need money to go to Chicago, but I hated to think of
+taking any from him. I felt like a beggar. Young, poor, ignorant as
+I was, even then I had an acute feeling of reluctance to permit any
+sordid considerations to come between this man and me. I was so long in
+answering him that he said lightly:
+
+"Well, how many thousands or millions of shekels do you suppose it will
+take to support a little poetess in Chicago?"
+
+I said:
+
+"You don't have to support poetesses if they are the right sort. All I
+want is enough money to carry me to Chicago. I'll get work of some kind
+then."
+
+"Well, let's see," he said. "I'll get you your ticket, and then you'd
+better have, say, a hundred dollars to start with."
+
+"No! no!" I cried out. "I couldn't use a whole hundred dollars."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I never had that much money in my life," I said. "I shouldn't know
+what to do with it."
+
+He laughed shortly.
+
+"You'll know all right," he said, "soon after you get to Chicago." Then
+he added almost bitterly, "You'll be writing to me for more within a
+week."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hamilton, I won't do that! I'll never take any more from
+you--honestly I won't."
+
+"Nonsense!" he returned lightly. "And now come along. You have time for
+a bite of luncheon before your train leaves."
+
+He ordered very carefully a meal for us, and took some time to decide
+whether I should have something to drink or not. He kept tapping the
+pencil on the waiter's pad and looking at me speculatively, and at last
+he said:
+
+"No, I guess not this time."
+
+So I got nothing to drink.
+
+It was a fine luncheon, and for the first time I had soft-shell crabs;
+also for the first time I tasted, and liked, olives. Mr. Hamilton
+seemed to take a grim sort of pleasure in watching me eat. I don't know
+why, I'm sure, unless it was because I frankly did not know what most
+of the dishes were, and I was helplessly ignorant as to which was the
+right fork or knife to use for this or that dish. I think I ate my
+salad with my oyster-fork, and I am sure I used my meat-knife for my
+butter. All these intricate things have always bothered me, and they do
+still.
+
+I suppose my eyes were still considerably swollen from the crying I had
+done, and, besides, I had slept very little after that awakening. Mr.
+Hamilton made me tell him all over again, and in minute detail, just
+what happened, and when I told him how I cried the rest of the night in
+'Mandy's arms, he said:
+
+"Yes, I can see you did," which made me say quickly, I was so anxious
+to look my best before him:
+
+"I look a fright, I know."
+
+Whereupon he slowly looked at me and said, with a suggestion of a smile:
+
+"You look pretty good to me," and that compensated for everything.
+
+He gave me the hundred dollars while we were in the dining-room, and
+advised me, with a slight smile, to hide it in "the usual place."
+
+I asked innocently where that was.
+
+"No one told you _that_ yet?" he asked teasingly, and when I shook my
+head, he laughed and said:
+
+"What a baby you are! Why, put it in your stocking, child."
+
+I turned fiery red, not so much from modesty, but from mortification
+at my ignorance and his being forced to tell me. What is more, I _had_
+kept money there before, and I remember the girl on the boat going to
+Jamaica had, too; but I did not suppose men knew girls did such things.
+
+On the way to the station, as he sat beside me in the carriage, I tried
+to thank him, and told him how much I appreciated what he was doing for
+me. I said that I supposed he had done good things like this for lots
+of other unfortunate girls like me (oh, I hoped that he had not!), and
+that I never could forget it.
+
+He said lightly:
+
+"Oh, yes, you will. They all do, you know."
+
+From this I inferred that there were "other girls," and that depressed
+me so that I was tongue-tied for the rest of the journey.
+
+We found, despite the hotel's telephoning, that it was impossible for
+me to get a lower berth. I am sure I didn't care whether I had a lower
+or upper. So, as he said he wanted me to have a comfortable journey, he
+had taken a little drawing-room for me. I didn't know what that meant
+till I got on the train. Then I saw I was to have a little car all to
+myself. The grandeur of this rather oppressed me; I do not know why.
+Nevertheless, it was an added proof of his kindness, and I stammered my
+thanks. He had come on the train with me, and was sitting in the seat
+opposite me, just as if he, too, were going. The nearer it approached
+the time for the train to leave, the sadder I felt. Perhaps, I thought,
+I should never see him again. Perhaps he looked upon me simply as a
+poor little beggar whom he had befriended.
+
+It may be that some of my reflections were mirrored on my face, for he
+suddenly asked me what I was thinking about, and I told him.
+
+"Nonsense!" he said. He had a way of dismissing things with "Nonsense!"
+
+He got up and walked up and down the little aisle a moment, pulling
+at his lower lip in a way he had, and watching me all the time. I was
+huddled up on the seat, not exactly crying, but almost. Presently he
+said:
+
+"Just as if it mattered whether you ever saw me again or not. After
+you've been in Chicago a while, you'll only think of me, perhaps, as a
+convenient old chap--a sort of bank to whom you can always apply for--"
+he paused before saying the word, and then brought it out hard--"money."
+
+"Please don't think that of me!" I cried.
+
+"I don't think it of you in particular, but of every one," he said.
+"Women are all alike. For that matter, men, too. Money is their
+god--money, _dirty_ money! That's what men, and women, exist for. They
+marry for money. They live for it. Good God! they die for it! You can
+have a man's wife or anything else, but touch his money, his dirty
+money--" He threw out his hands expressively. He had been talking
+disjointedly, and as if the subject was one that fascinated him, and
+yet that he hated. "You see," he said, "I know what I am talking
+about, because that's about all any one has ever wanted of me--my
+money."
+
+I made a little sound of protest. I was not crying, badly as I felt,
+but my face was burning, and I felt inexpressibly about that money of
+his that I, too, had taken. He went on in the jerking, bitter way he
+had been speaking:
+
+"Just now you think that such things do not count. That's because you
+are so young. You'll change quickly enough; I predict that. I can read
+your fate in your young face. You love pretty things, and were made to
+have them. Why not? Some one is going to give them to you, just as Dr.
+Manning--and, for that matter, I myself--would have given them to you
+here in Richmond. I don't doubt in Chicago there will be many men who
+will jump at the chance."
+
+He made a queer, shrugging gesture with his shoulders, and then swung
+around, looked at me hard, and as if almost he measured me. Then his
+face slightly softened, and he said:
+
+"Don't look so cut up. I'm only judging you by the rest of your sex."
+
+I said:
+
+"I'm going to prove to you that I'm different. You will see."
+
+He sat down opposite me again, and took one of my hands in his.
+
+"How will you prove it, child?" he said.
+
+"I'll never take another cent from you," I said, "and I'll give you
+back every dollar of this hundred you have lent me now."
+
+"Nonsense!" he said, and flushed, as if he regretted what he had been
+saying.
+
+"Anyway," I went on, "you're mistaken about me. I don't care so much
+about those things--pretty clothes and things like that. I like lots of
+other things better. _You_, for instance. I--I--like _you_ better than
+all the money in the world."
+
+"Nonsense!" he said again.
+
+He still had my hand in his, and he had turned it over, and was looking
+at it. Presently he said:
+
+"It's a sweet, pretty little hand, but it badly needs to be manicured."
+
+"What's that?" I asked, and he laughed and set my hands back in my lap.
+
+"Now I must be off. Send me your address as soon as you have one. Think
+of me a little, if you can."
+
+Think of him! I knew that I was destined to think of nothing else. I
+told him so in a whisper, so that he had to bend down to hear me, but
+he merely laughed--that short unbelieving, reluctant laugh, and said
+again twice:
+
+"Good-by, good-by."
+
+I followed him as far as the door, and when he turned his back toward
+me, and I thought he could not see me, I kissed his sleeve; but he did
+see me,--in the long mirror on the door, I suppose,--and he jerked his
+arm roughly back and said brusquely:
+
+"You mustn't do things like that!"
+
+Then he went out, and the door shut hard between us.
+
+I said to myself:
+
+"I will die of starvation, I will sleep homeless in the streets, I will
+walk a thousand miles, if need be, in search of work, rather than take
+money from him again. Some one has hurt him through his money, and he
+believes we are all alike; but I will prove to him that I indeed am
+different."
+
+A sense of appalling loneliness swept over me. If only a single person
+might have been there with me in my little car! If I had but the
+smallest companion! All of a sudden I remembered my little dog. My
+immediate impulse was to get directly off the train, and I rushed over
+to the door, and out upon the platform. He was down below, looking up
+at the window of my compartment; but he saw me as I came out on the
+platform and started to descend. At the same moment the train gave that
+first sort of shake which precedes the starting, and I was thrown back
+against the door. He called to me:
+
+"Take care! Go back inside!"
+
+The train was now moving, and I was holding to the iron bar.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hamilton," I cried, "I've forgotten Verley! I've forgotten my
+little dog!"
+
+He kept walking by the train, and now, as its speed increased, he was
+forced to run. He put his hand to his mouth and called to me:
+
+"I'll _bring_ him to you, little girl. Don't you worry!"
+
+Worry!
+
+I went back to my seat, and all that afternoon I did not move. The
+shining country slipped by me, but I saw it not. I was like one plunged
+in a deep, golden dream. There was a pain in my heart, but it was an
+ecstatic one, and even as I cried softly, soundlessly, something within
+me sang a song that seemed immortal.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+I saw Chicago first through a late May rain--a mad, blowing, windy
+rain. The skies were overcast and gray. There was a pall like smoke
+over everything, and through the downpour, looking not fresh and clean
+from the descending streams, but dingy and sullen, as if unwillingly
+cleansed, the gigantic buildings shot up forbiddingly into the sky.
+
+Such masses of humanity! I was one of a sweeping torrent of many, many
+atoms. People hurried this way and that way and every way. I rubbed my
+eyes, for the colossal city and this rushing, crushing mob, that pushed
+and elbowed, bewildered and amazed me.
+
+I did not know what to do when I stepped off the train and into the
+great station. For a time I wandered aimlessly about the room, jostled
+and pushed by a tremendous crowd of people, who seemed to be pouring in
+from arriving trains. It must have been about eight in the morning.
+
+All the seats in the waiting-room were taken, and after a while I sat
+down on my suitcase, and tried to plan out just what I should do.
+
+I had a hundred dollars, a fabulous sum, it seemed to me. With it I
+presumed I could live wherever I chose, and in comparative luxury. But
+that hundred dollars was not mine, and I had a passionate determination
+to spend no more of it than I should actually need. I wanted to return
+it intact to the man who had given it to me.
+
+As I had lain in my berth on the train I had vowed that he should not
+hear from me till I wrote to return his money. "Dirty money," he had
+called it, but to me anything that was his was beautiful. I planned the
+sort of letter I should write when I inclosed this money. By that time
+I should have secured a remarkable position. My stories and my poems
+would be bought by discerning editors, and I--ah me! the extravagant
+dreams of the youthful writer! What is there he is not going to
+accomplish in the world? What heights he will scale! But, then, what
+comfort, what sublime compensation for all the miserable realities of
+life, there is in being capable of such dreams! That alone is a divine
+gift of the gods, it seems to me.
+
+But now I was no longer dreaming impossible dreams in my berth. I was
+sitting in that crowded Chicago railway station, and I was confronted
+with the problem of what to do and where to go.
+
+It would of course be necessary for me to get a room the first thing;
+but I did not know just where I should look for that. I thought of
+going out into the street and looking for "furnished-room" signs, and
+then I thought of asking a policeman. I was debating the matter rather
+stupidly, I'm afraid, for the crowds distracted me, when a woman came
+up and spoke to me.
+
+She had a plain, kind face and wore glasses. A large red badge, with
+gilt letters on it, was pinned on her breast.
+
+"Are you waiting for some one?" she asked.
+
+"No," I answered.
+
+"A stranger?" was her next question.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Just come to Chicago?"
+
+"Yes. I just arrived."
+
+"Ah, you have friends or relatives here?"
+
+I told her I did not know any one in Chicago. What was I doing here,
+then, she asked me, and I replied that I expected to work. She asked at
+what, and I replied:
+
+"As a journalist."
+
+That brought a rather surprised smile. Then she wanted to know if I had
+arranged for a room somewhere, and I told her that that was just what I
+was sitting there thinking about--wondering where I ought to go.
+
+"Well, I've just got you in time, then," she said, with a pleasant
+smile. "You come along with me. I'm an officer of the Young Women's
+Christian Association." She showed me her badge. "We'll take care of
+you there."
+
+I went with her gladly, you may be sure. She led me out to the street
+and up to a large carriage, which had Y. W. C. A. in big letters on
+it. I was very fortunate.
+
+Unlike New York's Y. W. C. A., which is in an ugly down-town street,
+Chicago's is on Michigan Avenue, one of its finest streets, and is a
+splendid building.
+
+I was taken to the secretary of the association, a well-dressed young
+woman with a bleak, hard face. She looked me over sternly, and the
+first thing she said was:
+
+"Where are your references?"
+
+I took Mr. Campbell's letter of recommendation from my pocket-book, and
+handed it to her:
+
+It was as follows:
+
+
+     To Whom it may Concern:
+
+     The bearer of this, Miss Nora Ascough, has been on the staff of
+     _The Lantern_ for some time now, but unfortunately the tropical
+     climate of Jamaica is not suited to her constitution. In the
+     circumstances she has to leave a position for which her skill and
+     competency eminently qualify her.
+
+     As a stenographer, amanuensis, and reporter I can give her the
+     highest praise. She has for the entire session of the local
+     legislature reported the proceedings with credit to herself
+     and _The Lantern_, notwithstanding she was a stranger to her
+     surroundings, the people, and local politics. These are qualities
+     that can find no better recommendation. I confidently recommend
+     her to any one requiring a skilled amanuensis and reporter.
+
+
+I was justifiably proud of that reference, which Mr. Campbell had
+unexpectedly thrust upon me the day I left Jamaica. I broke down when
+I read it, for I felt I did not deserve it. The secretary of the Y.
+W. C. A., however, said in her unpleasant nasal voice as she turned it
+over almost contemptuously in her hand:
+
+"Oh, this won't do at all. It isn't even an American reference, and
+we require a reference as to your _character_ from some minister or
+doctor."
+
+Now, on the way to the association the lady who had brought me had
+told me that this place was self-supporting, that the girls must
+remember they were not objects of charity; but, on the contrary,
+that they paid for everything they got, the idea of the association
+being to _make_ no money from the girls, but simply to pay expenses.
+In that way the girls were enabled to board there at about half the
+price of a boarding-house. Under these circumstances I could not but
+inwardly resent the tone of this woman, and it seemed to me that these
+restrictions were unjust and preposterous. Of course I was not in a
+position to protest, so I turned to my friend who had brought me from
+the station.
+
+"What shall I do?" I asked her.
+
+"Can't you get a reference from your minister, dear?" she asked
+sympathetically. Why, yes, I thought I could. I'd write to Canon
+Evans, our old minister in Quebec. My friend leaned over the desk and
+whispered to the secretary, who appeared to be very busy, and irritated
+at being disturbed.
+
+All public institutions, I here assert, should have as their employees
+only people who are courteous, pleasant, and kind. One of the greatest
+hardships of poverty is to be obliged to face the autocratic martinets
+who seem to guard the doorways of all such organizations. There is
+something detestable and offensive in the frozen, impatient, and often
+insulting manner of the women and men who occupy little positions
+of authority like this, and before whom poor working-girls--and, I
+suppose, men--must always go.
+
+She looked up from her writing and snapped:
+
+"You know our rules as well as I do, Miss Dutton."
+
+"Well, but she says she can get a minister's reference in a few days,"
+said my friend.
+
+"Let her come here _then_," said the secretary as she blotted the page
+on which she was writing. How I hated her, the cat!
+
+"But I want to get her settled right away," protested my friend.
+
+How I loved her, the angel!
+
+"Speak to Mrs. Dooley about it, then," snapped the secretary.
+
+As it happened, Mrs. Dooley was close at hand. She was the matron
+or superintendent, and was a big splendid-looking woman, who moved
+ponderously, like a steam-roller. She gave one look at me only and said
+loudly and belligerently:
+
+"Sure. Let her in!"
+
+The secretary shrugged then, and took my name and address in Quebec.
+Then she made out a bill, saying:
+
+"It's five dollars in advance."
+
+I was greatly embarrassed to be obliged to admit that my money was in
+my stocking. Mrs. Dooley laughed at that, my friend looked pained, and
+the secretary pierced me with an icy glare. She said:
+
+"Nice girls don't keep their money in places like that."
+
+It was on the tip of my tongue to retort that I was not "nice," but I
+bit my tongue instead. My friend gave me the opportunity to remove my
+"roll," and I really think it made some impression on these officers of
+the Y. W. C. A., for the secretary said:
+
+"If you can afford it, you can have a room to yourself for six a week."
+
+I said:
+
+"No, I can't. This money is not mine."
+
+The elevator "boy" was a girl--a black girl.
+
+We went up and up and up. My heart was in my mouth, for I had never
+been in an elevator before. Never had I been in a tall building before.
+We did not have one in Quebec when I was there. We got off at the top
+floor. Oh, me! how that height thrilled me, and, I think, frightened
+me a little! On the way to the room, my friend--though I had learned
+her name, I always like to refer to her as "my friend." Ah, I wonder
+whether she is still looking for and picking up poor little homeless
+girls at railway stations!--said:
+
+"You know, dear, we have to be careful about references and such
+things. Otherwise all sorts of undesirable girls would get in here."
+
+"Well," I said, "I don't see why a girl who has a reference from a
+minister is any more desirable than one who has not."
+
+"No, perhaps not," she said; "but then, you see, we have to use some
+sort of way of judging. We do this to protect our good girls. This is
+frankly a place for good girls, and we cannot admit girls who are not.
+By and by you'll appreciate that yourself. We'll be protecting you,
+don't you see?"
+
+I didn't, but she was so sweet that I said I did.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Oh, such a splendid room! At least it seemed so to me, who had seen few
+fine rooms. It was so clean, even dainty. The walls and ceiling were
+pink calcimine, and some one had twisted pink tissue-paper over the
+electric lights. I didn't discover that till evening, and then I was
+delighted. No beautiful, costly lamps, with fascinating and ravishing
+shades, have ever moved me as my first taste of a shaded colored light
+in the Y. W. C. A. did.
+
+Our home in Quebec had been bare of all these charming accessories,
+and although my father was an artist, poor fellow, I remember he used
+to paint in the kitchen, with us children all about him, because
+that was the only warm room in the house. In our poor home the rooms
+were primitive and bare. Papa used to say that bare rooms were more
+tolerable than rooms littered with "trash," and since we could not
+afford good things, it was better to have nothing in the place but
+things that had an actual utility. I think he was wrong. There are
+certain pretty little things that may be "trash," but they add to the
+attractiveness of a home.
+
+Though papa was an artist, there were no pictures at all on our walls,
+as my older sisters used to take his paintings as fast as he made
+them, and go, like canvassers, from house to house and sell them for
+a few dollars. Yet my father, as a young man, had taken a gold medal
+at an exhibition at the Salon. Grandpapa, however, had insisted that
+no son of his should follow the "beggarly profession of an artist,"
+and papa was despatched to the Far East, there to extend the trade
+of my grandfather, one of England's greatest merchant princes. When
+misfortune overtook my father later, and his own people turned against
+him, when the children began to arrive with startling rapidity, then my
+father turned to art as the means of securing for us a livelihood.
+
+One of my sisters was known in Quebec as the "little lace girl." She
+sold from door to door the lace that she herself made. Marion followed
+in her steps with papa's paintings. Other sisters had left home, and
+some were married. I was the one who had to mind the children,--the
+little ones; they were still coming,--and I hated and abhorred the
+work. I remember once being punished in school because I wrote this in
+my school exercise:
+
+"This is my conception of hell: a place full of howling, roaring,
+fighting, shouting children and babies. It is supreme torture to a
+sensitive soul to live in such a Bedlam. Give me the bellowings of a
+madhouse in preference. At least there I should not have to dress and
+soothe and whip and chide and wipe the noses of the crazy ones."
+
+Ah, I wish I could have some charming memories of a lovely home! That's
+a great deal to have. It is sad to think of those we love as in poor
+surroundings.
+
+I suppose there are people in the world who would smile at the
+thought of a girl's ecstatic enthusiasm over a piece of pink paper
+on an electric light in a room in the Chicago Y. W. C. A. Perhaps I
+myself am now almost snob enough to laugh and mock at my own former
+ingenuousness. That room, nevertheless, seemed genuinely charming to
+me. There were two snow-white beds, an oak bureau, oak chairs, oak
+table, a bright rug on the floor, and simple white curtains at the
+window. At home I slept in a room with four of my little brothers and
+sisters. I hate to think of that room. As fast as I picked up the
+scattering clothes, others seemed to accumulate. _Why_ do children soil
+clothes so quickly!
+
+There was even a homey look about my room in the Y. W. C. A., for there
+were several good prints on the wall, photographs on the mantel and the
+bureau, a bright toilet set on the bureau, and a work-basket on the
+table. From these personal things I speculated upon the nature of my
+room-mate to be, and I decided she was "nice." One thing was certain,
+she was exceedingly neat, for all her articles were arranged with
+almost old-maid primness. I determined to be less careless with my own
+possessions.
+
+After unpacking my things, and hiding my money,--right back
+in my stocking, despite what the secretary had said!--I went
+down-stairs again, as I had been told a large reading-room, parlor,
+reception-rooms, etc., were on the ground floor.
+
+The night before I had planned a definite campaign for work. I intended
+to go the rounds of the newspaper offices. I would present to the
+editors first my card, which Mr. Campbell had had specially printed
+for me, with the name of our paper in the corner, show Mr. Campbell's
+reference, and then leave a number of my own stories and poems. After
+that, I felt sure, one or all of the editors of Chicago would be won
+over. You perceive I had an excellent opinion of my ability at this
+time. I wish I had it now. It was more a conviction then--a conviction
+that I was destined to do something worth while as a writer.
+
+In the reading-room, where there were a score of other girls, I found
+not only paper, pencils, pens, but all the newspapers and journals.
+Nearly all the girls were looking at the papers, scanning the
+advertising columns. I got an almanac,--we had one in Jamaica that was
+a never-failing reference-book to me,--and from it I obtained a list of
+all the Chicago papers, with the names of the proprietors and editors.
+I intended to see those editors and proprietors. It took me some time
+to make up this list, and by the time I was through it was the luncheon
+hour.
+
+I followed a moving throng of girls into a great clean dining-room,
+with scores of long tables, covered with white cloths. There were all
+sorts of girls there, pretty girls, ugly girls, young girls, old girls,
+shabby girls, and richly dressed girls. In they came, all chatting and
+laughing and seeming so remarkably care-free and happy that I decided
+the Y. W. C. A. must be a great place, and there I would stay forever,
+or at any rate until I had won Mr. Hamilton.
+
+You perceive now that I intended to court this man and, what is more,
+to win him, just as I intended to conquer Fate, and achieve fame in
+this city. How can I write thus lightly, when I felt so deeply then!
+Ah, well, the years have passed away, and we can look back with a gleam
+of humor on even our most sacred desires.
+
+It was a decent, wholesome meal, that Y. W. C. A. luncheon. All the
+girls at my table seemed to know one another, and they joked and
+"swapped" stories about their "fellows" and "bosses," and told of
+certain adventures and compliments, etc. I attracted very little
+notice, though a girl next to me--she squinted--asked me my name. I
+suppose they were used to strangers among them. New girls came and went
+every day.
+
+All the same, I did feel lonely. All these girls had positions and
+friends and beaux. I ardently hoped that I, too, would be working soon.
+A great many of them, however, were not working-girls at all, but
+students of one thing or another in Chicago who had taken advantage
+of the cheapness of the place for boarding purposes. By right they
+should not have been there, as the association was supposed to board
+only self-supporting girls. However, they got in upon one excuse or
+another, and I think the other girls were rather glad than otherwise to
+have them there. They were of course well dressed and well mannered,
+and they lifted the place a bit above the average working-girl's home.
+Curiously enough, there were few shop or factory girls there. Most of
+the girls were stenographers and bookkeepers.
+
+When I went up to my room after luncheon, I found a girl washing her
+face in the basin. She looked up, with her face puffed out and the
+water dripping from it, and she sang out in all her dampness:
+
+"Hello!"
+
+She proved, of course, to be my room-mate. Her name was Estelle Mooney.
+She was not good-looking, but was very stylish and had a good figure.
+Then, her hair appeared such a wonderful fabric that really one could
+scarcely notice anything else about her. It was a mass of rolls and
+coils and puffs, and it was the most extraordinary shade of glittering
+gold that I have ever seen. I could not imagine how she ever did it up
+like that--till I saw her take it off! Well, that hair, false though
+it was, entirely dominated her face. It was stupendous, remarkable.
+However, it was the fashion at that time to wear one's hair piled
+gigantically upon one's head, and every one had switches and rolls
+and rats galore--every one except me. I had a lot of hair of my own.
+It came far down below my waist, and was pure black in color. It waved
+just enough to look well when done up. Canadian girls all have good
+heads of hair. I never saw an American girl with more than a handful.
+Still, they make it look so fine that it really does not matter--till
+they take it down or off.
+
+My room-mate chewed gum constantly, and the back of our bureau was
+peppered with little dabs that she, by the way, told me to "please let
+alone." As if I'd have touched her old gum! I laughed at the idea then;
+I can still laugh at the remembrance.
+
+Estelle was a character, and she talked so uniquely that for once in
+my life I listened, tongue-tied and secretly enchanted. Never had
+I heard such speech. With Estelle to room with, why had I not been
+born a female George Ade! But, then, I soon discovered that nearly
+all American girls (the working-girls at least) used slang fluently
+in their speech, and it did not take me long to acquire a choice
+vocabulary of my own.
+
+Estelle had to return to her office by one, so she could snatch only
+a moment's conversation with me, and she talked with hair-pins in her
+mouth, and while sticking pins, bone knobs, and large rhinestone pins
+and combs into that brilliant mass of hair that dominated her. On
+top of this she finally set a great work of art, in the shape of an
+enormous hat. Its color scheme was striking, and set rakishly upon
+Estelle's head, it certainly did look "fetching" and stylish.
+
+Now, this girl, with all her slang and gaudy attire, was earning
+fifteen dollars a week as a stenographer and type-writer. She not only
+supported herself in "ease and comfort," as she herself put it, but
+she contributed three dollars a week to her family--she hailed from
+Iowa, despite her name--and she saved two dollars a week. Also she
+was engaged. She showed me her ring. I envied her not so much for the
+ring as for the man. I should have loved to be engaged. She said if it
+wasn't for the fact that her "fellow" called every evening, she'd take
+me out with her that night; and perhaps if Albert didn't object too
+much, she would, anyhow. Albert must have objected, for she did not
+take me.
+
+Albert worked in the same office as Estelle. He got twelve dollars a
+week; but Estelle planned that if they married, Albert, who was the
+next in line, would take her place. He was bound to rise steadily in
+the firm, according to Estelle. As they did not intend to marry for
+two or three years, she expected to have considerable saved by then,
+especially as Albert was also saving. I liked Estelle from the first,
+and she liked me. I always got on well with her, though she used to
+look at me suspiciously whenever she took a piece of gum from the back
+of the bureau, as if she wondered whether I had been at work upon it in
+her absence.
+
+I don't know how I found my way about the city that afternoon, but
+I declare that there was not a single newspaper office in Chicago at
+which I did not call. I went in with high hopes, and I sent in my
+card to proprietor and editor, and coldly stared out of countenance
+the precocious office boys, patronizing, pert, pitying, impudent, or
+indifferent, who in every instance barred my way to the holy of holies
+within. In not one instance did I see a proprietor of a paper. No
+deeply impressed editor came rushing forth to bid me enter. In most of
+the offices I was turned away with the cruel and laconic message of the
+office boy of "Nothing doing."
+
+In two cases "cub" reporters--I suppose they were that, for they
+looked very little older than the office boys--came out to see me, but
+although they paid flattering attention to the faltering recitation
+of my experiences as a reporter in Jamaica, West Indies, they, too,
+informed me there was "nothing doing," though they took my address. As
+far as that goes, so did the office boys. One of the reporters asked me
+if I'd like to go out to dinner with him some night. I said no; I was
+not looking for dinners, but for a position.
+
+I was very tired when I reached "home." I went up to my room to think
+the matter over alone, for the reading-room and the halls were crowded
+with girls. Estelle, however, had returned from work. She had taken off
+all her puffs and rats, and looked so funny with nothing but her own
+hair that I wanted to laugh, but turned away, as I would not have hurt
+her feelings for worlds.
+
+"Hello!" she cried as I came in. "Dead tired, ain't you?"
+
+How _can_ a firm employ a stenographer who says "ain't"?
+
+She offered me a piece of gum--unchewed. I took it and disconsolately
+went to work.
+
+"Got soaked in the eye, didn't you?" she inquired sympathetically.
+
+I nodded. I knew what she meant by that.
+
+"Well, you'll get next to something soon," said Estelle. "What's your
+line?"
+
+I started to say "journalism." In Canada we never say "newspaper work."
+Journalism seems a politer and more dignified term. To Estelle I said,
+"I write," thinking that that would be clear; but it was not. She
+thought I meant I wrote letters by hand, and she said at once:
+
+"Say, if I were you, I'd learn type-writing. You can clip off ten words
+on the machine to one you can write by hand, and it's dead easy to get
+a job as a type-writer. Gee! I don't see how you expect to get anything
+by writing! That's out of date now, girl. Say, where do you come from,
+anyhow?"
+
+Unconsciously, Estelle had given me an idea. Why should I not learn
+type-writing? I was an expert at shorthand, and if I could teach myself
+that, I could also teach myself type-writing. If a girl like Estelle
+could get fifteen dollars a week for work like that, what could not I,
+with my superior education--
+
+Heavens and earth! compared with Estelle I called myself "educated," I
+whose mind was a dismal abyss of appalling ignorance!
+
+A type-writer, then, I determined to be. It was a come-down; but I felt
+sure I would not need to do it for long. Estelle generously offered to
+have a type-writer sent to our room (three dollars a month for a good
+machine), and she said she would show me how to use it. In a few weeks,
+she said, I would be ready for a position.
+
+A few weeks! I intended to go to work at once. I had a hundred dollars
+to pay back. Already I had used five of it. If I stayed here a few
+weeks without working, it would rapidly disappear. Then, even when I
+did get a position, suppose they gave me only a beginner's salary, how
+could I do more than pay my board from that? The possibility of getting
+that hundred dollars together again would then be remote, remote. And
+if I could not get it, how, then, was I to see _him_ again?
+
+I would stick to my first resolve. I would not write to him until I
+could send him back that money--that dirty money. I felt that it stood
+between us like a ghost.
+
+I wonder if many girls suffer from this passionate sensitiveness about
+money. Or was I exceptional? _He_ has said so, and yet I wonder.
+
+I was determined to get work at once. I would learn and practise
+type-writing at night, but I would not wait till I had learned it,
+but look for work just the same through the day. Secretly I thought
+to myself that if Estelle took three weeks in which to learn the
+type-writer, as she said she did, I could learn it in two days. That
+may sound conceited, but you do not know Estelle. I take that back. I
+misjudged Estelle. Ignorant and slangy she may have been, but she was
+sharp-witted, quick about everything, and so cheerful and good-humored
+that I do not wonder she was able to keep her position for four or five
+years. In fact, for the kind of house she was in--a clothing firm--she
+was even an asset, for she "jollied" the customers and at times even
+took the place of a model. She said she was "a perfect thirty-six, a
+Veenis de Mylo."
+
+Conceit carries youth far, and if I had not had that confidence in
+myself, I should not have been able to do what I did.
+
+All next day I tramped the streets of Chicago, answering advertisements
+for "experienced" (mark that!) stenographers and type-writers. I was
+determined never to be a "beginner." I would make a bluff at taking a
+position, and just as I had made good with Mr. Campbell, so I felt I
+should make good in any position I might take. I could not afford to
+waste my time in small positions, and I argued that I would probably
+lose them as easily as the better positions. So I might as well start
+at the top.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+I hate to think of those nightmare days that followed. It seemed to me
+that a hundred thousand girls answered every advertisement. I stood
+in line with hundreds of them outside offices and shops and factories
+and all sorts of places. I stood or sat (when I could get a seat) in
+crowded outer offices with scores of other girls, all hungrily hoping
+for the "job" which only one of us could have.
+
+Then I began to go from office to office, selecting a building, and
+going through it from the top to the bottom floor. Sometimes I got
+beyond the appraising office boys and clerks of outer offices, and
+sometimes I was turned away at the door.
+
+I have known what it is to be pitied, chaffed, insulted, "jollied"; I
+have had coarse or delicate compliments paid me; I have been cursed at
+and ordered to "clear out--" oh, all the crucifying experiences that
+only a girl who looks hard for work knows!
+
+I've had a fat broker tell me that a girl like me didn't need to work;
+I've had a pious-looking hypocrite chuck me under the chin, out of
+sight of his clerks in the outer offices. I've had a man make me a
+cold business proposition of ten dollars a week for my services as
+stenographer and type-writer, and ten dollars a week for my services
+as something else. I've had men brutally touch me, and when I have
+resented it, I have seen them spit across the room in my direction, and
+some have cursed me.
+
+And I have had men slip into my hand the price of a meal, and then
+apologize when they saw they had merely hurt me.
+
+When the day was done, I've wearily climbed aboard crowded cars and
+taken my stand, packed between a score of men and women, or clung to
+straps or doors, and I have envied those other people on the car,
+because I felt that most of them were returning from work, while I was
+looking for it.
+
+And then I've gone back to my room in the Y. W. C. A., hurrying to get
+there before the chattering, questioning Estelle, and counted over my
+ever-diminishing hundred dollars, and lain down upon my bed, feverishly
+to think ever and only of _him_! Oh, how far, far away now he always
+seemed from me!
+
+Sometimes, if I came in early enough, and if I were not too desperately
+tired, I would write things. Odds and ends--what did I not write? Wisps
+of thoughts, passionate little poems that could not bear analysis; and
+then one day I wrote a little story of my mother's land. I had never
+been there, and yet I wrote easily of that quaint, far country, and of
+that wandering troupe of jugglers and tight-rope dancers of which my
+own mother had been one.
+
+A week passed away, and still I had found no work. What was worse, I
+had no way of learning type-writing, even with the machine before me;
+for Estelle, despite her promises, went out every night with Albert.
+She had merely shown me one morning how to put the paper on and move
+the carriage back and forth. I used to sit before that type-writer and
+peck at the type, but my words ran into one another, and sometimes the
+letters were jumbled together.
+
+I now knew a few of the girls in the house to speak to slightly, but I
+hesitated to ask any of them to show me something that perhaps I ought
+to pay to learn; for I did not want to spend the money for that. So I
+waited for Estelle to keep her promise.
+
+Sometimes I would approach a group of girls, with the intention of
+asking one of them to come with me up to my room, and then when she was
+there, ask her about the type-writer; but the girls at the Y. W. C. A.
+were always occupied in one way or another in the evening, and a great
+many of them, like myself, were looking for work.
+
+They used to cluster together in the lower halls and reading-room and
+talk over their experiences. Snorts of indignation, peals of laughter,
+strenuous words of advice--all these came in a stream from the girls.
+You'd hear one girl tell an experience, and another would say, "I tell
+you what _I'd_ have done: I'd have slapped him in the face!" Or again,
+a girl would say, "I just gave him one look that petrified him." From
+all of which I gathered that my own experiences while looking for
+work were common ones. Alas! most of us had passed the stage where we
+"smacked" or "slapped" a man in the face or "petrified" him with a
+stare when he insulted us. What was the use? I had got so that I would
+take a nasty proposition from a man with a shrug and a smile, and walk
+out gamely.
+
+I dare say there are people who cannot believe men are so base. Well,
+we girls who work see them at their worst, remember, and sometimes we
+see them at their best. There are men so fine and great in the business
+world that they compensate for all the contemptible wolves who prey
+upon creatures weaker and poorer than they are.
+
+I did not have time in those days to notice much that happened in
+the house, and yet small riots and strikes were on all sides of us.
+Girls were protesting about this or that. I remember one of the chief
+grievances was having to attend certain amateur theatrical performances
+given by patronesses of the association. We poor girls were obliged
+to sit through these abortive efforts at amusing us. Most of us, as
+Estelle said, could have "put it all over" these alleged actors.
+Then, not all of the girls cared to attend the religious services and
+prayer meetings. It was a real hardship to be obliged to sit through
+these when one would have much preferred to remain in one's room. The
+ten-o'clock rule was the hardest of all. At that hour all lights went
+out. We were supposed to be in bed unless we had permission to remain
+out later. Vehement protests against this rule were daily hurled at the
+powers that were, but in vain. The girls asserted that as there were no
+private parlors in which to see their company, they were obliged to go
+out, and it was cruel to make it obligatory to be in so early.
+
+So, you see, pleasant as in many ways the association was, it had its
+drawbacks. Even I, who was charmed with the place, and grateful for the
+immediate shelter it gave me, revolted after I had been working some
+time.
+
+One day a statue of General Logan was to be unveiled opposite our
+place, and a great parade was to mark the occasion. Naturally the
+windows of our house that faced the avenue were desirable and admirable
+places from which not only to see the parade, but to watch the
+unveiling exercises. Promptly the patrons and patronesses descended
+upon us, and our windows were demanded. We girls were told we would
+have to give up our rooms for that afternoon and go to the roof.
+
+I'll tell you what one girl did. When the fine party that was to occupy
+her room knocked upon her door, she called, "Come in!" and when they
+entered, they found the young person in bed. She declined to get up.
+
+Threats, coaxings, the titterings and explosive laughter of the
+association's "honored guests" (they were of both sexes) fell upon deaf
+ears. She declined to get up, and dared any one of them to force her
+up. She said she had paid for that room, and she, and no one else, was
+going to occupy it that day. That girl was I. I suppose I would have
+been put out of the place for that piece of unheard-of defiance but for
+the fact that one of the patronesses undertook to champion me. She said
+I was perfectly right, and as she was a most important patroness, I was
+not disturbed, though I received a severe lecture from Miss Secretary.
+
+Taken on the whole, however, it was a good place. We had a fine
+gymnasium and even a room for dancing. There were always lectures of
+one kind or another, and if a girl desired, she could acquire a fair
+education.
+
+At the end of my second week, and while I was still looking for a
+place, I made my first real girl friend and chum. I had noticed her in
+the dining-room, and she, so she said, had specially selected me for
+consideration. She called upon me one evening in my room. Of course she
+was pretty, else I am afraid I should not have been attracted to her.
+Pretty things hypnotize me. She was several years older than I, and was
+what men call a "stunning-looking" girl. She was tall, with a beautiful
+figure, which she always showed to advantage in handsome tailor-made
+suits. Her complexion was fair, and she had laughing blue eyes. She was
+the wittiest and prettiest and most distinguished-looking girl in the
+house. I forgot to describe her hair. It was lovely, shining, rippling
+hair, the color of "Kansas corn," as one of her admirers once phrased
+it.
+
+Estelle was out that evening, and while I was forlornly picking at my
+type-writer, some one tapped at my door, and then Lolly--her name was
+Laura, but I always called her Lolly--put her head in.
+
+She said:
+
+"Anybody but yourself at home?" and when I said no, she came in, and
+locked the door behind her. She was in a pink dressing-gown so pretty
+that I could not take my eyes from it. I had never had a dressing-gown.
+
+Lolly stretched herself out on my bed, brought forth a package of
+cigarettes, a thing absolutely forbidden in the place, offered me
+one, and lit and began to smoke one herself. To be polite, I took her
+cigarette and tried to smoke it; but she burst into merry laughter at
+my effort, because I blew out instead of drawing in. However, I did my
+best.
+
+Of course, like girls, we chatted away about ourselves, and after I had
+told her all about myself, Lolly in turn told me her history.
+
+It seems she was the daughter of a prominent Texas politician whose
+marriage to a stepmother of whom Lolly heartily disapproved had induced
+her to leave home. She was trying to make a "sort of a livelihood," she
+called it, as a reporter for the newspapers.
+
+When she said this carelessly, I was so surprised and delighted that
+I jumped on the bed beside her, and in a breath I told her that that
+was the work I had done, and now wanted to do. She said that there
+"wasn't much to it," and that if she were I, she'd try to get something
+more practical and dependable. She said she had a job one day and
+none the next. At the present time she was on the _Inter Ocean_, and
+she had been assigned to "cover" the Y. W. C. A. (she called it "The
+Young Women's Cussed Association") and dig up some stories about the
+"inmates" and certain abuses of the officials. She said she'd have a
+fine "story" when she got through.
+
+How I envied her for her work! Hoping she might help me secure a
+similar position, I read to her my latest story. She said it was "not
+bad," but still advised me to get a stenographer's place in preference.
+She said there were five thousand and ninety-nine positions for
+stenographers to one for women reporters, and that if I got a good
+place, I would find time to write a bit, anyway. In that way I'd get
+ahead even better than if I had some precarious post on a newspaper, as
+the space rates were excessively low. She said that she herself did not
+make enough to keep body and soul together, but that she had a small
+income from home. She said her present place was not worth that, and
+she blew out a puff of smoke from her pretty lips. Any day she expected
+that her "head would roll off," as she had been "falling down" badly on
+stories lately.
+
+In her way Lolly was as slangy as Estelle, but there was a subtle
+difference between their slangs. Lolly was a lady. I do not care for
+the word, but gentlewoman somehow sounds affected here. Estelle was
+not. Yet Lolly was a cigarette fiend, and, according to her own wild
+tales, had had a most extraordinary career.
+
+Lolly had the most charming smile. It was as sunny as a child's, and
+showed a row of the prettiest of teeth. She was impulsive, and yet at
+times exceedingly moody.
+
+I told her I thought she was quite the prettiest girl in the place,
+whereupon she gave me a squeeze and said:
+
+"What about yourself?"
+
+Then she wanted to know what I did with myself all the time. I said:
+
+"Why, I look for work all day."
+
+"But at night?"
+
+Oh, I just stayed in my room and tried to write or to practise on the
+type-writer.
+
+"Pooh!" said Lolly, "you'll die of loneliness that way. Why don't you
+get a sweetheart?"
+
+I suppose my face betrayed me, for she said:
+
+"Got one already, have you?"
+
+"No, indeed," I protested.
+
+"Then why don't you get one?"
+
+"You talk," I said, "as if sweethearts were to be picked up any day on
+the street."
+
+"So they are, as far as that goes," said Lolly. "You just go down the
+avenue some night and see for yourself."
+
+That really shocked me.
+
+"If you mean make up to a strange man, I wouldn't do a thing like that,
+would you?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Lolly, "if I felt like it. As it is now, however, I
+have too many friends. I've got to cut some of them out. But when I
+first came here, I was so d---- lonely"--she used swear-words just like
+a man--"that I went out one night determined to speak to the first man
+who got on the car I took."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Lolly threw back her head and laughed, blowing her smoke upward as she
+did so.
+
+"He was a winner from the word go, my dear. Most of the girls get
+acquainted with men that way. Try it yourself."
+
+No, I said I wouldn't do that. It was too "common."
+
+"Pooh!" said Lolly, "Lord knows I was brought up by book rule. I was
+the bell of D----, but now I'm just a working-girl. I've come down to
+brass tacks. What a fool I'd be to follow all the conventional laws
+that used to bind me. Then, too, I'm a Bohemian. Ever hear of that
+word?" she interrupted herself to ask.
+
+I nodded.
+
+Mama used to call papa that when she was angry with him.
+
+"Well," said Lolly, "I'm the bona-fide Bohemian article. My family
+think I'm the limit. What do you think?"
+
+"I think you are trying to shock me," I said.
+
+"Well, have I?"
+
+"No, not a bit."
+
+"Then you're the only girl in the house I haven't," she said with
+relish. "You know, I'm in pretty bad here, a sore spot in the body
+politic. Out I'd go this blessed minute if it wasn't for the fact that
+they're all afraid of me--afraid I'll show 'em up scorchingly."
+
+"Would you do that?" I asked.
+
+"Watch me!" said Lolly, laughing.
+
+The lights went out, and then she swore. She had to scramble about on
+the bed to find her cigarettes. When she was going out, she said:
+
+"Oh, by the way, if you like, I'll give you a card to a fellow out in
+the stock-yards. You go out there to-morrow and see him. He may have
+something for you."
+
+Have I, I wonder, in this first rough picture of Lolly done her an
+injustice? If so, I hasten to change the effect. Lolly was a true
+adventurer; I dare not say adventuress, for that has a nasty sound. I
+wonder why, when adventurer sounds all right. Though at heart she was
+pure gold, though her natural instincts were refined and sweet, she
+took a certain reckless pleasure in, as it were, dancing along through
+life with a mocking mask held ever before her. For instance, she took
+an almost diabolic delight in painting herself in black colors. She
+would drawl off one startling story after another about herself as with
+half-closed eyes, through the smoke, she watched my face to judge of
+the effect of her recital. Sometimes she would laugh heartily at the
+end of her confidences, and then again she would solemnly assert that
+every word was true.
+
+The morning after her first visit she woke me up early and, although
+Estelle grumbled, came airily into our room and got into bed with me.
+
+A queer sort of antagonism existed between Lolly and Estelle, which I
+never quite understood at the time, though perhaps I do now. Lolly,
+with her reckless, handsome stylishness and dash represented the
+finished product of what poor Estelle tried to be. To make a crude
+sort of comparison, since Estelle herself worked in a clothing house
+and used clothing-house figures of speech, it was as if Lolly were a
+fine imported model and Estelle the pathetic, home-made attempt at a
+copy. She had copied the outlines, but not the subtle little finishing
+touches. Lolly, moreover, was acutely, amusedly aware of this, and she
+took a wicked and heartless delight in teasing and gibing at Estelle
+with words fully as slangy as Estelle's own, but which fairly stung
+with their keenness and caustic wit.
+
+I could understand why Estelle hated Lolly, but I never could
+understand Lolly's contempt for Estelle. She always dismissed her as
+"Trash, Nora, trash!"
+
+So now Estelle turned over in bed and snorted loud and long as Lolly
+got into mine.
+
+Lolly said:
+
+"George! how the _hoi-polloi_ do snore!"
+
+Estelle lifted her head from the pillow, to show she was not sleeping,
+and, as she would have put it, "petrified" Lolly with one long,
+sneering, contemptuous look.
+
+Lolly had come in, in fact, on an errand of mercy toward me, to whom
+she had taken a sudden fancy very much reciprocated by me. She said she
+wanted me to go out to the stock-yards as early as possible, as she
+understood this man she knew there wanted a stenographer right away.
+His name, she said, was Fred O'Brien, and she gave me a card which
+read, "Miss Laura Hope, the _Inter Ocean_." On the back she had written:
+
+"Introducing Miss Nora Ascough."
+
+I was delighted. It was like having another reference. I asked her
+about this Mr. O'Brien. She said, with a smile and significantly, that
+she had met him on a recent expedition to the yards in an inquiring
+mood for the _Inter Ocean_ in regard to the pigs'-hair department, of
+which he was then manager.
+
+"Pigs' hair!"
+
+I had never heard of such a thing, and Lolly burst into one of her
+wildest peals of laughter, which made Estelle sit up savagely in bed.
+
+"You'll be the death of me yet," said Lolly.
+
+That was all the explanation she gave me, but all the way to the
+stock-yards, and as I was going through them, I kept wondering what on
+earth pigs' hair could be. I must say I did not look forward with any
+degree of delight to working in the pigs'-hair department.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Have you ever ridden through the Chicago stock-yards on a sunny day
+in the month of June? If you have, you are not likely to forget the
+experience.
+
+As I rode with about twenty or thirty other girls in the bus, all
+apparently perfectly contented and happy, I thought of some of my
+father's vivid stories of old Shanghai, the city of smells.
+
+I shall not describe the odors of the Chicago stock-yards. Suffice
+it to say that they are many, varied, and strong, hard to bear at
+first, but in time, like everything else, one becomes acclimated to
+them, as it were. I have heard patriotic yards people, born and reared
+in that rarefied atmosphere, declare that they "like it." And yet
+the institution is one of the several wonders of the world. It is a
+miraculous, an astounding, a mighty organization.
+
+Again, as on that first day in Chicago, at the railway station, I was
+one of many atoms pouring into buildings so colossal that they seemed
+cities in themselves. I followed several of the stenographers--only
+the stenographers rode in the busses; the factory girls of the yards
+walked through, as did the men--up a few flights of stairs, and came to
+a vast office where, I believe, something like three thousand clerks
+are employed on one floor. Men, women, girls, and boys were passing
+along, like puppet machines, each to his own desk and chair.
+
+The departments were partitioned off with oak railings. There was a
+manager and a little staff of clerks for every department, and, oh! the
+amazing number of departments! During all the months I worked there
+I never knew the names of more than half the departments, and when I
+come to think of what was on the other floors, in other buildings, the
+great factories, where thousands were employed, I feel bewildered and
+stupendously impressed.
+
+To think of the stock-yards as only a mighty butcher shop is a great
+mistake. It is better to think of them as a sort of beneficent feeder
+and provider of humanity, not merely because of the food they pour out
+into the world, but for the thousands to whom they give work.
+
+I heard much of the abuses there, of the hateful actions of many of the
+employers; but one loses sight of these things in contemplating the
+great general benefit of this astounding place. Of course I, in the
+offices, saw perhaps only the better and cleaner side of the yards, and
+therefore I cannot tell what went on elsewhere.
+
+I asked a boy for Mr. O'Brien, and he said:
+
+"Soap department."
+
+I went along the main railing, inquiring for the soap department, and
+a sharp-eyed youth (in the pickled snouts department) with a pencil on
+his ear, undertook to take me to O'Brien.
+
+As I passed along with him, I found myself the attacked of many eyes. A
+new girl is always an object of interest and speculation in the yards.
+I tried to look unconcerned and unaware, an impossibility, especially
+as some of the clerks coughed as I went by, some grinned at me, one
+winked, and one softly whistled. I felt ashamed and silly, and a fierce
+sort of pity for myself that I should have to go through this.
+
+"Lady for you, Fred," at last sang out my escort as we approached an
+inclosure, and then smiling, he opened a little gate, and half pushed,
+half led, me in.
+
+I found myself at the elbow of a long, lanky young man who was doubled
+over in such a position that his spine looked humped up in the middle.
+He had a large box before him, in which were a lot of pieces of soap,
+and he kept picking up pieces and examining them, sometimes smelling
+them. There was one other person in the inclosure, or department, and
+he was a very red-haired, freckle-faced boy of about twelve.
+
+For some time the long, lanky young man did not even look up, but
+continued to examine the soap. I was beginning to think he was ignorant
+of my presence at his elbow when he said, without taking his nose out
+of the box, and shifting his unlighted cigar from one side of his mouth
+to the other, in a snarling sort of voice, like the inquiring bark of
+a surly dog:
+
+"Wa-al, what d' yer want?"
+
+"A position as stenographer," I answered promptly.
+
+He straightened up in his seat at that, and took a look at me. His
+cheek-bones were high and lumpy; he had a rather pasty-colored skin,
+sharp-glancing eyes, and a humorous mouth. It was a homely face,
+yet, curiously enough, not unattractive, and there was something
+straightforward about it. He wore his hat on the back of his head, and
+he did not remove it in honor of me. After scrutinizing me in one quick
+glance, in which I felt he had taken in all my weaknesses and defects,
+he said in a less-snarling tone:
+
+"Sit down."
+
+I sat.
+
+Lolly's card I timidly proffered. He took it, stared at it with an
+astonished expression, and then snorted so loudly it made me think
+of Estelle, and I felt a quaking fear that Lolly's card was a poor
+recommendation. He spat after that snort, looked at me again, and said:
+
+"Well, I like her nerve!"
+
+Of course, as I was not aware of just what he meant by that (I
+subsequently learned that Lolly had gone to work for O'Brien supposedly
+as a stenographer, and then had written up and exposed certain
+conditions in the yards), I stared at him questioningly, and he
+repeated with even more eloquent emphasis:
+
+"Well, I like her _nerve_! It beats the _Dutch_!"
+
+Then he chuckled, and again scrutinized me.
+
+"That all the reference you got?" he asked.
+
+I produced Mr. Campbell's, and as I watched him read it with a rather
+puzzled expression, I hastily produced Canon Evans's reference as to
+my character, which my father had sent me for the Y. W. C. A. O'Brien
+handed the letters back to me without comment, but he kept Lolly's
+card, putting it carefully away in his card-case, and chuckling as he
+did so.
+
+"What do you know?" at last he said to me. "Good stenographer, are you?"
+
+"Yes, very good," I eagerly assured him.
+
+"Humph! How much salary do you expect to get?"
+
+"I got ten a week in the West Indies," I said. I never even thought
+that that "free board" at the hotel amounted to something, too. Ten
+dollars was my salary, and so I said ten.
+
+He hugged his chin reflectively, studying me, and after a moment he
+said:
+
+"I wasn't expecting to take any one on for a day or two, but so long as
+you're here, and come so highly recommended,"--and he grinned,--"you
+may stay. Salary fifteen per."
+
+"Oh, thank you!" I said so fervently that he got angrily red, and
+turned away.
+
+The red-haired office boy, who had been acutely listening to the
+conversation, now came up to me and pertly asked me if I was engaged.
+Which insolent question I at first declined to answer. When I realized
+that he did not mean engaged to be married, but engaged for the
+position, then I said, with scarlet face, that I was.
+
+"Red Top," as they called him, then showed me my desk, next to
+Mr. O'Brien's, filled my ink-wells, brought me pens, pencils, and
+note-books. I was inwardly congratulating myself that there was no sign
+of a type-writer when the boy pulled up the lid of my desk, and, lo!
+there was a fine, glistening machine.
+
+I suppose some girls really take a sort of pride in their machine, just
+as a trainer does in his horse. I confess that I felt no fond yearnings
+toward mine, and while I was debating how in the world I was ever
+going to copy the letters, Mr. O'Brien pulled out a slat on my desk,
+leaned over, and began to dictate. All the time he was dictating he
+was chewing tobacco, stopping once in a while to spit in a cuspidor at
+his feet, and watching my face out of the corner of his eye. This was
+a sample of the letters I took, and you can judge of my feelings as I
+wrote:
+
+
+     Messrs. So and So.
+     Gentlemen:
+
+     I send you F.O.B. five hundred broken babies, three hundred
+     cracked babies, one thousand perfect ones, etc.
+
+
+Broken babies, cracked babies, perfect ones! What sort of place was
+this, anyway? The pigs' hair department was mystifying and horrifying
+enough, and I _had_ heard that sausages were made from dogs and
+horses; but a trade in _babies_--cracked and broken!
+
+I suppose my face must have betrayed my wonder and perhaps horror, for
+O'Brien suddenly choked, though I don't know whether he was laughing or
+coughing, but he made a great noise. Then he said, clearing his throat:
+
+"Got all that?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"That's all," he said, and turned back to his soapbox. There was
+nothing for me to do now but to type-write those letters. I stared at
+that machine blindly, and to put off the evil moment, I tried to engage
+my "boss" in conversation while pretending to dust the machine.
+
+"Mr. O'Brien, have--have you many babies here?" I asked.
+
+"Thousands," he returned.
+
+"It must be like a hospital," said I.
+
+He grunted. I've often thought that O'Brien delighted to put
+stenographers through that "baby" joke, but I don't suppose any other
+girl was ever quite so gullible as I.
+
+"I'd like to see some of them," I said.
+
+"You're looking at them now," said he.
+
+I looked about me, but I saw no babies. O'Brien was digging down in the
+box. Suddenly he tossed up a handful of odd-shaped pieces on his desk.
+Then I understood. They were all in the shape of babies--Wool-Soap
+babies! O'Brien, with his tobacco in his cheek, thought it a good joke
+on me.
+
+I stuck the paper into the type-writer, and then I began slowly to
+write, pecking out each letter with my index-finger. I felt rather than
+saw O'Brien slowly turning round in his seat, and though I dared not
+look up, I felt both his and Red Top's amazed eyes on my slowly moving
+fingers. Suddenly O'Brien stood up.
+
+"Well, upon my word," said he, "you sure are a twin of that friend of
+yours! I like your nerve!"
+
+I sat still in my seat, just staring at the type, and a fearful lump
+came up in my throat and almost choked me. I could not see a thing for
+the tears that came welling up despite myself, but I held them back
+fiercely.
+
+Suddenly O'Brien snapped out in his most angry and snarling tone:
+
+"Say, who are you staring at, anyway?"
+
+I thought he meant me, and I started to protest that I was merely
+looking at the type, when I heard the feet of Red Top shuffle, and he
+said, oh, so meekly and respectfully:
+
+"Yes, sir; I ain't staring at _her_, sir."
+
+I was relieved, anyway, of a part of the pressure, for the office boy
+was now busy at some files. I found enough courage at last to look at
+O'Brien. He was studying me as if I were some strange curiosity that
+both amused and amazed him.
+
+"You're a nice one, aren't you," said he, "to take a job at fifteen per
+as an experienced and expert stenographer and--"
+
+I said quickly:
+
+"I am an expert stenographer. It's just the type-writing I can't do,
+and, oh! if you'll only give me a chance, I'll learn it in a few days,
+honestly I will. I'm cleverer than most girls, really I am. I taught
+myself shorthand, and I can type-writing, too. I'll practise every
+night, and if you'll just try me for a few days, I'll work so hard--and
+you won't be sorry; I'm sure you won't."
+
+I got this all off quickly and warmly.
+
+To this day I do not know what impulse moved Fred O'Brien to decide
+that he wanted me as his stenographer. His was an important department,
+and he could have had as good a stenographer as fifteen dollars a week
+will get, and that's a fair salary for work of that kind. Here was I,
+palpably a green girl, who could not type a line! No man's voice ever
+sounded nicer than that gruff young Irishman's when he said that I
+could stay, that for the first week I could do the letters by hand; but
+I was to practise every opportunity I got, and I could help him a lot
+if I would write the letters without making it necessary for him to
+dictate them.
+
+In justification of my boast to O'Brien that I would "make good," let
+me say that I stayed in his department all the time I was at the yards,
+and this is the reference he gave me when he himself left to take
+charge of the New York office:
+
+
+     To Whom it may Concern:
+
+     This is to certify that Miss Nora Ascough, who has been in my
+     employ for the past few months as stenographer and typewriter, is
+     an A No. 1 Crack-a-Jack.
+
+     Smith & Co. Per, Fred O'Brien, Mgr.
+
+
+Some one once said of me that I owed my success as a writer mainly
+to the fact that I used my sex as a means to help me climb. That is
+partly true not only in the case of my writing, but of my work as a
+stenographer. I have been pushed and helped by men who liked me, but in
+both cases I _made good_ after I was started.
+
+I think it would have broken my heart not to have "made good" to Fred
+O'Brien after he had trusted me in this way. This man, the first I
+worked for in America, was probably the best friend I ever had or will
+have. I do not mean so much while I worked for him, but later in my
+life.
+
+I have spoken of the mild sensation I made as I walked down that
+main aisle. All through the day, in whatever direction I looked, I
+encountered interested eyes bent upon me. Some were those of girls
+like myself, some office boys, a number of department managers, and
+nearly all the clerks in my vicinity. Some craned their necks to get a
+glimpse of me, some came officiously to talk to O'Brien. Thus it was
+an embarrassing day for me, especially at luncheon-hour, when I did
+not know quite what to do. Then a girl from another department came
+over and asked me to go to luncheon with her. She said that her "boss,"
+whose name was Hermann, and who was a chum of O'Brien, had bade her
+look out for me.
+
+She pointed Hermann out to me as we passed along, and he seized his
+hat, and came after us; but as he was passing our department, O'Brien
+seized him, and, looking back, I saw them both laughing, and I felt
+sure O'Brien was telling him about me.
+
+Hermann was about twenty-five. He had a stiff thatch of yellow
+hair which he brushed up straight, and which stood up just like
+bristles on his head. He had wide-awake eyes, and looked like a human
+interrogation-point, dressed very dudishly, and flirted right and
+left with all the girls. Though born in America, and wiry and active,
+nevertheless there was the stamp of "Made in Germany" everywhere
+upon him. Later in the afternoon he stuck so insistently about our
+department that O'Brien finally introduced us, and then said with a
+grin:
+
+"Now clear out. You got what you wanted."
+
+Two or three departments to the left of me I had noticed a very blond,
+plumpish, rather good-looking young man, who watched me unceasingly
+throughout the day, but, whenever I looked at him, would blush, just
+like a girl, and look down and fuss with papers on his desk. Well,
+about the middle of the afternoon, and while O'Brien was away from the
+department, a boy came over and laid a note on my desk. It was folded
+ingeniously, twisted into a sort of bowknot, and it was addressed,
+"Stenographer, Soap Dept."
+
+I thought it was some instruction from O'Brien, especially as the boy
+said:
+
+"Any answer?"
+
+I unfolded the note, and this is what I read:
+
+
+     I'm stuck on you. Will you keep company with me?
+
+
+I had to laugh, though I knew my furiously red swain was watching me
+anxiously.
+
+"Any answer?" again asked the boy. I wrote on a piece of paper the one
+word, "Maybe."
+
+People who have called me clever, talented, etc.,--oh, all women
+writers get accused of such things!--have not really reckoned with
+a certain weak and silly side of my character. If as I proceed with
+this chronicle I shock you with the ease and facility with which I
+encouraged and accepted and became constantly engaged to men, please
+set it down to the fact that I always felt an inability to _hurt_ by
+refusing any one who liked me enough to propose to me. I got into
+lots of trouble for this,--call it moral lack in me,--but I could not
+help it at the time. Why, it's just the same way that I once felt in
+a private Catholic hospital, and little Sister Mary Eulalia tried to
+convert me. Out of politeness and because I loved _her_, I was within
+an ace of acknowledging her faith, or any other faith she might choose.
+
+If you could have seen the broad smile of satisfaction that wreathed
+the face of my first stock-yards "mash," you, in my place, would not
+have regretted that little crumb of hope that I had tossed him. Yet
+I had no more intention of "keeping company" with him that I had of
+flying.
+
+It pleases me much to record that on this my first day in the yards I
+received three "mash" notes, which one of the girls later told me "was
+going it some for fair."
+
+My second note was a pressed flower, accompanied by these touching
+lines:
+
+
+     The rose is red; the violet's blue,
+     Honey's sweet, and so are you!
+     And so is he, who sends you this,
+     And when we meet we'll have a kiss.
+
+
+I don't know who sent me this, but I suspected an office boy in a
+neighboring department.
+
+My third note came just about an hour before leaving. It was from
+Hermann, and in a sealed envelop. It was as follows:
+
+
+     How about "Buffalo Bill" to-night?
+
+
+O'Brien leaned over me as I opened the note, deliberately took it from
+me, and read it. As he did so, Hermann stealthily pelted him with
+tightly chewed wads of paper, though, from his hunched-over position
+at his desk, no one would have suspected who was throwing those
+pellets. I saw him, however, and he winked at me as if I were in a
+conspiracy with him, and as much as to say:
+
+"We'll fix him."
+
+O'Brien, his cigar moving from one side of his mouth to the other,
+answered the note for me.
+
+"Nothing doing," was his laconic response to Hermann's invitation, and
+he despatched it by Red Top. He let me out with the five-thirty girls
+instead of the six, and he said:
+
+"Now step lively, and if you let Hermann catch up with you, I'll fire
+you in the morning."
+
+I went flying down the aisle with my heart as light as a feather.
+Next to being in love, there is nothing finer in the world, for a
+working-girl, than to have a good "job" and to know that some one is
+"stuck" on you.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+My type-writing was practised under difficulties, for girls kept coming
+in and out of my room, and Lolly, who was there nearly every evening,
+taught me. By this time I was getting acquainted with a great many of
+the girls in the house, and for some reason or other I was popular.
+The "good" girls wanted me to join this or that Christian Society or
+Endeavor Club, and the "bad" girls--alleged by the good ones to be
+bad--were always urging me to "come on out and have a good time."
+
+In those days Lolly was my chum. We were always together, much to
+Estelle's disgust. Every evening Lolly would come into my room unless
+she had an engagement, and, heavens! men came after Lolly like flies to
+the honey-pot. With a box of cigarettes and a magazine, or one of my
+own stories, all of which she was revising for me, she would curl up on
+my bed while I worked. Sometimes I practised till ten o'clock, when the
+lights would go out.
+
+After a long, if not hard, day in the yards--and even if one did not
+work at all, the incessant movement and buzz of the great work factory
+was exhausting--and two or three hours of type-writing practice at
+night, you may be sure I was pretty tired when finally I crept into bed.
+
+Then for some time thereafter I would lie wide awake. Like a
+kaleidoscopic panorama, the scenes of my day's work would slide in and
+out of my mind, then slowly pass away, as the figures in a strange
+dance. Visions would then come to me--the wavering, quaint persons and
+plots of the stories I would write. Dreams, too, came of the days when
+I would be famous and rich, and all my dear people would be lifted
+up from want. My poems would be on every one's tongue, my books in
+every home. And I saw myself facing a great audience, and bowing in
+acknowledgment of their praise of my successful play.
+
+A few years later, when the name of a play of mine flashed in electric
+letters on Broadway, and the city was papered with great posters
+of the play, I went up and down before that electric sign, just to
+see if I could call up even one of the fine thrills I had felt in
+anticipation. Alas! I was aware only of a sad excitement, a sense of
+disappointment and despair. I realized that what as an ignorant little
+girl I had thought was fame was something very different. What then I
+ardently believed to be the divine sparks of genius, I now perceived
+to be nothing but a mediocre talent that could never carry me far. My
+success was founded upon a cheap and popular device, and that jumble
+of sentimental moonshine that they called my play seemed to me the
+pathetic stamp of my inefficiency. Oh, I had sold my birthright for a
+mess of potage!
+
+We arrive at a stage of philosophic despair when we calmly recognize
+our limitations; but long before we know them, what wild dreams are
+those that thrill, enthrall, and torment us! Well, the dreams at least
+were well worth while.
+
+I was now part of a vast, moving world of work, and, strangely enough,
+I was, in a way, contented. It takes very little to make the average
+normal girl contented. Take the girls who worked as I did. Given fair
+salaries and tolerable conditions under which to work, they were for
+the most part light-hearted and happy. You had only to look at groups
+of them about the Y. W. C. A. to realize that. Not that most of us did
+not have some little burden to carry; a few of us cherished wistful
+ambitions beyond our sphere, and all of us, I think, had our romances.
+
+In the yards there was probably one girl to every three or four hundred
+men. They were obliged to pay good salaries, moreover, as many girls
+hesitated to go away out there to work, and the aristocrats of our
+profession balked at the sights and smells of the yards. Anyhow, the
+firm for which I worked treated us well. Special busses brought us to
+and from the yards. Excellent dressing-rooms and luncheon-rooms were
+assigned to us, and we were always treated with courtesy.
+
+We girls were all appraised when we entered, and soon afterwards were
+assigned certain places in the estimation of the men of the yards.
+That is to say, a girl was "good," "bad," a "worker," a "frost," or a
+"peach."
+
+The "good" girls were treated with respect; the "bad" girls made
+"dates" for dinners with the various "bosses," had fine clothes,
+jewels, were loud, and had privileges; the "frosts" were given a wide
+berth. They were the girls who were always on the defensive with the
+men, expecting and looking for insults and taking umbrage on the
+slightest provocation. The "workers" were of course the backbone of our
+profession. They received high salaries and rose to positions almost as
+good as the men's. Boys and men stepped lively for them, and took their
+orders unblinkingly. Finally, the title of "peach" was bestowed upon
+the girls whom the men decided were pretty and approved of in other
+ways. If one was in the "peach" class, she was persistently courted by
+all well-meaning or bad-meaning men who could get near her. She was a
+belle of the yards.
+
+Under which head I came, I never knew. I think I was the strange
+gosling that had sprung up somehow in this nest, and no one knew quite
+where I should be assigned. There was a wavering disposition at first
+to put me in the "peach" class, but I rather think I degenerated within
+a few weeks to the "worker" class, for Fred O'Brien early acquired the
+habit of leaving most of the details of our department entirely to me.
+
+Twenty-four men asked me to "go out" with them the first week I was
+there. I kept a note of this, just to amuse myself and O'Brien, who
+was vastly interested in the sensation he fatuously believed I was
+creating. He took a comical pride in my "success"! Ah, dear Fred! No
+one, not even I, was ever prouder of my later "success" than he. Every
+day he would ask me, "Well, who's asking you out to-night?" and I
+would show him my "mash" notes, most of which he confiscated, later, I
+suspect, to torment their authors.
+
+The men out here did not ask if they could call upon a girl. Their way
+of becoming better acquainted, or "going after" a girl, as they called
+it, was to invite her to "go out" with them, meaning for a ride, to the
+theaters, the parks, restaurants, or other places of amusement. I never
+"went out" with any of the men of the yards except O'Brien and Hermann,
+who had been acting like a clown for my special benefit by coming over
+to our department every day, and talking a lot of nonsense, telling
+jokes, and sending me countless foolish notes, until at last O'Brien
+took pity on him, and said they would call upon me one night.
+
+That was an illuminating occasion. "Fellows" were few and far between
+who called at the Y. W. C. A., and every girl who possessed a "steady"
+was marked. Whenever a new "fellow" appeared there, he was the object
+of the united curiosity of a score of girls, who hung about the halls
+and the parlors to get a look at him.
+
+Now, Hermann called upon me in great state. Much to my surprise and
+Lolly's hilarious joy, he came in silk hat and frock coat, with a
+gold-topped cane. I hardly knew him, when I descended in my own best, a
+white polka-dotted Swiss dress, with a pink sash, and found him sitting
+erect and with evident discomfort on the edge of a sofa in the parlor,
+the admired target of a score of eyes, all feminine. He was making a
+manful effort to appear at his ease, and unaware of the sensation he
+had made. Men with silk hats, you must know, do not call every day
+upon girls at the Y. W. C. A. It was plain to be seen that the poor
+fellow was suffering a species of delicious torture. In the hall,
+within direct sight of the sofa, Lolly was leaning against the wall,
+and looking her wickedest and prettiest. She had already tormented and
+teased me unmercifully about my "first beau."
+
+Hermann rose gallantly as I entered, and he bowed, as I did not know
+he could bow, over my hand, shaking it in the then approved and
+fashionable high manner; but I could not resist a little giggle as I
+heard Lolly chokingly cough in the hall, and I knew she was taking it
+all in.
+
+"O'Brien's waiting for us outside," said Hermann. "Wouldn't come in.
+Acted just like a man with a sore tooth. Ever seen a man with a sore
+tooth, Miss Ascough?"
+
+No, I had never had that pleasure, I told him.
+
+"Well," said Hermann, "the man with a sore tooth groans all day and
+night, and makes every one about him suffer. Then first thing in the
+A.M. he hikes off to the nearest dentist. He gives one look
+at the sign on the dentist's door, and that's enough for him: he's
+cured. Christian Science, you see. Now, that's how it is with O'Brien
+to-night. He was dead stuck on coming along, but got stage-fright when
+he saw the girls."
+
+"_You_ weren't afraid of us, were you, Mr. Hermann?" said I, admiringly
+and flatteringly.
+
+"Me? What, me afraid of girls? Sa-ay, I like that!" and Hermann laughed
+at the idea as if it amused him vastly. "Tell you what you do. Get
+another girl; there's a peach looking in at us now--don't look up.
+She's the blonde, with the teeth. What do you say to our all going over
+to the S---- Gardens for a lobster supper, huh?"
+
+Now, the peach, of course, was Lolly, who, with her dimples all abroad
+and her fine white teeth showing, was plainly on view at the door, and
+had already worked havoc in the breast of the sentimental Hermann.
+
+O'Brien didn't like the idea of the S---- Gardens. He said it was "too
+swift" for _me_, though he brutally averred it might do for Hermann
+and Lolly. Lolly and he sparred all the time, just as did Lolly and
+Estelle. He said, moreover, that it would not do at all for us to be
+seen together, and we would be sure to run across some yards people at
+the S---- Gardens. If he were seen out with his stenographer, every
+tongue in the office would be wagging about it next day.
+
+So he suggested that we take a long car ride, and get off at L----
+Park, where there was a good restaurant, and we could get something
+to eat and drink there. Fred and I paired off together, and Hermann,
+who had been utterly won away from me by Lolly, who was flirting with
+him and teasing him outrageously, brought up behind us as we started
+for the cars. After he had explained to me why we should not be seen
+together, O'Brien said, with an air of great carelessness:
+
+"Now, look a-here, girl, I don't want you to get it into your head that
+I'm stuck on you, for I'm not; but I like you, and if you don't pull my
+leg too hard, I'll take you out with me all you want."
+
+"Pull your leg!" I repeated, shocked. I had never heard that expression
+before. American slang was still a source of mystification, delight,
+and wonder to me. Lolly heard my horrified exclamation, and moved up,
+laughing her merriest.
+
+"Limb's the polite term," she corrected Fred.
+
+"Eh?" said he. Then as he saw I did not really understand, he explained
+to me what he meant.
+
+"Oh," said I, "you needn't worry about me. If you don't believe that I
+care nothing about money, look at this."
+
+There were a few coins in my pocketbook. I poured them into my hand,
+and deliberately and impulsively I tossed them out into the road. I am
+sure I don't know why I did such a senseless thing as that. It was just
+the impulse of a silly moment.
+
+The subjects we two girls and boys discussed were varied and many, but
+always by persistent degrees they seemed to swing back to the yards,
+wherein of course the interests of our escorts naturally centered.
+The boys entertained us with tales of the men and even cattle of this
+"city," as they called it. There was a black sheep called "Judas
+Iscariot" who led the other sheep to slaughter, and was always rewarded
+with a special piece of meat. There was a big black pig that wandered
+about the offices of a neighboring firm, and was the mascot of that
+office.
+
+There was a man who had been born in the yards, married in the yards,
+and whose heir had recently been born there. And so forth.
+
+I got into trouble at the Y. W. C. A. for the first time that night. We
+had forgotten to ask permission to be out after ten, and it was after
+eleven by the time we got back. The door girl let us in, but took our
+names, and we were reported next day. I was let off with a reprimand
+from the secretary, but Lolly had a stormy time of it with this
+unpleasant personage, upon whom, I am happy to say, she never failed
+to inflict deserved punishment. It seems Lolly was an old offender, and
+she was accused of "leading Miss Ascough astray." I, by the way, was
+now in high favor with the secretary, though I never liked her, and I
+never forgave her for that first day. Also I had seen many girls turned
+away, sometimes because they did not have the money to pay in advance,
+and sometimes because they had no references. My heart used to go out
+to them, as with drooping shoulders these forlorn little waifs who had
+applied for shelter were turned from the very doors that should have
+opened for them.
+
+That night as we felt our way in the dark through the unlighted halls
+to our rooms, Lolly, swearing audibly and picturesquely, said she was
+"darned tired" of this "old pious prison," and as she now had all the
+"dope" she wanted upon the place, she was going to get out, and she
+asked me to go with her. I said that I would.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+I worked for five weeks in the stock-yards before I could make up the
+deficit in my hundred dollars caused by those first three weeks of
+idleness and the consequent expenses of my board. I am very bad at
+figures. I still calculate with my fingers. Every night, however, I
+counted my little hoard, and I had it all reckoned up on paper how soon
+I would have that hundred intact again.
+
+Out of my fifteen a week I had to allow five dollars for my board, and
+so much for luncheon, car-fare, and the little articles I added to my
+wardrobe. I used about eight dollars a week on myself and I sent home
+two. That left me only five a week, and as I had used twenty-five of
+the hundred before I got my position, it took me over five weeks to
+make it up. As each week my little pile grew larger, the more excited I
+became in anticipation of that moment when I could write!
+
+I would lie awake composing the wonderful letter that would accompany
+that hundred dollars, but when the sixth Saturday (pay-day) actually
+came, and I had at last the money, I found myself unable to pen the
+glowing letter of my dreams. This was the letter I finally sent, and
+unless he read between the lines, goodness knows it was a model of
+businesslike brevity, showing the undoubted influence of the Smith &
+Co. approved type of correspondence:
+
+
+     Y. W. C. A.
+     Chicago, Ill., Aug. 8-19.
+
+     Roger Avery Hamilton, Esq.
+
+     _Dear Sir_:
+
+     I send you herewith inclosed the sum of one hundred dollars, being
+     in full the amount recently lent by you to,
+
+     Very faithfully yours,
+     NORA ASCOUGH.
+
+
+It was with a bursting heart that I folded that cold and brief epistle.
+Then I laid it on top of that eloquent pile of bills--"dirty money."
+Just before I did up the package, the ache within me grew so intense
+that I wrote on the envelop:
+
+"Please come to see me now."
+
+I made a tight little package of the money and letter, and I sent it
+off by registered mail. I knew nothing about post-office orders or
+checks. So the money went to him just like that.
+
+Now my life really changed. On the surface things went on as ever.
+I progressed with my type-writing. I "made good" at the office. The
+routine of the daily work in the yards was brightened by various little
+humorous incidents that occurred there. For instance, one of the firm,
+a darling old man of seventy, took a great fancy to me, and every day
+he would come down the main aisle of the office with a fresh flower
+in his hand, and lay it on my desk as he passed. Not bad for an old
+"pork-packer," was it? Every one teased me about him, and so did he
+himself. He called me "black-eyes," and said I was his "girl." Other
+men gave me flowers, too, but I prized that one of Mr. Smith's more
+than the others. Also I had enough candy given to me, upon my word, to
+feed me, and I could have "gone out" every night in the week, had I
+wanted to; but, as I have said, this was only part of my life now--my
+outer life. The life that I conjured up within me was about to come to
+reality, and no one knew anything about it, not even Lolly.
+
+She had been very much engaged in "educating" Hermann, who was madly in
+love with her. Lolly accepted his adoration with amused delight. She
+considered him a "character," but she never took him seriously.
+
+As the days passed away, the fever within me never waned. Though I went
+about my work as ever, my mind was away, and I was like one whose ear
+is to the ground, waiting, waiting.
+
+But he did not come, and the weeks rolled away, and two months passed.
+
+One night a man from Lolly's home came to call upon her. His name was
+Marshall Chambers. He was one of those big-shouldered, smooth-faced,
+athletic-looking men who make a powerful impression upon girls.
+According to Lolly, he was a wealthy banker whom she had known during
+her father's administration as mayor of her home town. I knew as soon
+as I saw them together that my poor Lolly was deeply in love with him,
+and I felt at once a sense of overwhelming antagonism and dislike
+toward him. I cannot explain this, for he was specially attentive to
+me, and although Lolly and he had not seen each other for some time, he
+insisted that I should accompany them to dinner at R----'s.
+
+When we went to our rooms to dress, Lolly asked me what I thought of
+this man, and I said:
+
+"I like Hermann better. _He's_ honest."
+
+That remark in ordinary circumstances would have sent Lolly into one of
+her merry peals of laughter,--she always laughed about Hermann,--but
+she gave me a queer look now, her cigarette suspended in her hand.
+Her face was flushed, and her eyes were so brilliant they looked like
+turquoises.
+
+"You're dead right," she said solemnly.
+
+But a moment later she was her old self again. I was putting on a
+little white dress when Lolly swung me round and examined me.
+
+"Here, you can't go to R----'s in duds like these," she said. "Wait a
+minute."
+
+She disappeared into her own room, and came back with her arms full
+of dresses; Lolly had beautiful clothes. I suppose her tailored
+suits would have looked ludicrous, as she was larger than I, but a
+little cream-colored chiffon frock, trimmed with pearl beads, was
+very becoming to me. She also lent me an evening cap, and a red rose
+(artificial) for my waist.
+
+"Now look at yourself," said she, "and after this don't let me catch
+you mooning in your room at night. Get out and show yourself. You'll
+only be young once."
+
+Lolly was in blue, the color of her eyes, and she looked, as always,
+"stunning." Beside her, I'm afraid, I appeared very insignificant, for
+Lolly was a real beauty. I never went anywhere with her but people--men
+and women, too--would stare at her, and turn around for a second
+look. People stared at me, too, but in a different sort of way, as
+if I interested them or they were puzzled to know my nationality. I
+would have given anything to look less foreign. My darkness marked and
+crushed me, I who loved blondness like the sun.
+
+Mr. Chambers did everything very splendidly. He had a carriage to take
+us to dinner, and he was extremely gallant in his manner to both Lolly
+and me, just as attentive, I thought wistfully, as if we were society
+girls, and not poor girls of the Y. W. C. A. Lolly and he talked a good
+deal in an undertone, and although they did not ignore me, I was left
+out of most of their conversation. I did not mind this. I was happy to
+lean back in that carriage, and indulge in my own fine dreams.
+
+I should have enjoyed the dinner more if our host had been some one
+other than this man Chambers. He made me uncomfortable and secretly
+angry by looking at me in a meaning sort of way when Lolly did not see
+him. I felt as if he were trying to establish some sort of intimacy
+with me behind Lolly's back. He sat beside Lolly, and I opposite them,
+and he would lean back in his seat, inclined toward Lolly, and over her
+shoulder he would make his bold eyes at me. No, I did not like that
+man, and I avoided his glances as much as I could. But Lolly, my poor
+Lolly, seemed infatuated with him, and all her pretty banter and chaff
+had departed. She scarcely ate anything, but played nervously with her
+food, and she would look at him in such a way that I wanted both to
+shake her and to cry for her.
+
+But this is my story, not Lolly's, though hers perhaps would make a
+better tale than mine.
+
+Chambers said he could tell one's fortune from one's palm, and that he
+would like to see mine. Lolly said:
+
+"Nora carries her fortune in her head."
+
+"And you," I said, "in your face."
+
+He reached over the table for my hands, and Lolly said:
+
+"Let him, Nora. Sometimes he makes pretty good guesses."
+
+Chambers began to reel off a fine fairy-story, which he said was to be
+my fortune. We were all laughing, Lolly leaning over, and making merry
+and mocking interpolations, and I eagerly drinking in every word, and,
+though I laughed, believing most of it, when suddenly I had a queer,
+nervous feeling that some one other than ourselves was listening to us
+and was watching my face. There is something in telepathy. I was afraid
+to look up, and my heart began to beat in a frightened way, for I knew,
+even before I had turned my head, that _he_ was somewhere there in the
+room with us. And then I saw him directly behind Marshall Chambers.
+Their chairs, back to back, were almost touching, but he had turned
+about in his seat, so that he was looking directly at me, and I shall
+never forget the expression of his face. It was as though he had made
+some discovery that aroused both his amusement and contempt.
+
+What had I done that he should look at me like that? I wanted to go
+to him, to beg him to speak to me; but some one with him--a woman, I
+think, for curiously enough, I was capable of seeing only him, and
+noted not at all his companions--said something to him, and he moved
+his chair till his back was turned toward me. I felt like some dumb
+thing unjustly punished.
+
+Lolly said:
+
+"What's the matter, Nora? You look as if you had seen a ghost."
+
+I suppose my face had blanched, for I was shivering, and I wanted to
+cover my face with my hands and to cry and cry.
+
+"Oh, Lolly," I said, "I want to go home!"
+
+Chambers took me by the arm, and we passed, like people in a dream,
+between the tables--ah! past where he was sitting, and out into the
+street and then home!
+
+
+The following morning I was passing languidly by the secretary's desk,
+in the main office, when she called to me:
+
+"Miss Ascough, you will have to ask your men visitors to call earlier
+in the evening if they wish to see you. You know our rules."
+
+"My men visitors?" I repeated stupidly.
+
+"Yes," she returned sharply; "a gentleman called here last night at
+nearly nine-thirty. Of course we refused to permit him to see you."
+
+"Oh," I said faintly, for before I had looked at that little card I
+knew who had at last come to see me. I went out with his card held
+blindly in my hand, and all that day, whenever my work paused or
+slackened, I found myself vaguely wondering why he had called so late,
+and I felt a dumb sense of helpless rage toward that hateful secretary
+who had turned him away.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Lolly came flying into my room just a little while before eight that
+evening, with her cheeks red and her eyes sparkling. She had dined down
+town with Marshall Chambers, and they had come back to get me to go to
+the theater with them.
+
+"Hurry up, Nora!" she cried. "Get dressed! Marshall has seats for
+Sothern and Harned in 'The Sunken Bell.'"
+
+Up to this time I had never been inside a theater. I had come to
+America in late May. It was now the beginning of September, and the
+theaters were just opening. Of course I had never been to a play of any
+sort at home, except some little church affairs. So, unhappy as I was,
+I dressed in Lolly's pretty chiffon dress, and we went down to join Mr.
+Chambers, who was waiting for us in the parlor. On the way down in the
+elevator, Lolly had handed me a number of advertisements of rooms and
+flats that she had cut from the papers, and while she was drawing on
+her gloves in the lower hall and I was glancing through these, a page
+called my name, and said a gentleman was waiting for me inside.
+
+As I went into the parlor, Marshall Chambers stood up, held out his
+hand, and said something to me; but I scarcely saw him, and I know I
+did not answer him. I saw, in fact, nothing in the world save Roger
+Hamilton, who had come across the room to me, and, with an odd air
+almost of proprietorship, had taken me quietly from Chambers.
+
+Without saying a word to each other, we sat for some time in the Y.
+W. C. A., with girls coming and going. I glanced only once at his
+face, and then I looked away, for I could not bear his expression.
+It was like that of the previous night. It was as if he examined me
+critically, cruelly, not only my face, but even my clothes and my
+gloved hands. Presently he said in a low voice:
+
+"There are too many people here. We shall have to go out somewhere."
+
+I found myself walking with him down Michigan Avenue. We said nothing
+as we walked, but presently we came to a little park, and found a bench
+facing the lake, and there we sat, I staring out at the water, and he
+looking at me. After a while he said:
+
+"Who was your friend of last night?"
+
+I said:
+
+"Her name is Lolly Hope."
+
+"I mean the _man_."
+
+"He is her friend," I said. "I never met him till last night."
+
+It was pretty dark, and I could not see his face, but insensibly I felt
+him lean toward me to look at mine; and then he said in a low voice:
+
+"Are you sure of that?"
+
+"Why, yes," I said. "I don't know the man at all. Did you think that I
+did?" He did not answer me, and I added, "Was it because of _him_ you
+did not speak to me last night?"
+
+"I did bow to you," he said, and then added reluctantly, "though I
+can't say I admired the looks of your party."
+
+I said:
+
+"I didn't even see the people with _you_, and it wouldn't have made any
+difference to me who they were."
+
+He put his arm along the back of the bench behind me, but not touching
+me.
+
+"Where did you get the clothes you had on--the dress you're wearing
+now?" he asked in a strained voice.
+
+"Lolly lent them to me," I said. "She said mine were not fine enough."
+
+After a pause he moved nearer to me, and I thought he was going to put
+his arm about me, but he did not. He said in a low voice:
+
+"You can have all the fine clothes you want."
+
+"I wish I could," I returned, sighing; "but one can't dress very
+beautifully on the salary I get."
+
+"What do you get?" he asked, and I told him. Then he wanted me to tell
+him all about myself--just what I had been doing, whom I had met,
+what men, and to leave out nothing. I don't know why, but he seemed
+to think something extraordinary had happened to me, for he repeated
+several times:
+
+"Tell me _everything_, every detail. I want to know."
+
+So I did.
+
+I told him of the Y. W. C. A. woman who had met me; of my failure
+with the newspaper offices; of my long hunt for work; of the insults
+and propositions men had made to me; of my work at the yards; and of
+O'Brien, my "boss," who had taken me on trust and had been so good to
+me.
+
+He never interrupted me once, nor asked me a single question, but let
+me tell him everything in my own way. Then when I was through, he took
+his arm down, put his hands together, and leaned over, with his elbows
+on his knees, staring out before him. After a while he said:
+
+"Do you mean to tell me you _like_ living at this--er--Y. W. C. A.?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"And you are contented to work at the Union Stock Yards?"
+
+"No, I don't say that; but it's a stepping-stone to better things,
+don't you see? It's a living for me for the present, and perhaps by and
+by I'll sell some of my poems and stories, and then I'll be able to
+leave the yards."
+
+He turned sharply in his seat, and I felt him staring at me.
+
+"When on earth do you get _time_ to write, if you work all day from
+nine till five-thirty?"
+
+"Sometimes I get up very early," I said, "at five or six, and then I
+write a bit; and unless the girls bother me at night, I have a chance
+then, too, though I wish the lights didn't go out at ten."
+
+"But you will kill yourself working in that way."
+
+"No, I won't," I declared eagerly. "I'm awfully strong, and, then,
+writing isn't work, don't you see? It's a real pleasure, after what
+I've had to do all day, really it is, a sort of balm almost."
+
+"But you can't keep that up. I don't want you to. I want you to go to
+school, to begin all over again. If you can, you must forget these
+days. I want you to blot them out from your mind altogether."
+
+I thought of that question he had asked me on the train when I had
+read to him my poem: "Wouldn't you like to go to school?" Now, indeed,
+neither my pride nor my vanity was piqued. I could even smile at his
+tone of authority. He was so sure I would obey him; but I was not going
+to let him do anything in the world for me unless he could say to me
+what I was able to say to him.
+
+"Well?" after a moment he prompted me.
+
+"No, Mr. Hamilton," I said, "I am not going to school. I cannot afford
+to."
+
+"I will send you," he said.
+
+"You cannot do that if I refuse to go."
+
+"Why should you refuse?" he said.
+
+"Because it would cost you money--dirty money," I said.
+
+"Nonsense!" He said that angrily now. "I _want_ you to go."
+
+"Thank you; but, nevertheless, I am not going."
+
+He sat up stiffly, and I could feel his frown upon me. He shot out his
+words at me as if he wished each one to hit me hard:
+
+"You are an ignorant, untrained, undisciplined girl. If you wish to
+accomplish the big things you plan, you will have to be educated. Here
+is your chance."
+
+"I'm sorry, but I'll have to get along the best way I can."
+
+"You are stubborn, pig-headed, foolish. Don't you _want_ to be
+educated? Are you satisfied with your present illiterate condition?"
+
+"I can't afford to be," I said.
+
+"But if I am willing--"
+
+I broke in:
+
+"I took nearly six weeks to earn the money to pay you back. I told you
+I'd never take another cent from you, and I never will."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I want you to know that I care nothing, nothing at
+all--nothing, nothing, about your money, that you said every one else
+wanted. _I_ only care for _you_. I do."
+
+I had run along headlong with my speech, and now I was afraid of what I
+had said.
+
+He did not say a word after that, and presently I added shakily:
+
+"Don't you see that I can't let you help me again unless you care for
+me as I do for you? Don't you see that?"
+
+He poked at the gravel with his cane, and after a moment he said very
+gently:
+
+"I see that you are a very foolish little girl."
+
+"You mean because I--care for you?" I asked.
+
+"Because you've made yourself believe you do," he said.
+
+"I _do_," I said earnestly. "I haven't thought of anything else except
+you."
+
+"Nonsense! You mustn't get sentimental about me. Let's talk of
+something else. Have you been writing anything lately?"
+
+I told him of the stories I was writing about my mother's land, and he
+said:
+
+"But you've never been there, child."
+
+"I know," I said; "but, then, I have an instinctive feeling about that
+country. A blind man can find his way over paths that he intuitively
+feels. And so with me. I feel as if I knew everything about that land,
+and when I sit down to write--why, things just come pouring to me, and
+I can write _anything_ then."
+
+I could feel his slow smile, and then he said:
+
+"I believe you can. I don't doubt that you will accomplish all that you
+hope to. You are a _wonderful_ girl."
+
+He stood up, and held out his hand to help me, saying we had better be
+returning now, as he expected to take a train at eleven. My heart sank
+to think that his visit was to be so short, and I felt a passionate
+regret that there was nothing I could do or say that would keep him
+longer.
+
+As we were walking down the avenue, he put the hand nearest me behind
+his back, and with the other swung his cane slightly. He seemed to be
+thinking all the time.
+
+I asked him whether he was going to come and see me again, and he said
+quickly:
+
+"If you do what I tell you."
+
+"You mean about the school?" I asked.
+
+"No-o. We'll let that go for the present; but you've got to get out of
+both that er--institution--"
+
+"The Y. W. C. A.?" I queried, surprised.
+
+"Yes, your precious Y. W. C. A."
+
+He was talking in a low and rather guarded voice, as if anxious that no
+one passing should hear us.
+
+"I want you to get bright, pretty rooms. You'll feel better and work
+better in attractive surroundings."
+
+"I did intend to move, anyway," I said. "Lolly and I were planning to
+look for rooms to-morrow."
+
+He said quickly:
+
+"I wouldn't go with her. Get a place of your own."
+
+"Well, but, you see, together we can get a better room for less money,"
+I explained.
+
+He made an impatient sound, as if the discussion of expense provoked
+him.
+
+"Get as nice a place as you can, child," he said, and added growlingly,
+"If you don't, I'll not come to see you at all."
+
+"All right," I said; "I'll get a nice place."
+
+"And now about your position--"
+
+"It's not bad," I asseverated. "Fred's awfully good to me."
+
+"Fred?"
+
+"Yes; he's my boss--Fred O'Brien."
+
+"You call him Fred?"
+
+"Yes; every one does at the yards."
+
+"Humph! I think it would be an excellent plan for you to leave those
+yards just about as expeditiously as you can."
+
+"But I can't. Why, I might not be able to get another position. Just
+look how I tramped about for weeks before I got that."
+
+He stopped abruptly in the street.
+
+"Don't you know, if you stay in a place like that, every bit of poetry
+and--er--charm--and fineness in you, and every other worth-while
+quality that you possess, will be literally beaten out of you?
+Why, that is no place for a girl like you. Now you get a pretty
+room--several, if you wish--and then go to work and write--write your
+poetry and stories and anything you want."
+
+"But, Mr. Hamilton, I can't afford to do that."
+
+He switched his cane with a sort of savage impatience.
+
+"Nonsense!" he said. "You can afford to have anything you want. I'll
+give you anything--anything you want."
+
+He repeated this sweepingly, almost angrily, and after a moment I said:
+
+"Well, why should you do this for me?"
+
+I was saying to myself that I would let him do anything for me if he
+did it because he cared for me. If not, I could take nothing from him.
+I waited in a sort of agony for his answer. It came slowly, as if he
+were carefully choosing his words:
+
+"I want to do it," he said, "because I am interested in you; because
+it pleases me to help a girl like you; because I believe you are, as I
+have said, a wonderful girl, an exceptionally gifted girl, and I want
+to give you a chance to prove it."
+
+"Oh!" I tried to speak lightly, but I wanted to sob. His belief in
+my talent gave me no pride. I vastly preferred him to care for me
+personally. "Thank you," I said, "but I can't let you give me a room
+and support me any more than I can let you send me to school."
+
+We had now reached the Y. W. C. A. I could see the door girl watching
+us through the glass. It was after ten, and I had to go in. I held out
+my hand, and he took it reluctantly and immediately let it go. His
+manner plainly showed that I had offended him.
+
+"Don't think," I said, "because I can't let you help me that I'm not
+grateful to you, for I am."
+
+"Gratitude be damned!" he said.
+
+Estelle and I had a little stock of candles, and when the lights went
+out before we were in bed, we used to light one. I had trouble finding
+one in the dark that night, and I tripped over the rocking-chair and
+hurt my ankle. Estelle sat up in petulant wrath.
+
+"Say, what's biting you lately, anyhow?" she demanded. "Getting gay in
+your old age, are you?" she inquired.
+
+"You shut up!" I said crossly, nursing my ankle. "I believe you hide
+those candles, anyway."
+
+"I sure do," retorted Estelle. "If you think I'm going to let your
+swell friend burn my little glimmers, you've got one more guess coming."
+
+By my "swell friend" she meant Lolly.
+
+She got out of bed, however, felt under the bureau, and produced and
+lighted a candle. Then she examined and rubbed my ankle, and, grumbling
+and muttering things about Lolly, helped me undress and into bed. When
+I supposed she had dropped off asleep, she sat up suddenly in bed.
+
+"Say, I'd like to ask you something. Have you got a steady?" she said.
+
+"No, Estelle; I wish I had," I replied mournfully.
+
+"Well," said Estelle, "you sure are going the way about _nit_ to get
+one. You let them swell guys alone that come nosing around you. Say, do
+you know _I_ thought you were in for a nice, steady fellow when I seen
+Pop-eyes"--Pop-eyes was her term for Hermann--"hanging round here. Then
+I seen _Miss_ Hope"--with a sneer--"had cut you out. Say, I'd 'a' like'
+to have handed her one for that. Who was the swell took you out last
+night?"
+
+"His name's Chambers. He's Lolly's friend."
+
+"And who was the man to see you to-night? Looked to me as if _he_ were
+stuck on you."
+
+I sat up in bed excitedly.
+
+"Oh, Estelle, did it?"
+
+"Humph! I was right there next to you, on the next sofa with Albert,
+but, gee! you didn't see nothing but him, and he was looking at you
+like he'd eat you up if you give him half a chance."
+
+I sighed.
+
+"I gave him a chance all right," I said mournfully.
+
+"And nothing doing?" asked Estelle, sympathetically.
+
+"No--nothing doing, Estelle," I said.
+
+"Well, what do you care?" said my room-mate, determined to comfort me.
+"Say, what does any girl want with an old grand-pop like him, anyway?"
+
+I laughed, I don't know why. Somehow, I was _glad_ that Mr. Hamilton
+was old. Oh, yes, forty seems old to seventeen.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+I don't know whether it was the effect of Mr. Hamilton's visit or not,
+but I was not so contented after that. Things about the Y. W. C. A.
+that I had not noticed before now irritated me.
+
+A great many unjust requirements were made of the girls. It was not
+fair to make us attend certain sermons. Goodness knows, we were tired
+enough when we got home, and most of us just wanted to go to our rooms;
+and if we did desire entertainment or relaxation, we wanted to choose
+it for ourselves. I believe some of these old rules are not enforced
+to-day.
+
+Then that ten o'clock rule! Really it _was_ a shame! Just fancy writing
+feverishly upon some beautiful (to me it was beautiful) story or poem,
+and all of a sudden the lights going out! That was maddening, and
+sometimes I swore as Lolly did, and I cried once when I had reached a
+place in my story that I simply _had_ to finish, and I tried to do it
+in the dark.
+
+So I was determined to move, and Lolly went about looking for rooms for
+us. I told her I'd like anything she got.
+
+Meanwhile life in the yards began to "get upon my nerves." I never
+before knew that I _had_ nerves; but I knew it now. No one, not even
+a girl of the abounding health and spirits I then enjoyed, could work
+eight hours a day at a type-writer and two or three hours writing at
+night, and be in love besides, and not feel some sort of strain.
+
+And I _was_ in love. I don't suppose any girl was ever more utterly and
+hopelessly in love than I was then. No matter what I was doing or where
+I was,--even when I wrote my stories,--he was always back there in my
+mind. It was almost as though he had hypnotized me.
+
+Loving is, I suppose, a sort of bliss. One can get a certain amount of
+real joy and excitement out of loving; but it's pretty woeful when one
+must love alone, and that was my case. You see, though I knew I had
+made a kind of impression upon Mr. Hamilton, or, as he himself put it,
+he was "interested" in me, still he certainly was not in love with me,
+and I had little or no hope now of making him care for me.
+
+I realized that he belonged to a different social sphere. He was a
+rich, powerful man, of one of the greatest families in America, and
+I--I was a working-girl, a stenographer of the stock-yards. Only in
+novels or a few sensational newspaper stories did millionaires fall
+in love with and marry poor, ignorant working-girls, and then the
+working-girl was sure to be a beauty. I was not a beauty. Some people
+said I was pretty, but I don't think I was even that. I had simply the
+fresh prettiness that goes hand in hand with youth, and youth gallops
+away from us like a race-horse, eager to reach the final goal. No, I
+was not pretty. I looked odd, and when I began to wear fine clothes, I
+must have appeared very well, for I had all sorts of compliments paid
+to me. I was told that I looked picturesque, interesting, fascinating,
+distinguished, lovely, and even more flattering things that were not
+true. It showed what clothes will do.
+
+I was not, however, wearing fine clothes at this time. My clothes were
+of the simplest--sailor shirtwaist, navy-blue cloth skirt, and a blue
+sailor hat with a rolled-up brim. That was how I dressed until the
+night Lolly lent me some of her finery.
+
+My only hope lay in pulling myself up by my talent. If I achieved fame,
+that, perhaps, I felt, would put me on a level with this man. But fame
+seemed as elusive and as far away as the stars above me.
+
+Then, his insistence that I should be educated and his statement that I
+was illiterate made me pause in my thought to take reckoning of myself.
+If, indeed, my ignorance was so patent that it was revealed in my mere
+speech, how, then, could I hope to achieve anything? I felt very badly
+about that, and when I read over some of my beloved poems, instead
+of their giving me the former pride and delight, I felt, instead, a
+deep-seated grief and dissatisfaction, so that I tore them up, and then
+wept just as if I had destroyed some living thing.
+
+Yes, I was very unhappy. I kept at my work, doing it efficiently; but
+the place now appeared hideous and abhorrent to me, and every day I
+asked myself:
+
+"How much longer can I bear it?"
+
+I remember leaving my desk one day, going to the girls' dressing-room,
+and just sitting down alone and crying, without knowing just what I was
+crying about--I who cried so little!
+
+I suppose things would have gone from bad to worse for me but for two
+things that happened to distract me.
+
+We moved, Lolly and I. I can't say that our rooms were as attractive
+and clean-looking as the ones we had at the Y. W. C. A., and of course
+they cost more. Still, they were not bad. We had two small rooms.
+Originally one large room, a partition had made it into two. By putting
+a couch in the outer room, we made a sitting-room, and were allowed to
+have our company there. Whichever one was up the last with company was
+to sleep on the couch.
+
+Lolly made the rooms very attractive by putting pretty covers over the
+couch and table, and college flags that some men gave her on the wall,
+with a lot of pictures and photographs. The place looked very cozy,
+especially at night, but somehow I missed the cleanly order of my room
+of the Y. W. C. A.
+
+I wrote a letter to Mr. Hamilton and gave him our new address. I could
+not resist telling him that I had been very unhappy; that I realized
+he was right, and that I could never go very far when my equipment in
+life was so pitifully small. However, I added hopefully that I intended
+to read a lot that winter, and that Lolly and I were going to join the
+library. I could take a book with me to work. There were many intervals
+during the day when I could read if I wished to; in the luncheon hour,
+for instance, and on the cars going to and from work. One could always
+snatch a moment. Didn't he think I would improve myself much by reading?
+
+He did not answer me, but a few days later three large boxes of books
+came to the house for me.
+
+Lolly and I were overjoyed. We had a great time getting shelves for the
+books and setting them up. We had Balzac, Dumas, Flaubert, Gautier,
+Maupassant, Carlyle's "French Revolution," and the standard works of
+the English authors. Also we had the Encyclopædia Britannica. I was so
+happy about those books that my depression dropped from me in a moment.
+I felt that if my little arms could have embraced the world, I should
+have encircled it. It was not merely the delight of possessing books
+for the first time in my life, but because _he_ had chosen and sent
+them to me.
+
+The second thing that came up to divert me from a tendency to
+melancholia at this time happened at the yards immediately after that.
+
+One day O'Brien did not come to work till about five in the afternoon.
+As soon as he came in I noticed that there was something wrong with
+him. His hat was tipped over one eye, and his mouth had a crooked
+slant as he moved his cigar from side to side. Without noticing me,
+he took his seat, and slightly turned his back toward me. I chanced
+just then to catch Hermann's eye. He made a sign to me. I could not
+understand at first what he meant till he lifted an empty glass from
+his desk, held it to his lips, and then pretended to drain it. Then I
+knew: Fred had been drinking.
+
+I suppose I ought not to have spoken to a man in his condition, but I
+think for the first time in my life there swept over me a great wave of
+maternal feeling toward this big uncouth boy who had been so good to
+me. I said:
+
+"Fred!"
+
+He turned around slightly, and looked at me through bleary eyes. His
+lips were dirty and stained with tobacco, and the odor that came from
+him made me feel ill. His voice, however, was steady, and he had it
+under control.
+
+"Nora," he said, "I'm soused."
+
+"You'd better go home," I whispered, for I was afraid he would get into
+trouble if one of the firm were to see him. "I'll finish your work for
+you. I know just how."
+
+"I'm not going home till _you_ do," said Fred. "I'm going with you.
+You'll take care of me, won't you, Nora?"
+
+"O Fred," I said, "please do go home!"
+
+"I tell you I'm going with you. I want to tell you all about myself. I
+never told you before. Got to tell you to-night."
+
+"I'd rather hear it to-morrow night."
+
+"Don't care what you'd rather. I'm going to tell you to-night,"
+persisted Fred, with the irritable querulousness of a child.
+
+"But I go out on the bus with the girls," I said. "And that leaves at
+5:30."
+
+"Tha' 's true," said Fred. "Tell you what I'll do. I'll start off now,
+and I'll meet you at the end of the yards when the bus comes out. See?"
+
+I nodded. Fred settled his hat more crookedly on his head, and, with an
+unlighted cigar twisting loosely in his mouth, went staggering down the
+aisle.
+
+Hermann came over to my desk, and when I told him what Fred had said,
+he advised me to slip off the bus quickly and make a run for the
+nearest car. He said if Fred "got a grip" on me, he'd never let go
+"till he had sobered up."
+
+I asked Hermann how long that would take, and he said:
+
+"Well, sometimes he goes on a long drunk, for weeks at a time. It
+depends on who is with him. If he can get any one to drink with him,
+he'll keep on and on, once he's started. Once a prize-fighter just got
+a hold of him and punched him into sensibility, and he didn't touch
+a drop for a year afterward. He can, if he tries, sober up in a few
+hours. He goes months without touching a thing, and then all of a
+sudden he reverts."
+
+Hermann then told me that Fred had once been jilted by a girl in
+Milwaukee, and that had started him to drinking.
+
+As the bus took us through the yards, I thought how terrible and sad
+it was for a man who was in such a condition to be left to his own
+devices. It was just as if one left a helpless baby to mind himself, or
+threw a poor sick person out upon the street, expecting him to be cured
+without treatment. What was drink but a disease, anyhow? And I said to
+myself that I wished I were a prize-fighter. Fred had been good to me.
+I come of a race, on my mother's side, which does not easily forget
+kindnesses, and somehow I could think of nothing save how Fred had
+treated me that first day, and had given me a chance when no one else
+would.
+
+So when I stepped from the bus, and Fred came lurching toward me, I
+simply had not the heart to break away from him. All the girls were
+watching us, and some of the men tried to draw Fred aside by the arm.
+
+He became wildly excited, and said he could "lick any son of a gun in
+the Union Stock-Yards."
+
+One of the men told me to "beat it" while they took care of Fred; but
+Fred did look so helpless and so inexpressibly childish as he cried
+out his defiance, and as I was mortally afraid that they might get
+fighting among themselves, and, anyhow, though drunk, he was not
+offensive, I said:
+
+"I'll take him home. I'm not afraid of him."
+
+Some of them laughed, and some protested; but I didn't care anything
+about any of them except Fred, and I helped him on an open car that
+went near our house.
+
+I took him to our rooms, and there Lolly tried to sober him by making
+him black coffee, and Hermann, who came, too,--he had kept right up
+with Fred and me,--said he'd take care of Fred while Lolly and I got
+our dinner. We took our meals out.
+
+When we got back,--it was about eight then,--there was Fred sitting
+on the door-step. Hermann was trying to drag him to his feet, but he
+wouldn't move, and he kept saying: "Nora's going to take care of me.
+S-she's m' stenographer, you know."
+
+Hermann explained that our landlady had ordered them out, as Fred had
+begun to sing after we went. Hermann wanted Lolly and me to go into
+the house, and he said he'd take care of Fred, even if he had to "land
+him in a cell" to do it. He said that in such a nasty way that poor
+Fred began to cry that he hadn't a friend in the world, and that made
+me feel so badly that I told him that I was his friend, and that I'd
+take good care that Hermann didn't put him in a cell. Then I had an
+inspiration.
+
+I suggested that we all take a long street-car ride and that the open
+air might clear his head, and if it didn't, we could get off at some
+park and walk around. Fred exclaimed that walking was the one thing
+that always "woke" him up.
+
+Lolly said:
+
+"Not for me!" and went into the house.
+
+So Hermann and I, with Fred between us, made for the nearest car. I
+got in first, then Fred, and then as Hermann was getting on, Fred
+seized his hat and threw it out into the road. A wind caught it, and
+Hermann had to chase after it. While he was doing this, Fred pulled the
+bell-rope, and the car started.
+
+We rode to the end of the line, Fred behaving very well. Here we got
+off, and we went into the park. I asked Fred how he was feeling, and he
+said "tip-top," and that he would be all right after walking about a
+bit.
+
+We _walked_!
+
+At first Fred was garrulous in a wandering sort of way, and he tried to
+tell me about the girl who had jilted him. He said he had never liked a
+girl since except me, and then he pulled himself up abruptly and said:
+
+"But don't think I'm stuck on you, because I ain't. I got stuck on one
+girl in my life, and that was enough for me."
+
+"Of course you're not," I said soothingly, "and I'm not stuck on you,
+either. We're just good pals, aren't we?"
+
+"Best ever," said Fred, drowsily.
+
+Then for a long time--my! it seemed hours and hours--we just tramped
+about the park. Curiously enough, I didn't feel a bit tired; but by and
+by I could tell by the way he walked that Fred was just about ready to
+drop from exhaustion. He had been up drinking all the previous night
+and all the day. So presently I found a bench under a big tree, and I
+tried to make him sit down; but nothing would do but that he must lie
+down at full length on the bench, with his head on my lap. He dropped
+off almost immediately into a sound sleep or stupor, breathing heavily
+and noisily.
+
+I don't know how long we were there. I grew numb with the weight of
+his heavy head upon my knee. A policeman came along and asked me what
+we were doing. I told him truthfully that Fred had been drinking, and
+was now asleep, and I asked him, please not to wake him. He called Fred
+my "man," and said we could stay there. We did stay there. Nothing I
+believe could have awakened Fred. As for me, well, I made up my mind
+that I was "in for it." I thought of trying to go to sleep with my head
+against the back of the seat, but it was too low. So I had to sit up
+straight.
+
+It was a still, warm night in September, with scarcely a breeze
+stirring. I could see the giant branches of the trees on all sides of
+us. They shot up like ghostly sentinels. Even the whispering leaves
+seemed scarcely to stir.
+
+I saw the stars in a wide silver sky, staring and winking down upon us
+all through that long night. I looked up at them, and thought of my
+father, and I thought of that great ancestor of mine who had been an
+astronomer, and had given to the world some of its chief knowledge of
+the heavens above us. It would be strange, I whimsically thought, if
+somewhere up there among the stars, he was peering down at me now on
+this microscopic earth; for it was microscopic in the great scheme of
+the universe, my father had once said.
+
+To sit up all night long in a quiet, beautiful park, under a
+star-spotted sky, with a drunken man asleep on your lap, after all,
+that is not the worst of fates. _I_ know, because I have done it, and I
+tell you there have been less happy nights than that in my life.
+
+As we rush along in the whirligig of life, we girls who must work so
+hard for our daily bread, we get so little time in which to _think_.
+For one cannot think save disjointedly, while working. Now I had a
+long chance for all my thoughts, and they came crowding upon me. I
+thought of my little brothers and sisters, and I wistfully longed that
+I might see them again while they were still little. I thought of my
+sister Marion, whom I had left in Boston. Had she fared as well as I?
+She had written me two or three times, and her letters were cheerful
+enough, but just as I told her in my letters nothing of my struggles,
+so she told me nothing of hers. Yet I read between the lines, and I
+_knew_--it made my heart ache, that knowledge--that Marion was having
+an even more grim combat with Fate than I; I was better equipped than
+she to earn a living. For one's mere physical beauty is, after all,
+a poor and dangerous asset. And Marion was earning her living by her
+beauty. She was a professional model, getting fifty cents an hour.
+
+I thought of other sisters, one of whom had passed through a tragic
+experience, and another--the eldest, a girl with more real talent
+than I--who had been a pitiful invalid all her days. She is dead
+now, that dear big sister of mine, and a monument marks her grave in
+commemoration of work she did for my mother's country.
+
+It seemed as if our heritage had been all struggle. None of us had
+yet attained what the world calls success. We were all straining and
+leaping up frantically at the stars of our ancestor; but they still
+stared aloofly at us, like the impenetrable Sphinx.
+
+It seemed a great pity that I was not, after all, to be the savior of
+the family, and that my dreams of the fame and fortune that not alone
+should lift me up, but all my people, were built upon a substance as
+shifting as sand and as shadowy as mist. For, if what Mr. Hamilton had
+said was true, there was, alas! no hope in me. Perhaps I was doomed to
+be the wife of a man like the fat, blond clerk at the yards, or even of
+Fred. To think now of Mr. Hamilton as a possible husband was to do so
+with a cynical jeer at my own past ingenuousness. Since that visit of
+his, I had been awakened, as it were, to the clear knowledge that this
+man could never be to me what I had so fondly dreamed. Well!
+
+I don't know when the stars began to fade. They just seemed to wink
+out one by one in the sky, and it grew gray and haggard, as it does
+just before the dawn. Even in the dark the birds began to call to one
+another, and when the first pale streak from the slowly rising sun
+crept stealthily out of the east, these winged little creatures dropped
+to earth in search of food, and a small, soft, inquiring-eyed squirrel
+jumped right in the path before me, and stood with uplifted tail and
+pricked-up head, as if to question my presence there.
+
+Perhaps it was the whistling chatter of the birds that awoke Fred. He
+said I called to him, but he was mistaken.
+
+He was lying on his back, his head upturned on my lap, and suddenly
+he opened his eyes and stared up at me. Then slowly he sat up, and
+he leaned forward on the bench and covered his face with his hands.
+I thought he was crying, but presently he said to me in a low, husky
+voice:
+
+"How long have we been here?" and I said:
+
+"All night, Fred."
+
+"Nora Ascough, you're a dead-game sport!" he answered.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+It may sound strange, but I really felt very little the worse for
+that long night's vigil. I went home, took a cold bath, had breakfast
+in a near-by restaurant (one of those, ten, twenty, twenty-five-cent
+places), and went to work just the same as ever. What is more, I had a
+specially hard day at the yards, for of course Fred was not there, and
+I had to do a good part of his work.
+
+Frank Hermann wanted to know just how I got away from Fred, and I told
+him just what had happened. He said admiringly:
+
+"Gee! you're one corker, Nora!"
+
+"Fred gave me my job," I said, but I may as well add that I felt rather
+proud. Not every girl can be called a "dead-game sport" and a "corker."
+
+Hermann said he had told the men about the place who had seen me go
+home with Fred that he had joined us, and later had himself taken Fred
+home. I felt grateful to Hermann for that. Personally I cared very
+little what these stock-yard people thought of me. Still it was good of
+Frank to undertake to protect me. He was a "good sort," I must say.
+
+One of the girls in the bus said as we were going home that evening
+that I looked "fagged out," so I suppose I had begun to show the
+effects of the night; but I was not aware of any great fatigue until I
+got on the street car. All the seats were taken, and I had to stand in
+a crush all the way home, holding to a strap. I was glad enough to get
+home, I can tell you.
+
+I thought Lolly was in when I saw the light in my room, and that
+surprised me, because her hours were very irregular. She seldom came
+home for dinner, and often worked at night.
+
+I suppose it was the surprise and shock of finding him there, and, of
+course, my real state of weakness, but I nearly fainted when I saw Mr.
+Hamilton in my room. His back was turned to the door when I went in, as
+he was looking at the books he had sent me. Then he turned around and
+said:
+
+"Well, how's the wonderful girl?"
+
+I couldn't answer him, and I must have looked very badly, for he came
+over to me quickly, took both my hands, and drew me down to the couch
+beside him. Then he said roughly:
+
+"You see, you can't stand work like this. You're all trembling and
+pale."
+
+I said hysterically:
+
+"I'm trembling because you are here, and I'm pale because I'm tired,
+and I'm tired because I've been up all night long."
+
+"What!" he exclaimed.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Oh, yes. Fred was drunk, and he wanted me with him; so I walked with
+him in L---- Park, and then he fell asleep on a bench with his head on
+my lap."
+
+He jumped to his feet, and looking up, I saw his face. It was so black
+with astounded fury that I thought he was going to strike me; but I was
+not afraid of him. I felt only a sudden sense of wonder and pain. His
+voice, though low, had a curious sound of suppressed rage.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that you have been out all night with that man?"
+
+I looked into his face, and then I nodded, without speaking. He gave me
+a hard look, and then he laughed shortly, brutally.
+
+"So you are _that_ sort, are you?" he said.
+
+"Yes," I returned defiantly, "I am that sort. Fred was good to me. He
+took me on trust. If I had left him last night, he might have gone on
+drinking, or a policeman would have arrested him. You can't imagine the
+state he was in--just like a helpless child."
+
+While I was speaking he kept staring at me. I was so nervous that I
+wrenched my hands together. And then I saw his face change, just as if
+it were broken, and in place of that hard, sneering expression there
+came that beautiful look that I had seen on his face that day on the
+train when he had asked me if I would like to go to school.
+
+He came over and sat down again beside me on the couch. He took my
+hands in his, and held them as if he were warming them. Then I put my
+face against his arm and began to cry. He didn't say a word to me for
+the longest time. Then he asked me very gently to tell him all over
+again just what happened. So I did. He wanted to know if Fred had said
+anything offensive to me, or if he had been familiar or tried to kiss
+me. I said, "No; Fred is not that kind." If he had been, he asked me,
+what would I have done? I didn't know, I told him.
+
+"You'd have permitted him to?" he demanded sharply, and I said I didn't
+think I would; but then, of course, one couldn't tell what a drunken
+man might do. He said that that was the whole point of the matter,
+and that I could see for myself that I had done a very foolish and
+dangerous thing.
+
+By this time he was walking up and down. After a while, when he had
+gotten over his excitement and wrath about Fred, he shook up all the
+sofa pillows on the couch, and made me lie down. When I sat up, he
+lifted up my feet, and put them on the couch, too. So I had to lie
+down, and I was so tired and happy that he was there, and _cared_,
+that I would have done anything he ordered me to. Then he drew up a
+chair beside me, and began to talk again on the subject of my going to
+school. Goodness! I had thought that matter was settled. But, no; he
+had the persistency of a bull-dog in matters about which he cared.
+
+He said it was nonsense for me to be expending my strength like this,
+when I ought to be studying and developing myself. He said association
+at my age meant everything; that I had the impressionable temperament
+of the artist, and was bound either to be benefited or hurt by the
+people with whom I associated.
+
+I let him go on, because I loved to hear him talk, anyway, even though
+he was so cross about it. He kept frowning at me, as if he were
+administering a scolding, and driving the fist of his right hand into
+the palm of his left in a way he had when talking. When he was through,
+I said:
+
+"If I go to school, will you come to see me, like this?"
+
+"Of course I'll come to see you," he said. "Not--like this exactly; but
+I shall make it a point of coming to see you."
+
+"Well, would I be alone with you ever?" I asked.
+
+He said, yes, sometimes, but that I ought to know what boarding-schools
+were like. I smiled up at him at that, and he frowned down at me, and I
+said:
+
+"I'd rather live like this, with all my besotted ignorance, and have
+you come to see me, and be with me all alone, just like this, than go
+to the finest boarding-school in the world."
+
+He said, "Nonsense!" but he was touched, for he didn't say anything
+more about my going to school then. Instead, he began to urge me to
+leave my position at the yards. When I said I couldn't do that, he
+grew really angry with me. I think he would have gone then, for he
+picked up his hat; but I told him I hadn't had any dinner. Neither, of
+course, had he, as I had come in about six-thirty. So then I made him
+wait while I dressed, and he took me out to dinner.
+
+There were a number of restaurants near where I lived, but he knew of a
+better place down-town; so we went there, by carriage, instead. On the
+way he asked me where I got the suit I had on, and I told him. Then he
+wanted to know what I paid for it, and I told him $12. It was a good
+little blue serge suit, and I had a smart hat to go with it. In fact,
+I was beginning to dress better, and more like American girls. I asked
+him if he liked my suit. He said roughly:
+
+"No," and then he added, "it's too thin." After a moment he said:
+
+"I'm going to buy you decent clothes first of all."
+
+I had a queer feeling that so long as I took nothing from this man, I
+should retain his respect. It was a stubborn, persistent idea. I could
+not efface from my mind his bitter words of that day on the train, and
+I wanted above all things to prove to him that I cared for him only for
+himself and not for the things I knew he could give me and wanted to
+give me. I never knew a man so anxious to give a woman things as was
+Mr. Hamilton to do things for me from the very first. So now I told him
+that I couldn't let him get clothes for me. That made him angrier than
+ever, and he wouldn't speak to me all the rest of the way. While we
+were having dinner (he had ordered the meal without reference to me at
+all, but just as if he knew what I should like), he said in that rough
+way he often assumed to me when he was bent upon having his way about
+something:
+
+"You want me to take you with me when I come to Chicago, don't you--to
+dinner, theaters, and other places?"
+
+I nodded. I did want to go with him, and I was tremendously proud to
+think that he wanted to take me.
+
+"Very well, then," he said; "you'll have to dress properly."
+
+I couldn't find any answer to that, but I inwardly vowed that I would
+spend every cent I made above my board on clothes.
+
+I think he was sorry for having spoken unkindly to me, because he
+ceased to urge me about the school, my position, my lodgings, which he
+did not like at all, and now my clothes. He made me tell him all over
+again for the third or fourth time about last night. He kept asking me
+about Fred, almost as if he were trying to trap me with questions, till
+finally I grew so hurt by some of his questions that I wouldn't answer
+him. Then again he changed the subject, and wanted to know what I had
+been writing. That was a subject on which he knew I would chatter
+fluently, and I told him how I had actually dared to submit my latest
+to a mighty publication in New York. He said he wished he were the
+editor. I said:
+
+"Would you take my stories?"
+
+"You better believe I would," he said.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, why do you suppose?"
+
+"Because you think my stories are good or because you like me--which?"
+
+He laughed, and told me to finish my coffee.
+
+I said:
+
+"You must like me _some_, else you wouldn't have cared about Fred."
+
+He tried to frown at me for that, but instead laughed outright, and
+said if it gave me any satisfaction to believe that, to go on believing
+it.
+
+My happiness was dashed when he said he had to return to Richmond on
+the eleven o'clock train. I had been secretly hoping he would remain
+in Chicago a few days. When I faltered out this hope, he said rather
+shortly:
+
+"I can only run down here occasionally for a day or a few hours at a
+time. My affairs keep me in Richmond."
+
+Little things exhilarate me and make me happy, and little things
+depress me and make me sad. So while I was light-hearted a moment
+before, I felt blue at the thought of his going. I said to myself that
+this was how it would always be. He would always come, and he would
+always go, and I wondered if a day would ever come when he would ask me
+to go with him.
+
+He saw that I was depressed, and began to talk teasingly:
+
+"Do you know," he said--we were now at the steps of my
+boarding-house--"that you are a very fickle little person?"
+
+"I? Why I'm foolishly faithful," I declared.
+
+"I say you are fickle," he asserted with mock seriousness. "Now I know
+one chap that you used to think the world and all about, but whom you
+have completely forgotten. The poor little fellow came to me, and told
+me all about it himself."
+
+I couldn't think whom in the world he could mean, and thought he was
+just joking, when he said:
+
+"So you've forgotten all about your little dog, have you?"
+
+"Verley!"
+
+"Yes, Verley."
+
+"Oh, you've seen him?"
+
+I think it gave him all kinds of satisfaction to answer me as he did.
+
+"I've got him. He's mine now--ours, shall we say?"
+
+"Oh, did Dr. Manning give him to you?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Not much. He _sold_ him to me."
+
+"He had no right to do that. Verley was my dog."
+
+"But you owed Dr. Manning for your fare from Boston."
+
+"That's true. Did he tell you that?"
+
+"No, but I knew it, and I didn't like the idea of your owing anything
+to any one except--me," and he gave me one of his warmest smiles when
+he said that. "I did not see the doctor myself, but a friend arranged
+the matter for me. By the way, he owes you a considerable little sum
+over the amount he paid for your fare from Boston, though we are not
+going to bother collecting it. We'll let it go."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"It seems he considered the dog a very expensive article. I paid him
+three hundred dollars for Verley, whose high-bred ancestry I very much
+doubt."
+
+"Three hundred dollars! Oh, what a shame! He wasn't worth anything like
+that," I cried.
+
+He said after a moment, during which he looked at me very steadily:
+
+"Yes, he was worth that to me: he was--_yours_."
+
+I caught my breath, I was so happy when he said that.
+
+"Now I know you do like me," I said, "else you wouldn't say things like
+that."
+
+"Nonsense!" he said.
+
+"Why do you bother about me at all, then?" I asked.
+
+He had put the key in the lock now. He didn't look up when he answered
+that, but kept twisting the key.
+
+"I told you why. I'm interested in you--that's all," he said.
+
+"Is that--_really_--all?" I asked tremulously.
+
+"Yes," he said in a rough whisper; "that is really all, little girl."
+
+"Well, anyway," I said, "even if you don't love me, I love you. You
+don't mind my doing that, do you?"
+
+I could _feel_ his smile in the darkness of that little porch as he
+said:
+
+"No, don't stop doing _that_, whatever happens. That would be a
+calamity hard to bear--now."
+
+It's not much to have permission to love a person, who doesn't love
+you, but it was a happy girl who slept on the couch that night. Lolly
+came in after I did, but I made her sleep inside. She wanted to know
+why on earth I had all the pillows on the couch. I didn't answer. How
+could I tell her that I wanted them about me because _he_ had put them
+there?
+
+In the morning, on the table, I found half a cigar that he had smoked.
+I rolled it up in tissue-paper and put it in the drawer where I kept
+only my most cherished treasures.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Now that the lights no longer went out at ten, I did considerable
+writing at night. I had to work, however, under difficulties, for Lolly
+had no end of men callers. She had discouraged men calling on her at
+the Y. W. C. A., but now that we had a place of our own, she liked them
+to come. As she gaily put it to me one day: "Beaux make great meal
+tickets, Nora."
+
+And then, too, she liked men. She told me once I was the only girl chum
+she had ever had, though she had had scores of men chums, who were not
+necessarily her admirers as well.
+
+Lolly was a born flirt. Hermann was her slave and her shadow now, and
+so were several newspaper men and editors who seemed devoted to her.
+There was only one man, however, for whom she cared a "button," so she
+told me, and that was Marshall Chambers; and yet, she quarreled with
+him constantly, and never trusted him.
+
+Lolly's men friends were kind to me, too. They tried many devices to
+entrap me to go with them. It was all I could do to work at night, for
+even when I shut myself into the inner room, Lolly was always coming in
+with this or that message and joke, and to urge me to "come on out,
+like a good fellow, just for to-night." Though, to do Lolly justice,
+many a time, when she thought the story I was working on was worth
+while, she would try to protect me from being disturbed, and sometimes
+she'd say:
+
+"Clear out, the whole bunch of you! Nora's in the throes of creation
+again."
+
+However, I really don't know how I managed to write at all there.
+Hermann came nearly every night in those days, and even when Lolly was
+out, he used to sit in that outer room and wait, poor fellow, for her
+to return. He never reproached Lolly, though he certainly knew she
+did not return his love. Hermann just waited, with a sort of untiring
+German patience and determination to win in the end. He was no longer
+the gay and flippant "lady-killer." In a way I was glad to have Hermann
+there at nights, for I was afraid of Chambers. Whenever he found me
+alone, he would try to make love to me, and tell me he was mad about me
+and other foolish things.
+
+I asked him once what he would do if I told Lolly. He replied, with an
+ugly smile, that he guessed Lolly would take his word before mine.
+
+That marked him as unprincipled, and I hated him more than ever. Of
+course I never told him I disliked him. On the contrary, I was always
+very civil and joking with him. It's queer, but I have a good streak of
+the "Dr. Fell" feeling in me. Hermann and I once talked over Marshall
+Chambers, and his efforts to make love to me. Hermann said that that
+was one of the reasons he was going to be there when he could. He said
+that some day Lolly was going to find out, and he (Hermann) wanted to
+be there to take care of her when that day came. Such was his dog-like
+affection for Lolly, that, although he knew she loved this man, he was
+prepared to take her when she was done with the other.
+
+Occasionally Fred, too, came to see me in the evening, but if I was
+writing, he would go away at once. My writing to Fred loomed as
+something very important. He believed in me. Hamilton had called me
+a wonderful girl, but Fred believed I was an inspired genius. He let
+me copy all my stories on the type-writer at the office, and would
+literally steal time for me in which to do it, making Red Top do work I
+should have done.
+
+Fred was "in bad" at the yards. It seems that his last "drunk" had
+completely exasperated certain heads of the firm, and there was a
+general opinion, so Hermann told me, that Fred's head might "come off"
+any day now.
+
+I was so worried about this that I tried to warn him. He stuck his
+tongue in one cheek and winked at me. Then he said:
+
+"Nora, I have an A No. 1 pull with old man Smith, and there ain't
+nobody going to get my job here; but I'm working them for the New York
+job. I want to go east."
+
+That made me feel just as badly, for, if Fred was transferred to the
+New York branch, what would become of me? I could not go, too, and I
+disliked the thought of working under another.
+
+I felt so badly about it that I wrote to Mr. Hamilton, who had not been
+to see me for three weeks. I suppose if I had not been working so hard,
+I should have felt worse about that, because I had thought he would be
+sure to come and see me again soon. But he did not; nor did he even
+write to me, though I wrote him four letters. My first letter was a
+very foolish one. It was this:
+
+
+     I know you do not love me, but I do you.
+
+     NORA.
+
+
+I felt ashamed of that letter after I mailed it. So then I sent another
+to say I didn't mean it, and then I sent another immediately to say
+that I did.
+
+Then, for a time, as I received no answers, I didn't write to him,
+but tried to forget him in my writing. It's a fact that I was fairly
+successful. Once I started upon a story, my mind centered upon nothing
+else; but as soon as I was through with it, I would begin to think
+about him again, and I suppose he really was in my mind all the time.
+
+But to get back to Fred. I wrote Mr. Hamilton that Fred was likely
+to be transferred to the New York office, and in that event he would
+take me with him. Of course it would be a fine opportunity for me, as
+all the best publishing houses and magazines were in New York, and I
+would have a chance to submit my work directly to the editors. Then,
+too, if Fred was placed in charge of the New York offices, it would be
+much pleasanter than in the stock-yards, since there would be merely a
+handful of clerks. He never answered that letter, either. I wondered
+why he never wrote to me. His silence made me blue and then reckless.
+
+Lolly, who by this time knew all about Mr. Hamilton, offered me her
+usual consolation and advice. The consolation was a cigarette, but I
+didn't care for it at all. Cigarettes choked me every time I tried
+to smoke them, and I couldn't for the life of me understand why she
+liked them. She must have smoked a dozen packages a day, for she
+smoked constantly. Her pretty fingers were nicotine-stained, and I've
+known her even in the night to get up and smoke. So I could not accept
+Lolly's consolatory cigarette. I did, however, follow her advice in a
+way. She said:
+
+"Nora, the only way to forget one man is to interest yourself in
+another--or many others."
+
+So toward the end of the month I began to go about with some of Lolly's
+friends.
+
+They took me to dinners, theaters, and some social and Bohemian clubs
+and dances. At one of these clubs I met Margaret Kingston, a woman
+lawyer, who became my lifelong friend. I don't know how old she was,
+but to me then she seemed very "grown-up." I dare say she was no more
+than forty or forty-five, though her hair was gray. She was a big woman
+physically, mentally, and of heart. Good-humored, full of sentiment,
+and with a fine, clear brain, I could not but be attracted to her at
+once. She was talented, too. She wrote, she painted, she was a fine
+musician, and a good orator. She was a socialist, and when very much
+excited, declared she was also an anarchist. With all her talents,
+possibly because of a certain impractical and sort of vagabond streak
+in her, she was always poor, hard up, and scraping about to make both
+ends meet.
+
+She came over to the table where I was sitting with Lolly and Hermann
+and a newspaper man, and she said she wanted to know the "little girl
+with the black eyes." That was I. We liked each other at once, just as
+Lolly and I had liked each other. I form attachments that way, quickly
+and instinctively, and I told her much about myself, my writing, etc.,
+so that she became at once interested in me and invited me to her
+house. She said she "kept house" with another "old girl."
+
+I went to see them that very next night. They had a pretty house on
+G---- Avenue. Mrs. Kingston took me through the place. I suppose
+I looked so longingly at those lovely rooms that she asked me if
+I wouldn't like to come and live with them. She said she needed a
+couple of "roomers" to help with the expenses, and offered me a dear
+little room--so dainty and cozy!--for only seven dollars a week, with
+board. There were to be no other boarders, so she said; but there was
+a suite of two rooms and a bath in front, and these she intended to
+rent without board. She laughingly said that as these rooms were so
+specially fine, she'd "soak the affluent person who took them" enough
+to carry our expenses. I wanted badly to move in at once, but I was
+afraid Lolly would be offended, so I said I'd see about it.
+
+On that very first visit to Mrs. Kingston, who asked me, by the way, to
+call her "Margaret"--she said she felt younger when people called her
+that; and if it didn't sound so ugly, she would even like to be called
+"Mag"--I met Dick Lawrence, a _Tribune_ reporter.
+
+One never knows why one person falls in love with another. See how I
+loved Hamilton despite his frankly telling me he was only "interested"
+in me. Dick Lawrence fell in love with me, and just as Hermann was
+Lolly's shadow, so Dick became mine. He was as ambitious as I, and
+quite as impractical and visionary. He wrote astonishingly clever
+things, but never stuck at anything long enough to succeed finally. He
+was a born wanderer, just like my father, and although still in his
+early twenties, had been well over the world. At this time the woes of
+Cuba occupied the attention of the American press, and Lawrence was
+trying to get out there to investigate conditions. This was just prior
+to the war.
+
+I never really thought he would go, and was much astonished when only
+two weeks after I met him he turned up one night for "two purposes,"
+as he said. The first was to tell me that he loved me, and the second
+to bid me good-by. Some newspaper syndicate was sending him to Cuba.
+Dick asked me if I would marry him. I liked him very much. He carried
+me away with his eloquent stories of what he was going to do. Moreover
+I was sorry to think of his going out to hot and fever-wracked Cuba,
+among those supposedly fiendish Spaniards; also he reminded me of
+Verley Marchmont, so that I could not help accepting him. You see, I
+had given up all hope of hearing from Mr. Hamilton again. He had not
+answered my letters. I was terribly lonesome and hungry for some one
+to care for me. Dick was a big, wholesome, splendid-looking boy, and
+his tastes were similar to mine. Then he said he'd "move mountains," if
+only I'd become engaged to him. He appeared to me a romantic figure as
+I pictured him starting upon that perilous journey.
+
+The long and short of it is, that I said, "All right." Whereupon Dick
+gave me a ring--not a costly one, for he was not rich--and then, yes,
+he kissed me several times. I won't deny that I liked those kisses.
+I would have given anything in the world to have Mr. Hamilton kiss
+me; but, as I said, I had reached a reckless stage, where I believed
+I should not see him again, and next to being kissed by the man you
+love, it's pleasant to be kissed by a man who loves you. However, that
+may be with his strong young arms about me and his fervent declaration
+that he loved me, I felt comforted and important.
+
+Meantime Lolly came in soon after we were engaged, and she had a party
+of men with her. Dick made me promise to tell no one. He sailed the
+next morning for Cuba. I never saw him again.
+
+When I told Lolly about my engagement she laughed, and told me to
+"forget it." She said Dick had been on her paper a while, and she knew
+him well. She said he never took girls seriously, and although he did
+seem "hard hit" by me, he'd soon get over it once he got among the
+pretty Cuban and Spanish _señoritas_. That was a dubious outlook for
+me, I must say. Just the same, I liked to wear his ring, and I felt a
+new dignity.
+
+It's queer, but in thinking of Mr. Hamilton at this time I felt a
+vindictive sort of satisfaction that I was now engaged. It was good to
+know that even if he didn't love me enough to answer my letters, some
+one did.
+
+One day Fred came in very late from luncheon. I thought at first from
+something strange in his attitude that he had been drinking again, but
+he suddenly swung around in his seat and said:
+
+"Do you know Mott?"
+
+"No. Who is he?"
+
+"Manager of the ---- Department."
+
+"I don't know him by name," I said. "Point him out to me."
+
+Fred said ominously:
+
+"That's him; but he's not looking quite his usual handsome self."
+
+I saw a man several departments off who even from that distance looked
+as if his face and nose were swollen and cut.
+
+"Then you never went out with him?" demanded Fred.
+
+"Why, of course not," I declared. "I've never been out with any yards
+men except you and Hermann. You know that."
+
+"I thought so. Now look a-here," and he showed me his fists. The skin
+was off the knuckles, and they had an otherwise battered look.
+
+"That son of a blank," said Fred, "boasted that you had been out with
+him. I knew that he lied, for no decent girl would be seen with the
+likes of him; so I soaked him such a swig in the nose that he'll not
+blow it again for a month."
+
+I tell this incident because it seems to be a characteristic example
+of what certain contemptible men say about girls whom they do not even
+know. I have heard of men who deliberately boasted of favors from girls
+who despised them and who assailed the character of girls who had
+snubbed them. This was my first experience, and my only one of this
+kind. That a man I had not known existed would talk lightly about me
+in a bar-room full of men seemed to me a shameful and cruel thing. That
+a man who did know me had defended me with his fists thrilled and moved
+me. At that moment I almost loved Fred.
+
+This incident, however, thoroughly disgusted me with everything
+connected with the yards. I made up my mind that I would go with Fred
+to New York. We talked it over, and he said that even if the firm would
+not send me, he himself would engage me after he was settled there. So
+I began to plan to leave Chicago, though when I paused to think of Mr.
+Hamilton I grew miserable. Still, the thought of the change excited
+me. Lolly said I'd soon forget him--I knew I wouldn't--and that there
+was nothing like a change of scene to cure one of an infatuation of
+that kind. She always called my love for Hamilton "infatuation," and
+pretended never to regard it as anything serious. She said I was a
+hero-worshipper, and made idols of unworthy clay and endowed them with
+impossible attributes and virtues. She said girls like me never really
+loved a man at all. We loved an image that we ourselves created.
+
+I knew better. In my love I was simply a woman and nothing else, and
+as a woman, not an idealist, I loved Hamilton. I never pretended he
+was perfect. Indeed, I saw his faults from the first, but despite his
+faults, not because of them, I loved him.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Fred was to leave for New York on the first of November, and that was
+only a week off. The firm had decided to retain me, after all, in
+the Chicago offices, but I was determined I would not remain there,
+and planned to go to New York as soon as possible, when Fred would
+immediately engage me. He said he'd "fire" any girl he had then for me.
+
+I had been saving from week to week for my fare and a set of furs. My
+suit, though only two months old, had already begun to show wear, and
+it was thin, as Mr. Hamilton had said. The girls at the yards were
+already wearing furs, but furs were beyond my purse for months to come.
+Lolly had beautiful furs, black, silky lynx, that some one had given
+her the previous Christmas.
+
+It was now five weeks since I had seen Mr. Hamilton, and two since Dick
+had gone. I had had a few letters from Dick. They were not exactly
+love-letters. Dick's letters were more, as it were--well, written for
+publication. I don't know why they seemed like that to me. I suppose he
+could not help writing for effect, for although he said tender things,
+and very brilliantly, too, somehow they did not ring true to me.
+
+I did not think very seriously of our engagement, though I liked my
+ring, and showed it to all the girls at the yards.
+
+My stories came back with unflattering regularity from the magazines to
+which I sent them. Lolly, however, gave two of my stories to her paper,
+and I was to be paid space rates (four dollars a column, I think it
+was) on publication. I was a long time waiting for publication.
+
+Dissatisfied, unhappy, and restless, as I now really was, I did not
+even feel like writing at night. I now no longer ran up-stairs to my
+room, with an eager, wishful heart, hoping that _he_ might be there.
+Alas! I felt sure he had abandoned me forever. He had even ceased, I
+told myself, to be interested in me.
+
+Then one night he came. I had had a hard day at the yards. Not hard
+in the sense of work; but Fred was to leave the following day, and a
+Mr. Hopkins was to take his place. We had spent the day going over all
+the matters of our department, and it's impossible for me to say how
+utterly wretched I felt at the thought of working under another "boss"
+than Fred.
+
+So I came home doleful enough, went out and ate my solitary dinner in a
+nearby restaurant, and then returned to the house.
+
+He called, "Hello, little girl!" while I was opening the door.
+
+I stood speechlessly staring at him for a moment, so glad was I to
+see him. It seemed an incredible and a joyous thing to me that he was
+really there, and that he appeared exactly the same--tall, with his
+odd, tired face and musing eyes.
+
+"Well, aren't you glad to see me?" he asked, smiling, and holding out
+his hand.
+
+I seized it and clung to it with both of mine, and I wouldn't let it
+go. That made him laugh again, and then he said:
+
+"Well, what has my wonderful girl been doing?"
+
+That was nearly always his first question to me.
+
+"I wrote to you four times," I said, "and you never answered me once."
+
+"I'm not much of a hand at letter-writing," he said.
+
+"I thought that you'd forgotten me," I told him, "and that you were
+never going to come and see me again."
+
+He put his hand under my chin, raised my face, and looked at it
+searchingly.
+
+"Would it have mattered so much, then?" he asked gently.
+
+"You know very well I'm in love with you," I told him desperately, and
+he said, as always:
+
+"Nonsense!" though I know he liked to hear me say that.
+
+Then he wanted to inspect me, and he held me off at arm's-length, and
+turned me around, too. I think it was my suit he was looking at, though
+he had seen it before. Then he made me sit down, and said we were
+going to have a "long talk." Of course I had to tell him everything
+that had happened to me since I had seen him. I omitted all mention of
+Dick!
+
+I told him about Fred's wanting me to join him in New York, and he
+remarked:
+
+"Fred can jump up. You're not going."
+
+I did not argue that with him. I no longer wanted to go. I was quite
+happy and contented now that he was here. I didn't care whether he
+returned my love or not. I was satisfied as long as he was with me.
+That was much.
+
+He always made me tell him every little detail of my life, and when I
+said I found it difficult to write, because of so many men coming to
+see Lolly,--I didn't mention that they were coming to see me, too!--he
+said:
+
+"You're going to move out of this place right away. We'll look about
+for rooms to-morrow."
+
+So then I knew he was not going back that night, and I was so glad that
+I knelt down beside him and cuddled up against his knee. I wished that
+he would put his arm about me, but all he did was to push back the
+loose hair that slipped over my cheek, and after that he kept his hand
+on my head.
+
+He was much pleased with my description of the rooms at Mrs.
+Kingston's. He said we'd go there the next day and have a look at them.
+He said I was to stay home from work the next day, but I protested that
+I couldn't do that--Fred's last day! Unless I did just what he told
+me, it exasperated him always, and he now said:
+
+"Then go away from me. I don't want anything to do with a girl who
+won't do even a trifling thing to please me."
+
+I said that it wasn't trifling, and that I might lose my position; for
+the new man was to take charge to-morrow, and I ought to be there.
+
+"Damn the new man!" he said.
+
+He was a singularly unreasonable man, and he could sulk and scowl for
+all the world like a great boy. I told him so, and he unwillingly
+laughed, and said I was beyond him. To win him back to good humor, I
+got out some of my new stories, and, sitting on the floor at his feet,
+read them to him. I read two stories. When I was through, he got up and
+walked up and down, pulling at his lower lip in that way he had.
+
+"Well," I challenged, "can I write?"
+
+He said:
+
+"I'm afraid you can." Then he took my manuscripts from me, and put them
+in his pocket.
+
+It was late now, for it had taken me some time to read my stories,
+but he did not show any signs of going. He was sitting in our one
+big chair, smoking, with his legs stretched out in front of him, and
+although his eyes were half closed, he was watching me constantly. I
+began to yawn, because I was becoming sleepy. He said he supposed I
+wanted him to get out. I said no, I didn't; but my landlady probably
+did. She didn't mind our having men callers as long as they went
+before midnight. It was nearly that now. He said:
+
+"Damn the landlady!" just as he had said, "Damn the new man!" Then he
+added, "You're not going to be run by every one, you know."
+
+I said mischievously:
+
+"Just by you?"
+
+"Just by me," he replied.
+
+"But when you stay away so long--"
+
+It irritated him for me to refer to that. He said that there were
+certain matters I wouldn't understand that had kept him in Richmond,
+and that he had come as soon as he could. He added that he was
+involved in some lawsuit, and that he was being watched, and had to
+be "careful." I couldn't see why he should be watched because of a
+lawsuit, and I asked:
+
+"Would you be arrested?"
+
+He threw back his head and laughed, and said I was a "queer little
+thing," and then, after a while, he said very seriously:
+
+"It's just as well, anyway. We mustn't get the habit of _needing_ each
+other too much."
+
+I asked:
+
+"Do you think it possible _you_ could ever need _me_?" To which he
+replied very soberly:
+
+"I need you more than you would believe."
+
+Mr. Hamilton never made a remark like that, which revealed any
+sentiment for me, without seeming to regret it a moment later. Now he
+got up abruptly and asked me which room I slept in. I said generally
+in the inner one, because Lolly came in late from her night work and
+engagements.
+
+"I want to see your room," he said, "and I want to see what clothes you
+need."
+
+He knew much about women's clothes. I felt ashamed to have him poking
+about among my poor things like that, and I grew very red; but he took
+no notice of me, and jotted down some things in his notebook. He said I
+would need this, that, and other things.
+
+I said weakly:
+
+"You needn't think I'm going to let you get me clothes. Honestly, I
+won't wear them if you do."
+
+He tilted up my chin, and spoke down into my face:
+
+"Now, Nora, listen to me. Either you are going to live and dress as I
+want you to, or I am positively not coming to see you again. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Well, I can get my own clothes," I said stubbornly.
+
+"Not the kind I want you to have, not the kind _I_ am going to get you."
+
+He still had his hand under my chin, and I looked straight into his
+eyes.
+
+"If you tell me just once," I said, "that you care for me,
+I'll--I'll--take the clothes then."
+
+"I'll say anything you want me to," he said, "if you'll do what I tell
+you."
+
+I took him up at that.
+
+"All right, then. Say, 'I love you,' and you can buy pearls for me, if
+you want to."
+
+He gave me a deep look that made me thrill, and I drew back from his
+hand. He said in a low voice:
+
+"You can have the pearls, anyway."
+
+"But I'd rather have the words," I stammered, now ashamed of myself,
+and confused under his look.
+
+"Consider them said, then," he said, and he laughed. I couldn't bear
+him to laugh at me, and I said:
+
+"You don't mean it. I made you say it, and therefore it has no meaning.
+I wish it were true."
+
+"Perhaps it is," he said.
+
+"Is it?" I demanded eagerly.
+
+"Who knows?" said he.
+
+Lolly came in then. She did not seem at all pleased to see Mr. Hamilton
+there, and he left soon after. When he was gone, she told me I was a
+very silly girl to have taken him into my room. I told her I hadn't;
+that he had just walked in. Lolly asked me, virtuously, whether I had
+ever seen _her_ let a man go in there, and I confessed I had not. She
+wanted to know whether I had told Mr. Hamilton about Dick. Indeed, I
+had not! The thought of telling him frightened me, and I besought Lolly
+not to betray me. Also I took off Dick's ring. I intended to send it
+back to him. It was impossible for me to be engaged to him now.
+
+Lolly said if she were I, she wouldn't let Mr. Hamilton buy clothes
+for her. She said once he started to do that, he would expect to pay
+for everything for me, and then, said Lolly, the first thing I knew,
+people would be saying that he was "keeping" me. She said that I
+could take dinners, flowers, even jewels from a man,--though in "high
+society" girls couldn't even do that; but working-girls were more
+free,--and I could go to the theater and to other places with him;
+but it was a fatal step when a man began to pay for a girl's room and
+clothes. Lolly added that once she had let a man do that for her,
+and--She blew out a long whiff of smoke from her lips, saying, "Never
+more!" with her hand held solemnly up.
+
+So then I decided I couldn't let him do it, and I felt very sorry that
+I had even weakened a little bit in my original resolve not to let him
+spend money on me. I went to sleep troubled about the matter.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+As soon as I got up next day I called him on the telephone. It was so
+early that I probably woke him up, but I had to tell him what was on my
+mind.
+
+"It's Nora," I said.
+
+He replied:
+
+"Last time you telephoned to me you were in trouble; do you remember?
+Are you in trouble now, little girl?"
+
+I said I wasn't, but I just wanted to say I _couldn't_ and wouldn't let
+him buy clothes for me.
+
+I knew just as well as if I could see him how he was looking when I
+said that. He was used to having his own way, and that I dared to set
+my will against his always made him angry. After a moment he said:
+
+"Will you do something else to please me, then?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Don't go to work to-day."
+
+"I've _got_ to; truly I have."
+
+"You only think that. Call up O'Brien and ask to be excused. If you
+don't, I will. Now I'll be up at your place about ten. I've something
+special to give you, anyway."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I can't tell you on the 'phone."
+
+"We-ell," I weakened; "all right, then."
+
+I was rewarded beautifully for that.
+
+"That's _my_ little girl!" he said.
+
+Then he rang off. I never would have.
+
+So I stayed home from work, the first time since I had been at the
+yards--and Fred's last day! Mr. Hamilton came over about ten. Lolly was
+still sleeping, so I had to see him down-stairs in the parlor. As soon
+as I saw him, I held out my hands and said:
+
+"Where's the special thing?"
+
+He laughed. I could make him laugh easily now, though I don't believe
+any one else could. He pinched my chin and said:
+
+"Get your hat on. We're going shopping."
+
+"Now, Mr. Hamilton, I am not going to let you buy things for me."
+
+"Did I say I was going to do that?" he demanded.
+
+"Well, then, how can we shop?"
+
+"You have some money of your own, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, but I was saving it for furs and to go to New York."
+
+"Well, you can get the furs later, and you're not going to New York.
+The main thing is you need a decent suit and a--er--heavy coat to wear
+to work, since you _will_ work; and you need gloves and--let me see
+your shoes--" [I showed them] "and shoes, a hat and--"
+
+"I haven't the money for all those things."
+
+"Yes, you have. I know a place where you can get all kinds of bargains.
+Ever hear of bargain-shops?"
+
+No, I had never heard of bargain-shops, though I had of bargain-sales,
+I told him. Well, it was the same thing, he said, except that this
+particular shop made a specialty of selling nothing but bargains.
+
+That, of course, tempted me, and I went up to my room and put on my
+coat and hat. I had thirty dollars, and I borrowed ten from Lolly. So I
+was not so badly off. He was right; I really needed new things, and I
+might as well let him choose them for me.
+
+That was a happy morning for me! All girls love to "shop," and there
+was a joy in trying on lovely things, even if I couldn't afford them.
+It was a small shop to which he took me, but the things there were
+really beautiful and astonishingly cheap. He made them try many things
+on me, not only suits, but negligées and evening gowns.
+
+Then he chose a soft dark-blue velvet suit, trimmed with the loveliest
+gray fur at the neck and sleeves. I thought it must be very expensive,
+but the saleswoman said it was only fifteen dollars. I had never
+_heard_ of such a bargain, especially as a hat, trimmed with the fur,
+and a muff also went with the suit. I made up my mind I'd bring Lolly
+here. I told the lady who owned the store that I would bring a friend.
+That made her laugh, but she stopped, because Mr. Hamilton frowned and
+looked very angry. He liked to laugh at me himself, but he didn't want
+others to do so, and I liked him for that.
+
+Still, I felt uncomfortable. The woman's laugh had been peculiar, and
+the saleswomen were watching me. I bought, too, a heavy navy-blue coat,
+with a little cape, and belted, just the thing for every day, and
+gloves and two pairs of shoes. She said that, as I'd bought so much,
+she'd give me silk stockings to go with the shoes.
+
+Of course I know now that I was a blind fool; but then I was only
+seventeen, and nine months before I had never been outside my home
+city, Quebec. For that matter, I hardly knew Quebec, so limited and
+confined is the life of the poor. I thought my forty dollars paid for
+all; I _did_ think that!
+
+Mr. Hamilton was in a fine humor now, and he made me wear the velvet
+suit and the hat to go to luncheon with him, and where do you suppose
+he took me? Right to his own hotel. There he introduced me to a man
+named Townsend who was waiting for him. I didn't at all like the way
+Mr. Townsend looked at me; but Mr. Hamilton did not seem to mind it,
+though he was quick to notice such things. When I had dined with him
+before, if any man stared at me, he used to lean over and say, without
+the slightest suggestion of a smile:
+
+"Well, what shall I do to him? Turn the seltzer on him or push his face
+in?"
+
+Mr. Townsend, however, was not trying to flirt with me, as, for
+instance, Mr. Chambers always was. He studied me curiously and, I
+thought, suspiciously. He talked in an undertone to Mr. Hamilton, and
+I am sure they were talking about me. I did hope that Mr. Townsend had
+not noticed any mistakes I made about the knives and forks.
+
+I was glad when luncheon was over. We entered a cab again, and Mr.
+Hamilton directed the driver to take us to Mrs. Kingston's. I asked
+him who Mr. Townsend was. He said he was his lawyer, and began to talk
+about something else. He wanted to know if I wasn't curious to know
+what that special thing was he had to give me. I had forgotten about
+it. Now, of course, I wanted to know.
+
+"Well," he said, "'open your mouth and shut your eyes, and in your
+mouth you'll find a prize.'"
+
+I thought he was going to give me a candy, so I shut my eyes and opened
+my mouth, just like a foolish child; and then he kissed me. It wasn't
+like a kiss at all, because my mouth was open; but he seemed to think
+it very funny, and when I opened my eyes, he was sitting back in the
+carriage, with his arms folded, laughing hard. I think he thought that
+a good joke on me, because I dare say he knew I wanted him to kiss me.
+I didn't think it a good joke at all, and I wouldn't speak to or look
+at him, and my face grew hot and red, and at last he said teasingly:
+
+"I'll have to keep you angry all the time, Nora. You look your
+prettiest then."
+
+I said with dignity:
+
+"You know very well I'm not even a little bit pretty, and I wish you
+wouldn't make fun of me, Mr. Hamilton."
+
+He was still laughing, and he said:
+
+"You know very well you are pretty, you little fraud, and my name is
+Roger."
+
+I never called him Mr. Hamilton after that.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+When I introduced Mr. Hamilton to Mrs. Kingston, she put on her glasses
+and examined him curiously, and he said, with a rather formal smile,
+not at all as he smiled at me:
+
+"I've heard quite a lot about you from Miss Ascough, and am very glad
+to meet you."
+
+"I've known all about you for some time," she said, chuckling. And then
+she added, "I don't know what I expected to see, but you don't quite
+measure up to Nora's extravagant ideal."
+
+"No, I suppose not," he said, his eyes twinkling. "I doubt if any man
+could do that."
+
+We were all laughing, and I said:
+
+"Oh, well, I know he's not much to look at; but I'm crazy about him,
+anyhow, and he wants to see the rooms."
+
+He didn't think the little room nearly good enough for me, but he said
+that big suite of rooms in front was just the thing. That made me
+laugh. Did he suppose any stenographer could afford a luxurious suite
+of rooms like that? There was a long room that ran across the front of
+the house, with big bay-windows and a great fireplace, and opening out
+from this room was a large bedroom, with a bath-room adjoining it.
+As one may see, they weren't exactly the rooms a girl getting fifteen
+dollars a week could afford.
+
+I said:
+
+"Tell him just how much you intend to 'soak' your prospective roomer
+for these palatial chambers."
+
+She started to say, "Twenty-five dollars a week," which was what she
+had told me she expected to charge, when I saw him make a sign to her,
+and she hesitated. Then I knew he intended to get her to name a cheap
+price just for me, and pay the difference himself. But now I was too
+quick for him. He had actually deceived me about those clothes. I had
+not the remotest idea till months afterward that he had paid for them
+and for many other things I subsequently bought, or thought I bought;
+but Mrs. Kingston had already told me the price of that room. So I said:
+
+"It's no use. I know the price."
+
+"Yes, but for a friend," he replied, "I'm sure Mrs. Kingston would
+make--er--a considerable reduction."
+
+She said nothing. I don't know how she felt. Of course she knew that I
+was in love with him, but, as she told me afterward, she couldn't quite
+make out just what our relations were.
+
+"That's all very well," I said, "but Mrs. Kingston has to get her rent."
+
+Then he said:
+
+"Well, but--er--I'm sure her practice is going to soar from now on. A
+great lawyer like Mrs. Kingston need not rent rooms at all."
+
+Still she said nothing; but I saw her watching us both. He went on to
+urge me to have these rooms, but of course the idea was absurd. It was
+really provoking for him to keep pressing me to have things I simply
+could not afford and did not greatly want. I said all this. Besides,
+I added, it would be foolish for me to make any change at this time.
+Things were uncertain with me at the yards, now that Fred was leaving,
+and I should have to speak to Lolly, anyhow.
+
+He argued that if I expected to write, I should have to move. No one
+could write in such disturbing circumstances. Of course that was true
+enough, and I said I'd talk it over that night with Lolly.
+
+He took out some money then, and wanted to pay Mrs. Kingston so much
+down on the rooms, when I exclaimed that even if I did leave Lolly, I
+didn't mean to take these rooms, but the little one, if Mrs. Kingston
+was still willing to let me have it. She said she certainly was; that
+she badly wanted me to come. Both she and Mrs. Owens (the woman with
+her) needed a young person about the place to make them forget what
+old fogies they were, and that it would be like a real home to have me
+there, and we'd all be very happy.
+
+It ended like this: _he_ took that suite of rooms. He said they'd be
+there for me to have at any time I wanted them. I told him it was just
+a waste of money, for I simply would not let him pay for my room any
+more than I would let him pay for my clothes, and that was all there
+was to it.
+
+He smiled curiously at that, and asked Mrs. Kingston what she thought
+of my clothes. She said:
+
+"I haven't been able to take my eyes off them. Nora is _wonderful_!
+Does it seem possible that clothes can make such a difference?"
+
+She wanted to know where I got them. I told her, and how cheap they
+were. She was amazed at the price, and Mr. Hamilton went over to the
+window and looked out. How clearly this all comes back to me now!
+
+All the way back to my rooms he argued with me about the matter. He
+said if I had a pleasant place like that to live in, I'd soon be
+writing masterpieces (ah, he knew which way my desires ran!), and soon
+I'd not have to work in offices at all. To take rooms like those, he
+said, was really an investment. Business men all did things that way.
+It was part of the game. He wanted me to try it, for a while, and at
+last I said in desperation:
+
+"What's the use of talking about it? I tell you, I haven't got the
+money."
+
+Then he said (I never knew a man who could so persist about a thing on
+which he had set his heart):
+
+"Now, look here, Nora, I've got more money than is decent for any one
+person to have, and I _want_ to spend it on _you_. I want to give you
+things--comforts and luxuries and all the pretty things a girl like
+you ought to have. If you could see yourself now, you'd realize what a
+difference even clothes make. And so with other things. I want to take
+hold of you and make you over. I never wanted to do anything so much in
+my life before. Now you're going to be a good girl, aren't you, and not
+deny me the pleasure--the real _joy_ it gives me to do things for you,
+dear little girl?"
+
+By this time I was nearly crying, but I set my teeth together, and
+determined not to be won over to something I knew was not right.
+
+"You told me once," I said, "that all any one had ever wanted of you
+was your money--your 'dirty money,' you called it; and now, just
+because I won't take it from you, you get angry with me."
+
+"Well, but, confound it! I didn't mean you then."
+
+"Oh, yes, you did, too; because you said I'd be sending for more money
+in a week, and you said that I was made to have it, and men would
+give--"
+
+He put a stop to my too vivid recollections.
+
+"But, _child_, I had no _idea_ then of the kind of girl you were,"--he
+lowered his voice, and added tenderly, he was trying so hard to have
+his way!--"of the exceptional, wonderful little girl you are."
+
+"But I wouldn't be exceptional or wonderful," I protested, "if I took
+your money. I'd be common. No; I'm not going to let people say you
+_keep_ me!"
+
+"Where did you hear that word?" he demanded roughly.
+
+"From Lolly--and the girls at the Y. W. C. A. Oh, don't you suppose I
+know what that means?" I was looking straight at him now, and I saw his
+face turn red, but whether with anger or embarrassment, I do not know.
+He said in a sort of suppressed way:
+
+"Don't you know that men who keep women are their lovers?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+He sat up stiffly now, and he gave me a cold, almost sneering, look
+that made me shiver. Then he said:
+
+"Have I ever given you the slightest reason to suppose I wanted to be
+_your_ lover?"
+
+I shriveled up not only at his words, but at his look, and I turned
+my face away, and looked out of the window of the cab without seeing
+anything. It was true he had never pretended to care for me. I was the
+one who had done all the caring, and now it almost seemed as if he were
+throwing this up to me as something of which to be ashamed. But though
+my face was burning, I felt no shame, only a sort of misery.
+
+"Well?" he prompted me, for I had not answered that last brutal query.
+Without looking at him, I said, in a shaking little voice, for I was
+heartbroken to think that he could use such a tone to me or look at me
+in that way:
+
+"No, you haven't. In fact, if you had, perhaps I might have done what
+you wanted."
+
+He came closer to me in the carriage when I said that, but I shrank
+away from him. I was nearer to disliking him then than at any time in
+my acquaintance with him.
+
+"You mean," he said, "that if I _were_ your lover, you _would_ be
+willing to--live with me--like that? Is that what you mean, Nora?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know what I mean," I said. "I don't pretend to be
+respectable and good in the way the women of your class are. I suppose
+I have no morals. I'm only a girl in love with a man; and if--if--he
+cared for me as I did for him, I'd be willing to do anything in the
+world he wished me to. I'd be willing to die for him. But if he
+didn't--if he didn't care for me, don't you see, I couldn't take
+_anything_ from him. I should feel degraded."
+
+It was a tangled, passionate sort of reasoning. For a long time after
+that we rode along in silence, I looking out of the window, and he
+looking constantly at me. I could _feel_ his eyes on me, and I did not
+dare to turn around. Then presently he said:
+
+"I'm all kinds of a rotter, Nora, but I'm straight about you. You're
+my wonderful girl, the oasis in my life. I wouldn't harm a hair of
+your precious little head. If I were to tell you I loved you, I would
+precipitate a tragedy upon you that you do not deserve. So I am not
+going to say any such thing to you." He cleared his throat, and as I
+said nothing, he went on strongly, it seemed to me:
+
+"Your friend, Lolly, is right about men, and I'm not different from
+other men as far as women are concerned; but in your case I am. My
+desire to do things for you is based on no selfish design. I assure
+you of that. I simply have an overwhelming desire to take care of you,
+Nora, to help you."
+
+I said with as much composure as I could command:
+
+"Thank you, I don't need help. I'm not so badly off as you think. I
+make pretty good money, and, anyway, I'm independent, and that's a big
+thing."
+
+"But you have to work like a slave. I can't bear to think of that, and
+as for being independent, you won't be any the less so if you let me
+do things for you. You may go on with your life in your own way. I'll
+never interfere or try to dictate to you about anything."
+
+Almost hysterically I cried out:
+
+"Oh, please stop talking about this! Every time you come here you scold
+me about something."
+
+"Why, Nora," he said aggrievedly, "I have never asked you to do
+anything but this. That's the only thing I ever scolded you about."
+
+"Look how you acted that first night, when you saw me with Lolly and
+Mr. Chambers, and then the night I was up with Fred. You wanted to
+_beat_ me! I saw it in your face. You could no more help dictating to
+and scolding me than you can help coming to see me now."
+
+The last sentence slipped out before I knew it, and he sat up sharply
+at that, and then laughed, uncomfortably.
+
+"I am a dog in the manger as far as you are concerned," he said; "but
+I'll turn over a new leaf if you'll let me do these things for you."
+
+I smiled ruefully, for I was beginning to know him so well now, and I
+sighed. He asked me why I sighed, and then I asked him in turn just why
+he wanted to do these things for me. He paused a moment, and then said
+slowly, and not without considerable emotion:
+
+"I've told you why before, Nora. I'm interested in you. You're my find,
+my discovery. I take a special pride in everything connected with you.
+You're the one thing in life I take a real interest in, and I want to
+watch you, and see you develop. I haven't the slightest doubt of your
+eventual success."
+
+"Hum! You look upon me as a sort of curiosity, don't you?"
+
+"Nonsense! Don't talk so foolishly!"
+
+But I knew that that was just how he did regard me, and it made me sick
+at heart. My beautiful day had clouded over. I supposed that nothing in
+the world would ever induce this man to admit any feeling for me but
+interest. Well, I wanted to love and to be loved, and it was a cold
+sort of substitute he was offering me--pretty clothes and fine rooms. I
+could earn all those things myself in time.
+
+"Now, then," he said, "you _are_ going to be my darling, reasonable
+little girl, aren't you? After all, it isn't so much I am asking of
+you. All I want you to do is to leave your position and go to live with
+this Mrs. Kingston. She struck me as being all right, and the rooms
+are exceedingly attractive, though we'll furnish them over ourselves.
+And then you are going to let me get you the proper kind of clothes
+to wear. I'll choose them myself for you, Nora. Then, since you won't
+go to school,--and, you see, I'm willing to let that go,--why, we
+can arrange for you to take special lessons in languages and things
+like that, and there are certain English courses you can take up at
+Northwestern. And I want you to study music, too, piano and vocal--the
+violin, too, if you like. I'm specially fond of music, and I think it
+would be a good thing for you to take it up. Then in the spring you
+shall go abroad. I have to go myself about that time, and I want to
+see your face when you see Europe, honey." That was the only Southern
+endearing term he ever applied to me, and I had never heard it used
+before. "It will be a revelation to you. And now the whole thing is
+settled, isn't it?"
+
+I hated, after all this, to have to refuse again, so I didn't answer
+him, and he said, taking my hand, and leaning, oh, so coaxingly toward
+me:
+
+"It's all settled, isn't it, dear?"
+
+I turned around, and shouted at him almost hysterically:
+
+"No, it _isn't_. And I wish you'd shut up about those things. You only
+make me miserable."
+
+If I had stung him, he could not have drawn back from me more sharply.
+
+"Oh, _very_ well," he said, and threw himself back in his seat, his
+face looking like a thunder-cloud.
+
+He didn't speak another word to me, and when the carriage stopped at my
+door, he got out, assisted me from the carriage, and then immediately
+got in again himself. I stood at the curb, my hand on the door of the
+carriage, and I said:
+
+"Please don't go like this."
+
+"I'm sorry, but I am taking the 6:09 train."
+
+"Take a later train."
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"Please!"
+
+"Sorry. Good-by."
+
+"Please don't be angry with me!"
+
+He didn't answer. It was terrible to have him go like that, and I asked
+him when he was coming back.
+
+"I can't say," was his curt response. Then his angry glance fixed me,
+and he said slowly:
+
+"You can let me know when you take those rooms I chose for you. I'll
+come then--at once."
+
+And that is the cruel way he left me. I was heartbroken in a way, but
+I was angry, too. I went up to my room, and sat on the couch, and as I
+slowly pulled off my new gloves, I was not thinking kindly of Mr. R. A.
+Hamilton. No man had a right to impose his will in this way on a girl
+and to demand of her something that she could not do without losing her
+self-respect. I asked myself whether, because I loved this man, I was
+willing to make of myself a pusillanimous little door-mat, or if I had
+enough pride to stand by my own convictions?
+
+I had humbled myself enough to him; indeed, I had virtually offered
+myself to him. But he did not want me. He had made that clear enough.
+If, in the circumstances, I took from him the gifts he offered me, I
+would roll up a debt I could never wipe out. Now, although poor and
+working, I was a free woman. What I had, I honestly earned. I was no
+doll or parasite who needed to be carried by others. No! To retain
+my belief in my own powers, I must prove that they actually existed.
+Only women without resources in themselves, without gifts or brains,
+were "kept" by men, either as mistresses or wives or from charity, as
+Hamilton wished to "keep" me. I had the youthful conviction that _I_
+was one of the exceptional souls of the world, and could carry myself.
+Was I, then, to be bought by the usual foolish things that attract the
+ordinary woman? No! Not even my love could alter my character.
+
+Now, there really was a fine streak in me, for I did want pretty things
+(what young girl does not?), I hated my work, and I loved this man, and
+wanted above all things on earth to please him.
+
+Lolly said, to jerk one's mind from too much brooding over one
+man, one should think of another, I discovered another method of
+distraction. Pretty clothes are a balm even to a broken heart, and
+although I was clever, I was also eternally feminine. My things had
+arrived from the shop, and they were so lovely,--so much lovelier than
+I had thought,--that I was enchanted. Lolly came in while I was lifting
+the things from the boxes. I hadn't taken off my suit, and she turned
+me around to look at me.
+
+"Isn't it stunning, Lolly?" I asked. "And, just think, it was only
+fifteen dollars, suit, hat, muff, and all."
+
+Lolly's unbelieving glance swept me, then she threw her cigarette down,
+and said spitefully:
+
+"For the love of Mike, Nora, cut it out! You're a poor little liar!"
+
+"Liar! What do you mean, Lolly Hope?"
+
+I was furious at the insult, capping all I had gone through.
+
+"That suit you have on never cost one penny less than $150. The fur
+alone is easily worth half of that. It's silver fox, an inch of which
+is worth several dollars, and that muff--" She laughed disgustedly.
+"What do you take me for, anyhow, to try to spring that fifteen-dollar
+gag on me?"
+
+"It was marked down, I tell you, at a bargain sale."
+
+"Oh, come off, Nora! Don't try that on me. I know where you got those
+clothes. That man Hamilton gave them to you. You didn't follow my
+advice, I see." She shrugged her shoulders. "Of course it's your own
+affair, and I'm the last to blame you or any other girl for a thing
+like that, but, for heaven's sake, don't think it necessary to make up
+fairy-tales to me!"
+
+"Lolly, I swear to you that I paid for these myself."
+
+"Tell it to the marines!" said Lolly.
+
+"Then see for yourself. Here are the price-tags, and here's the bill,"
+I cried excitedly, and I thrust them upon her. Everything came to
+exactly forty dollars. Lolly looked the bill over carefully; then she
+put her cigarette in her mouth, and looked at me. All of a sudden she
+began to laugh. She threw her head back upon the sofa pillows and just
+laughed and laughed, while I became angrier and angrier with her. I
+waited till she was through, and then I said, very much injured:
+
+"Now you can apologize to me, Lolly Hope."
+
+"You blessed infant," she cried, "I'm in the dust at your feet. One
+thing's sure, and I guess friend Hamilton is wise to that: there's no
+one like _you_ in this dull old world of ours!"
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+My new "boss" at the yards was a sharp-nosed, sharp-eyed old-young man
+who seemed to think that his chief mission in life was to crack a sort
+of mental whip, like an overseer, over the heads of those under him,
+and keep us all hustling and rushing like frightened geese.
+
+I had been accustomed to answer the correspondence of the soap
+department myself, Fred merely noting a few words in pencil on each
+letter, giving the gist of what he wanted said; but Mr. Hopkins
+dictated everything, and as soon as I was through one batch of
+correspondence, he would find something else for me to do. It seemed to
+give him a pain for my typewriter to be idle a moment. I think I was on
+his mind all the time except when he was thinking up work for Red Top.
+
+My position, therefore, had become a very hard one. I worked
+incessantly from nine till six. Fred had let me off at five-thirty and
+often at five; but Mr. Hopkins kept me till six. I think he'd have made
+it seven, but the bell rang at six, and the office was supposed to
+close after that.
+
+Many a time I've seen him glance regretfully at the clock or make an
+impatient movement with his shoulders at the clanging of the bell, at
+which moment I always banged my type-writer desk, and swiftly departed.
+
+How I missed Fred! He had made life at the yards tolerable and even
+amusing for me with his jokes and confidences. And, then, there's a
+pleasure in working for some one you know approves of you and likes
+you. Fred _did_ like me. In a way, I don't think any one ever liked me
+better than poor Fred did.
+
+It makes me sad to think that the best girl friend I ever had, Lolly,
+and the best man friend, Fred, are now both gone out of this world,
+where I may have still such a long road to travel.
+
+I hated my position now. I was nothing but an overworked machine.
+Moreover, the routine of the work was deadening. When I answered the
+letters myself, it gave a slight diversion; but now I simply took
+dictation and transcribed it, and when I was through with that, I
+copied pages of itemized stuff. My mind became just like a ticker that
+tapped off this or that curt and dry formula of business letter in
+which soap, soap, soap stood out big and slimy.
+
+I now neither wrote at night nor went out. I was too tired from the
+incessant labor at the type-writer, and when I got to sleep,--after
+two or three hours, in which I lay awake thinking of Mr. Hamilton and
+wondering whether I would ever see him again; I always wondered about
+that when he was away,--I declare, I would hear the _tap-tapping_ of
+that typewriter all night long! Other type-writists have had the same
+experience. One ought to escape from one's treadmill at least in sleep.
+
+But this is a world of miracles; doubt it who can.
+
+There came a glorious day late in the month of November--to be exact,
+it was November 24. No, Mr. Hamilton did not come again. He was still
+waiting for my capitulation anent the rooms at Mrs. Kingston's.
+
+This is what happened: I was type-writing, when Red Top came in with
+the mail. He threw down on my desk some personal letters that had
+come for me. Although Mr. Hopkins was at his desk, and I knew it was
+a criminal offense to stop any office work to attend to a personal
+matter, I reached over and picked up my letters. I heard my "boss"
+cough significantly as I glanced through them. Two were from home, and
+I put them down, intending to read them at noon. One was from Fred. I
+put that down, too. And the other! Oh, that other! It was from--listen!
+It was from the editor of that great magazine in New York! I opened
+it with trembling fingers. The words jumped up at me and embraced me!
+My story was accepted, and a check for fifty dollars accompanied that
+brief, but blessed, note.
+
+Mr. Hopkins was clearing his throat so pronouncedly now that I turned
+deliberately about in my chair and grinned hard at him. He glared at me
+indignantly. Little idiot! He thought I was trying to flirt with him!
+
+"Are you through, Miss Ascough?" he asked.
+
+"No, Mr. Hopkins," I responded blandly, "and I never will be now. I've
+just come into some money, and I'm not going to work for you any more."
+
+"What! What!" he said in his sharp little voice, just like a duck
+quacking.
+
+I repeated what I had said, and I stood up now, and began gathering my
+things together--my pocketbook, handkerchief, odds and ends in my desk,
+and the rose that Mr. Smith had given me that day.
+
+Mr. Hopkins had a nasal, excitable, squeaking sort of voice, like the
+querulous bark of a dog--a little dog.
+
+"But, Miss Ascough, you don't mean to say you are leaving now?"
+
+"Yes, I do mean to say it," I replied, smiling gloriously.
+
+"But surely you'll finish the letter on the machine."
+
+"I surely will not," said I. "I don't _have_ to work any more.
+Good-by." And out I marched, or, rather, flew, without waiting to
+collect three days' pay due me, and resigning a perfectly good
+fifteen-dollar-a-week job on the first money I ever received for a
+story!
+
+I did not walk on solid ground, I assure you. I flew on wings that
+carried me soaring above that Land of Odors, where I had worked for
+four and a half hard months, right up into the clouds, and every one
+knows the clouds are near to heaven.
+
+Mr. Hamilton? Oh, yes, I did remember some such person. Let me see.
+He was the man who thought I was incapable of taking care of myself,
+and who grandiloquently wanted to "make me over"; who once said I was
+"ignorant, uncivilized, undisciplined," and would never get anywhere
+unless I followed his lordly advice. How I laughed inwardly at the
+thought of the effect upon him of those astounding conquests that I was
+to make in the charming golden world that was smiling and beckoning to
+me now.
+
+As soon as I got to my room, I sat down and wrote a letter to him. I
+wanted _him_ to know right away. In fact, I had a feeling that if _he_
+didn't know, then all the pleasure of my triumph might go. This is what
+I said to him:
+
+
+     Dear Roger:
+
+
+[Yes, I called him Roger now.]
+
+
+     Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the inclosed thrilling,
+     extraordinary, and absorbing indorsement of
+
+     Your abused and forsaken
+     NORA.
+
+
+How had he the heart not to answer that letter of mine, I wondered.
+
+Girls love candies, pretty clothes, jewelry, geegaws, and, as the old
+song has it, "apples and spices and everything nicest," they like
+boys and men and all such trifling things. Those are the things that
+make them giggle and thrill and weep and sometimes kill themselves;
+but I tell you there isn't a thrill comparable with that electric and
+ecstatic shock that comes to a young girl writer when, after many
+rebuffs, her first story is accepted. Of course, alas! that thrill is
+brief, and soon one finds, with wonder, that the world is actually
+going on just the same, and, more wonder of wonders! there are still
+trouble and pain and tragedy and other ugly things crawling about upon
+the face of the earth. Ah me! They say the weird, seeking sound of a
+new soul is the most beautiful music on earth to the ears of a mother.
+I think a poet feels that way toward his first poem or story that comes
+to life. The ecstasy, the pain, and thrill of creating and bearing--are
+they not all here, too? I know that often one's "child" is unworthy,
+uncouth, sometimes deformed, or, worse, a misshapen and appalling
+monster, a criminal product, as it were; but none the less he is one's
+own, and one's love will accompany him, even as a mother's, to the
+gallows.
+
+"It never rains but it pours," says a homely old adage. I thought this
+was the case with me now. Within a few days after I got that letter
+and check, lo and behold! I had three stories accepted by a certain
+Western magazine. I was sure now that I was not only going to be famous
+immediately, but fabulously wealthy.
+
+Three stories, say, at fifty dollars each, made a hundred and fifty;
+add the fifty I had from the New York magazine, and you perceive I
+would possess two hundred dollars. Then do not forget that I had as
+well a little black suitcase full of other stories and poems, and an
+abortive effort at a novel, to say nothing of a score of articles about
+Jamaica. Besides, my head was teeming with extraordinary and unusual
+plots and ideas,--at least they seemed extraordinary and original to
+me,--and I felt that all I had to do was to shut myself up somewhere
+alone, and out they would pour.
+
+I now sat down on the floor, with my suitcase before me, and I made a
+list of all my stories, put prices opposite them, added up the list,
+and, bedad! as O'Brien would say, I was a rich girl!
+
+In fact I felt so confident and recklessly happy that nothing would do
+but I must treat Lolly and Hermann to a fine dinner and the theater.
+My fifty dollars dropped to forty. But of course I was to get one
+hundred and fifty for those other three stories. It's true, the letter
+accepting them did not mention the price, but I supposed that all
+magazines paid about the same, and even though in the case of the
+Western magazine I was to be "paid upon publication," I was sure my
+stories would be published soon. In fact, I thought it a good thing
+that I was not paid all at once, because then I might be tempted to
+spend the money. As it was, it would come in just about the time I was
+through with the fifty.
+
+If my ignorance in this matter seems infantile, I think I may
+confidently refer my readers to certain other authors who in the
+beginning of their careers have been almost as credulous and visionary
+as I. It's a matter of wonder how any person who is capable of writing
+a story can in other matters be so utterly impractical and positively
+devoid of common sense.
+
+I never saw fifty dollars fly away as quickly as that fifty dollars
+of mine. I really don't know _what_ it went for, though I did swagger
+about a bit among my friends. I took Mrs. Kingston and Mrs. Owens,
+the woman who lived with her, to the theater, and I went over to the
+Y. W. C. A. several times and treated Estelle and a lot of my old
+acquaintances to ice-cream sodas and things like that.
+
+I avidly watched the news-stands for the December number of that
+Western magazine to appear, and when it did come out, I was so sure at
+least one of my stories was in it, that I was confounded and stunned
+when I found that it was not. I thought some mistake must have been
+made, and bought two other copies to make sure.
+
+I was now down to my last six dollars. I awoke to the seriousness of
+my position. I would have to go to work again and immediately. The
+thought of this hurt me acutely, not so much because I hated the work,
+but because I realized that my dream of instant fame and fortune was in
+fact only a dream.
+
+The December number of the New York magazine also was out, but my
+story was not in it. I wrote to the editors of both the Eastern and
+Western magazines, and asked when my stories would appear. I got
+answers within a few days. The New York magazine said that they were
+made up for several months ahead, but hoped to use my story by next
+summer,--it was the first week in December now,--and the Western
+magazine wrote vaguely that they planned to use my stories in "the near
+future."
+
+I wrote such a desperate letter to the editor of that Western magazine,
+imploring him to use my stories very soon, that I must have aroused his
+curiosity, for he wrote me that he expected to be in Chicago "some time
+next month," and would be much pleased to call upon me and discuss the
+matter of the early publication of my stories and others he would like
+to have me write for them.
+
+I said my fifty dollars flew away from me. I except the last six
+dollars. I performed miracles with that. I paid my share of our
+room-rent for a week--three dollars--and lived eleven days on the other
+three. At the end of those eleven days I had exactly ten cents.
+
+For two reasons I did not tell Lolly. In the first place, while I had
+not lied to her, I had in my egotistical and fanciful excitement led
+her to believe that not only had I sold the four stories, but that they
+had been paid for. And in the second place, Lolly at this time was
+having bitter troubles of her own. They concerned Marshall Chambers.
+She was suffering untold tortures over that man--the tortures that only
+a suspicious and passionately jealous woman who loves can feel. She had
+no tangible proof of his infidelities, but a thousand little things had
+occurred that made her suspect him. They quarreled constantly, and then
+passionately "made up." So I could not turn to Lolly.
+
+I had not heard a word from Mr. Hamilton, and after that glowing,
+boastful letter I had written, how _could_ I now appeal to him? The
+mere thought tormented and terrified me.
+
+Toward the end, when my money had faded down to that last six dollars,
+I had been desperately seeking work. I think I answered five hundred
+advertisements at least, but although now I was well dressed, an asset
+to a stenographer, and had city references (Fred's), I could get
+nothing. My strait, it will be perceived, was really bad, and another
+week's rent had fallen due.
+
+I didn't have any dinner that evening when I went over to Mrs.
+Kingston's, but I had on my beautiful blue velvet suit. My luncheon
+had been a single ham sandwich. Mrs. Kingston had called me up on the
+telephone early in the day, and invited me over for the evening, saying
+she had some friends who wished to meet me.
+
+Her friends proved to be two young men from Cincinnati who were living
+and working in Chicago. One, George Butler, already well known as a
+Socialist, was head of a Charities Association Bureau (I hysterically
+thought it an apropos occasion for me to meet a man in such work),
+and the other, Robert Bennet, was exchange editor of the _News_.
+Butler was exceedingly good-looking, but he had a thick, baggy-looking
+mouth, and he dressed like a poet,--at least I supposed a poet would
+dress something like that,--wearing his hair carelessly tossed back,
+a turn-over soft collar, flowing tie, and loose-fitting clothes that
+looked as if they needed to be pressed.
+
+Bennet had an interesting face, the prominent attribute of which was
+an almost shining quality of _honesty_. It illuminated his otherwise
+rugged and homely countenance, and gave it a curious attraction and
+strength. I can find no other word to describe that expression. He wore
+glasses, and looked like a student, and he stooped a little, which
+added to this impression. Both boys were in their early twenties, I
+should say, and they roomed together somewhere near Jane Addams's Hull
+House, where both worked at night, giving their services gratuitously
+as instructors in English. They were graduates of Cornell.
+
+Butler talked a great deal about Socialism, and he would run his hand
+through his hair, as Belasco does on first nights. Bennet, on the other
+hand, was a good listener, but talked very little. He seemed diffident
+and even shy, and he stammered slightly.
+
+On this night I was in such a depressed mood that, despite Mr.
+Butler's eloquence, I was unable to rouse myself from the morbid
+fancies that were now flooding my mind. For the imagination that
+had carried me up on dizzying dreams of fame now showed me pictures
+of myself starving and homeless; and just as the first pictures had
+exhilarated, now the latter terrified and distracted me.
+
+Mrs. Kingston noticed my silence, and asked me if I were not feeling
+well. She said I did not seem quite myself. I said I was all right.
+When I was going, she asked me in a whisper whether I had heard from
+Mr. Hamilton, and I shook my head; and then she wanted to know whether
+he knew of my "success." Something screamed and cried within me at that
+question. My success! Was she mocking me then?
+
+Bennet had asked to see me home, and as it was still early,--only about
+nine,--he suggested that we take a little walk along the lake.
+
+It was a beautiful night, and though only a few weeks from Christmas,
+not at all cold. Mrs. Kingston had apparently told Mr. Bennet of my
+writing, for he tried to make me talk about it. I was not, however, in
+a very communicative mood. I talked disjointedly. I started to tell
+him about my stories, and then all of a sudden I remembered how I was
+fixed, and then I couldn't talk at all. In fact, I pitied myself so
+that I began to cry. It was dark in the street, and I cried silently;
+so I didn't suppose he noticed me until he stopped short and said:
+
+"You're in trouble. Can't you tell me what is the matter?"
+
+"I've got only ten cents in the world," I blurted out.
+
+"What!"
+
+"Just ten cents," I said, "and I _can't_ get work."
+
+"Good heavens!" he exclaimed. "You poor girl!"
+
+He was so sorry for me and excited that he stammered worse than ever,
+and I stopped crying, because, having told some one my secret, I felt
+better and knew I'd get help somehow.
+
+So then I told him all about how I had come down to such straits; how
+I had worked all those months, and my implicit belief that that fifty
+dollars would last till I was paid for the other three stories.
+
+When I was through, Bennet said:
+
+"N-now, l-look here. I get thirty dollars a week. I don't need but half
+of that, and I'm going to give you fifteen a week of it till you get
+another place."
+
+I protested that I wouldn't think of taking his money, but I was
+joyfully hailing him in my heart as a veritable savior. Before we had
+reached my lodging-place, I had not only allowed him to give me ten
+dollars, but I agreed to accept ten dollars a week from him till I got
+work.
+
+It is curious how, without the slightest compunction or any feeling
+even of hurt pride or shame, I was willing to accept money like this
+from a person whom I had never seen before; yet the thought of asking
+Hamilton filled me with a real terror. I believe I would have starved
+first. It is hard to explain this. I had liked to think of myself as
+doing something very unusual and fine in refusing help from Hamilton,
+and yet where was my logic, since without a qualm I took money from
+Bennet? Our natures are full of contradictions, it seems to me.
+Perhaps I can explain it in this way, however. There was something so
+tremendously _good_ about Bennet, so overpoweringly human and great,
+that I felt the same as I would have felt if a woman had offered to
+help me. On the other hand, I was desperately in love with Hamilton.
+I wanted to impress him. I wanted his good opinion. I unconsciously
+assumed a pose--perhaps that is it--and I had to live up to it. Then
+I have often thought that almost any woman would have confidently
+accepted help from Bennet, but might have hesitated to take anything
+from Mr. Hamilton.
+
+Some men inspire us with instant confidence; we are "on guard" with
+others. I can write this analysis now; I could not explain it to myself
+then.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Now my life assumed a new phase. No man like Bennet can come into a
+woman's life and not make a deep impression. I have said that Dick
+was my "shadow." Bennet was something better than that. He was my
+protector, my guide, and my teacher. He did not, as Dick had done,
+begin immediately to make love to me, but he came persistently to see
+me. Always he brought some book with him, and now for the first time in
+my life the real world of poetry began to open its doors for me. I a
+poet! Oh, me!
+
+Hamilton had filled my bookshelves with novels, chiefly by French
+authors. They were of absorbing interest to me, and they taught me
+things just as if I had traveled; but Bennet read to me poetry--Keats,
+Shelley, Byron, Browning, Tennyson, Heine, Milton, and others. For
+hours I sat listening to the jeweled words. No, I could not write
+poetry,--I never shall,--but I had the hungry heart of the poet within
+me. I know it; else I could not so vividly, so ardently have loved the
+poetry of others.
+
+I cannot think of my acquaintance with Bennet without there running
+immediately to my mind, like the refrain of an old song, some of those
+exquisite poems he read to me--read so slowly, so clearly, so subtly,
+that every word pierced my consciousness and understanding. Else how
+could a girl like me have gasped with sheer delight over the "Ode to a
+Grecian Urn"? What was there in a poem like that to appeal to a girl of
+my history?
+
+When we did not stay in and read, Bennet would take me to some good
+theater or concert, and I went several times with him to Hull House.
+There twice a week he taught a class in English poetry. The girls in
+his class were chiefly foreigners,--Russian Jewesses, Polish and German
+girls,--and for the most part they worked in factories and stores; but
+they were all intelligent and eager to learn. They made me ashamed of
+my own indolence. I used to fancy that most of his pupils were secretly
+in love with Bennet. They would look at his inspired young face as if
+they greatly admired him, and I felt a sense of flattering pride in
+the thought that _he_ liked only me. Oh, I couldn't help seeing that,
+though he had not then told me so.
+
+Sometimes he took me over to his rooms. They were two very curious,
+low-roofed rooms down in the tenement-house district, completely lined
+with books. Here Butler, with his pipe in his loose mouth, used to
+entertain me with long talks on Socialism, and once he read me some
+of Kipling's poems. That was my first acquaintance with Kipling. It
+was an unforgettable experience. In these rooms, too, Bennet read me
+"Undine," some of Barrie's stories, and Omar Khayyam.
+
+Those were clean, inspiring days. They almost compensated for
+everything else that was sad and ugly in my life. For sad and ugly
+things were happening to me every day, and I had had no word, no single
+sign, from Mr. Hamilton. I tried to shut him from my mind. I tried hard
+to do that, especially as I knew that Robert Bennet was beginning to
+care for me too well. Through the day, it was easy enough. I could do
+it, too, when Bennet read to me from the poets; but, ah, at night, that
+was when he slipped back insidiously upon me! Sometimes I felt that if
+I did not see him soon, I should go mad just from longing and desire to
+see his dear face and hear the sound of his cruel voice.
+
+I got a position about two weeks after I met Bennet. It was in a steel
+firm; I stayed there only two days. There were two other stenographers,
+and the second day I was there, the president of the firm decided to
+move me from the outer to his private office, to do his work. Both
+of the girls looked at each other so significantly when my desk was
+carried in that I asked them if anything was the matter. One of them
+shrugged her shoulders, and the other said:
+
+"You'll find out for yourself."
+
+Within ten minutes after I entered that inner office I did. I was
+taking dictation at a little slat on the desk of the president when
+he laid a photograph upon my book, and then, while I sat dumfounded,
+trying to look anywhere save at what was before me, he laid more
+photographs, one after the other, on top of that first one, which was
+the vilest thing I have ever seen in my life.
+
+The girls at the Y. W. C. A. and the girls at the stock-yards used to
+talk about their experiences in offices, and we used to laugh at the
+angry girls who declared they did this or that to men who insulted
+them. As I have written before, I had become hardened to such things,
+and when I could, I simply ignored them. They were one of the dirty
+things in life that working-girls had to endure. But now, as I sat
+at that desk, I felt rushing over me such a surge of primitive and
+outraged feeling that I could find no relief save in some fierce
+physical action. I seized those photographs, and slammed them into the
+face of that leering old satyr.
+
+After that I went from one position to another. I took anything I
+could get. Sometimes I left because the conditions were intolerable;
+sometimes because they did not pay me; usually I was allowed to go
+after a brief trial in which I failed to prove my competence. I was
+very bad at figures, and most offices require a certain amount of that
+kind of work from their stenographers. These were the places where I
+failed.
+
+Of course, changing my position and being out of work so much, I made
+little progress, and although I had had only twenty dollars from
+Bennet, I was unable to pay him back. I had hoped to by Christmas, now
+only a week off.
+
+And now something happened that caused a big change in my life; that
+is, it forced me at last to separate from Lolly. For some time she had
+been most unhappy, and one evening she confided to me her suspicions of
+Chambers. She said she had "turned down" Hermann, who wanted to marry
+her, for Chambers, though friends had warned her not to trust him; but
+that though he had at times been brutal to her, she adored him. Pacing
+up and down the room, she told me that she wished she knew some way to
+prove him. It was then that I made my fatal offer. I said:
+
+"Lolly, I could have told you long ago about Chambers. I _know_ he is
+no good. If I were you, I'd have nothing more to do with him."
+
+Lolly stopped in her pacing, and stared at me.
+
+"_How_ do you know?" she demanded.
+
+"Because," I said, "he's tried several times to make love to me."
+
+"You lie, Nora Ascough!" she cried out in such a savage way that I was
+afraid of her. If I had been wiser, perhaps, I might have reassured her
+and let her think I did lie. Then the matter would have ended there;
+but I had to plunge in deeper.
+
+"Lolly, I'll prove it to you, if you wish."
+
+"You can't," retorted Lolly, her nostrils dilating.
+
+"Yes, I can, I say. He's coming to-night, isn't he? Well, you stay in
+that inner room, by the door. Let me see him alone here. Then you'll
+see for yourself."
+
+She considered the suggestion, with her eyes half closed, blowing the
+smoke slowly from her lips, and looking at the tip of her cigarette.
+Then she shrugged her shoulders and laughed sneeringly.
+
+"The trouble with you, Nora, is that because a lot of muckers at the
+Union Stock-Yards got 'stuck' on you, a few poor devils of newspaper
+men are a little smitten, and a fast rich man tried to keep you, you
+imagine every other man is after you."
+
+I couldn't answer that. It was untrue. None the less, it hurt. I had
+never in my life boasted to Lolly about men. I supposed she knew that,
+like every other girl who is thrown closely into contact with men, I
+naturally got my share of attention. I had long ago realized the exact
+value of this. The girls at the yards, for instance, used to say that
+the men would even go after a hunchback or a girl that squinted if she
+gave them any encouragement. And as for Robert Bennet and Dick, it
+was mean of Lolly to refer to them in that contemptuous way. Lolly, I
+think, regretted a moment later what she had said. She was as generous
+and impulsive as she was hasty in temper. Now she said:
+
+"Forget I said that, Nora. Just for fun I'll try your plan. Of course,
+it's ridiculous. Marshall has never looked upon you as anything but
+a joke. I mean he thinks you're a funny little thing; but as for
+anything else--" Lolly blew forth her cigarette smoke in derision at
+the notion.
+
+Chambers came about eight-thirty. They never announced him, but we knew
+his double knock, and Lolly slipped into the inner room, but did not
+close the door tight.
+
+I had taken up Lolly's mandolin, and now I painfully tried to pick out
+a tune on the strings. Chambers stood watching me, smiling, and when I
+finally did manage "The Last Rose of Summer," he said:
+
+"Bully for you!"
+
+Then he looked about quickly and said:
+
+"Lolly out?"
+
+I nodded. Whereupon he sat down beside me.
+
+"Want to learn the mandolin?" he asked.
+
+I nodded, smiling.
+
+"This is the way," he said. He was on my left side, and putting his arm
+about my waist, and with his right hand over my right hand, he tried to
+teach me to use the little bone picker; but while he was doing this he
+got as close to me as he could, and as I bent over the mandolin, so did
+he, till his face came right against mine, and he kissed me.
+
+Then something terrible happened. Lolly screamed. She screamed like
+a person gone mad. Chambers and I jumped apart, and I felt so weak I
+was afraid to go inside that room. Just then Hermann came rushing in
+with the landlady. She had heard Lolly's screams, and she wanted to
+know what was the trouble. I said Lolly was ill; but as soon as she
+went out, I told Hermann the truth. When Chambers realized that he was
+the victim of a trap, and while Lolly was still crying,--a moaning
+sort of cry now,--he picked up his hat and made for the door. There he
+encountered Hermann, all of whose teeth were showing. Hermann's hand
+shot up to Chambers's collar, and he threw him bodily from the room.
+How he did this, I am sure I don't know, for Chambers was a larger
+and seemingly much stronger man than Hermann. Then Hermann went in to
+Lolly, and I, feeling like a criminal, followed.
+
+I had never seen a woman in hysterics before. Lolly was lying on her
+back on the bed, with her arms cast out on each side. Her face was
+convulsed, and she was gasping and crying and moaning and laughing all
+at the same time. Hermann put his arms about her, and tried to soothe
+and comfort her, and I, crying myself now, begged her to forgive me.
+She screamed at me, "Get out of my sight!" and kept on upbraiding and
+accusing me. She seemed to think that I must have been flirting with
+Chambers for some time, and she said I was a snake. She said she hated
+me, and that if I did not go "at once! at once! at once!" she'd kill me.
+
+I didn't know what to do, and Hermann said:
+
+"For God's sake! Nora, go!"
+
+I packed my things as quickly as I could. I had no trunk, but two
+suitcases, and I made bundles of the things that would not go into
+them. I told Hermann I'd send for the things in the morning. Then I
+put on my coat and hat, and took the suitcase with my manuscripts and
+my night things. Before going, I went over to the bed and again begged
+Lolly to forgive me, assuring her that I never had had anything to do
+with Chambers till that night. I told her that I loved her better than
+any other girl I knew, better than my sisters even, and it was breaking
+my heart to leave her in this way. I was sobbing while I talked, but
+though she no longer viciously denounced me, she turned her face to the
+wall and put her hands over her ears. Then I kissed her hand,--women of
+my race do things like that under stress of emotion,--and, crying, left
+my Lolly.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+I went direct to Mrs. Kingston's. As soon as I walked in with my bag in
+my hand, she knew I had come to stay, and she was so delighted that she
+seized me in her arms and hugged me, saying I was her "dearest and only
+Nora." She took me right up to what she thought were to be my rooms,
+but I said I preferred the little one, and after we had talked it over
+a bit, she said she agreed with me. It was much better for me to have
+only what I myself could afford.
+
+I didn't tell her a word about Lolly. That was my poor friend's secret;
+but I told her of my straitened affairs, my poor position and that I
+owed money to Bennet. When I ended, she said:
+
+"That boy's an angel. I can't wish you any better luck than that you
+get him."
+
+"Get him?"
+
+"He is simply crazy about you, Nora. Can't talk about anything else,
+and you couldn't do better if you searched from one end of the United
+States to the other. He's of a splendid family, and he's going to make
+a big name for himself some day, you mark my words."
+
+I agreed with all her praise of Bennet, but I told her I thought of
+him only as a friend, as I did of Fred O'Brien for instance.
+
+She shook her head at me, sighed, and said that she supposed I still
+cared for "that man Hamilton," and I didn't answer her. I just sat on
+the side of the bed staring out in front of me. After a moment she said:
+
+"Of course, if that's the way you feel, for heaven's sake! let poor
+Bennet alone; though if I were you, it wouldn't take me long to know
+which of those two men to choose between."
+
+"You'd take Bennet, wouldn't you?" I asked heavily, and she replied:
+
+"You better believe I would!"
+
+"Don't you like Mr. Hamilton?" I asked wistfully.
+
+"I don't entirely trust him," said she. "Candidly, Nora, that was a
+nasty trick he tried to play us here. I was 'on to him,' but I didn't
+know just where you stood with him, and I'm not in the preaching
+business. I let people do as they like, and I myself do what I please;
+and then, of course, Lord knows I need all the money I can get." She
+sighed. Poor woman, she was always so hard up! "So if he wanted to take
+those rooms and pay the price, I wasn't going to be the one to stand
+in the way. Still, I was not going to let him pull the wool over your
+eyes, poor kiddy."
+
+"I suppose not," I assented languidly. I was unutterably tired and
+heartsick, with the long strain of those weeks, and now with this
+quarrel with Lolly, and I said, "Yet I'd give my immortal soul to be
+with him again just for a few minutes even."
+
+"You would?" she said. "You want to see him as much as all that?"
+
+I nodded, and she said pityingly:
+
+"Don't love any man like that, dear. None of them is worth it."
+
+I didn't answer. What was the use? She said I looked tired out, and had
+better go to bed, and that next day she would send the man who looked
+after the furnace for my belongings.
+
+Mrs. Kingston was really delighted to have me with her. She said she
+could have had any number of girls in her house before this, but that
+she had set her heart on having just me, because I was uncommon. She
+had a funny habit of dismissing people and things as "ordinary and
+commonplace." I was not that, it seems.
+
+Here was I now in a really dear little home, not a boarder, but treated
+like a daughter not only by Mrs. Kingston, but by Mrs. Owens, who
+quickly made me call her "Mama Owens." She was a pretty woman of about
+sixty, with lovely dark eyes, and white wavy hair that I often did up.
+She had periodical spells of illness, I don't know just what. Both Mrs.
+Kingston and Mrs. Owens were widows.
+
+I brightened up a bit after I got there, for they wouldn't give me a
+chance to be blue. We had a merry time decorating the house with greens
+and holly, and we even had a big Christmas-tree. Mama Owens said she
+couldn't imagine a Christmas without one. Just think, though I was one
+of fourteen children (two of the original sixteen had died), I can
+never remember a Christmas when we had a tree!
+
+Bennet came over and helped us with the decorations, and he and Butler
+were both invited to the Christmas dinner. Butler could not come, as he
+was due at some Hull House entertainment, but Bennet expected to have
+dinner with us before going to work. He was working nights now, and
+would not have Christmas off.
+
+I was getting only twelve dollars a week at this time, so I had little
+enough money to spend on Christmas presents. I did, however, buy books
+for Bennet and Mrs. Kingston and Mrs. Owens. Also for Lolly, to whom I
+had written twice, begging her to forgive me. She never answered me,
+but Hermann wrote me a note, advising me to "leave her alone till she
+gets over it."
+
+I had to walk to work for two days after that, as I didn't have a cent
+left, and I did without luncheon, too. I rather enjoyed the walk, but
+it was hard getting up so early, as I had to be at the office at eight.
+I was working for a clothing firm not unlike the one Estelle was with,
+and I had obtained the position, by the way, through Estelle.
+
+On Christmas eve Margaret had to go to the house of a client in regard
+to some case, so mama and I were left alone. We were decorating the
+tree with strings of white and colored popcorn and bright tinsel
+stuff, and I was standing on top of a ladder, putting a crowning
+pinnacle on the tree,--a funny, fat, little Santa Claus,--when our bell
+rang. Our front door opened into the reception hall, where our tree
+was, so when mama opened the door and I saw who it was, I almost fell
+off the ladder. He called out:
+
+"Careful!" dropped his bag, came over to the ladder, and lifted me
+down. You can't lift a girl down from a ladder without putting your
+arms about her, and I clung to him, you may be sure. He kept smoothing
+my hair and cheek, and saying,--I think he thought I was crying against
+his coat,--"Come, now, Nora, it's all right! Everything's all right!"
+and then he undid my hands, which were clinging to his shoulders, and
+shook himself free.
+
+Mama Owens had never met him, so I had to introduce them. She scolded
+me dreadfully afterward about the way I had acted, though I tried to
+explain to her that it was the surprise and excitement that had made me
+give way like that.
+
+It was queer, but from the very first both Margaret and Mama Owens
+were prejudiced against him. Both of them loved me and were devoted to
+Bennet. They were planning to make a match between us. Hamilton was the
+stumbling-block; and although in time he partly won Margaret over, he
+never moved mama, who always regarded him as an intruder in our "little
+family."
+
+I now hinted and hinted for her to leave us alone, but she wouldn't
+budge from the room for the longest time. So I just talked right before
+her, though she kept interrupting me, requiring me to do this or that.
+She didn't ask him to do a thing, though if Bennet had been there, she
+would have seated herself comfortably and let him do all the work.
+
+However, I was so happy now that it didn't matter if all the rest of
+the world was disgruntled. I hugged Mama Owens, and told her if she
+didn't stop being so cross, Mr. Hamilton and I would go out somewhere
+and leave her "all by her lonesome." I could do almost anything with
+her and Margaret, and I soon had her in a good humor; she even went off
+to get some Christmas wine for Mr. Hamilton.
+
+I had in a general way told Roger something of what I had been doing
+since I had seen him; but I did not tell him of the straits to which I
+had come, or of the money I had borrowed from Bennet. He suspected that
+I had passed through hard times, however. He had a way of picking up my
+face by the chin and examining it closely. The moment we were alone, he
+led me under the gas-light, and looked at me closely. His face was as
+grave as if he were at a funeral, and I tried to make fun of it; but he
+said:
+
+"Nora, you don't look as well as you should."
+
+I said lightly:
+
+"That's because you didn't come to see me."
+
+"I came," he returned, "as soon as you did what I told you. As soon as
+Mrs. Kingston sent me word that you were here, I came, though it was
+Christmas eve, and I ought to be in Richmond."
+
+I saw what was in his mind: he thought I had taken those rooms! I put
+my arm through his, just to hold to him in case he went right away,
+while I told him I had only the little room.
+
+He said, with an expressive motion:
+
+"Well, I give you up, Nora."
+
+I said:
+
+"No, please, don't give me up. I'll die if you do."
+
+Margaret came in then, and she greeted him very cordially. She chuckled
+when I called her a "sly thing" for writing to him, and she said she
+had to let him know, since he had paid for the big room.
+
+"Yes, but you didn't tell him I had the little room," I said.
+
+"What does it matter?" laughed Margaret. "You two are always making
+mountains out of molehills. Life's too short to waste a single moment
+of it in argument."
+
+Roger said:
+
+"You are perfectly right. After this, Nora and I are not going to
+quarrel about anything. She's going to be a reasonable child."
+
+I had to laugh. I knew what he meant by my being reasonable. Nothing
+mattered this night, however, except that he had come. I told him that,
+and put my cheek against his hand. I was always doing things like
+that, for although he was undemonstrative, and the nearest he came to
+caressing me was to smooth my cheek and hair, I always got as close to
+him as I could. I'd slip my hand through his arm, or put my hand in
+his, and my head against him; and when we were out anywhere, I always
+had my hand in his pocket, and he'd put his hand in over mine. He liked
+them, too, these ways of mine, for he used to look at me with a queer
+sort of grim smile that was nevertheless tender.
+
+He was a man used to having his own way, however, and he didn't intend
+to give in to me in this matter of the rooms. So this is how he finally
+arranged things: I was to have the little room, and he would take the
+suite in front. When he was in Chicago, he would use these rooms; but
+when he was not, I was to have the use of them, and he made me promise
+that I would use the big room for writing.
+
+This arrangement satisfied Mrs. Kingston and delighted me, but mama was
+inclined to grumble. She wanted to know just why he should maintain
+rooms in the house, anyway, and just what he was "after" me for. She
+was in a perverse and cranky mood. She talked so that I put my hand
+over her mouth and said she had a bad mind.
+
+Roger explained to Margaret--he pretended to ignore mama, but he was
+talking for her especially--that they need have no anxiety in regard
+to his intentions toward me; that they were purely disinterested; in
+fact, he felt toward me pretty much as they did themselves. I was an
+exceptional girl who ought to be helped and befriended; that he had
+never made love to me, and, he added grimly, that he never would. My!
+how I hated mama at that moment for causing him to say that. In fact
+he talked so plausibly that Margaret and I threw black looks at mama
+for her gratuitous interference, and Margaret whispered to me that it
+should not happen again. Mama "stuck to her guns," however, and finally
+said:
+
+"Well, let me ask you a question, Mr. Hamilton. Are you in love with
+Nora?"
+
+He looked over my head and said:
+
+"No."
+
+That was the first time he had directly denied that he cared for me,
+and my heart sank. I wouldn't look at him, I felt so badly, nor did I
+feel any better when, after a moment, he added:
+
+"I'm old enough to be Nora's father, and at my time of life I'm not
+likely to make a fool of myself even for Nora."
+
+"Hm!" snorted mama, "that all sounds very fine, but what about Nora? Do
+you pretend that she is not in love with you?"
+
+His stiff expression softened, but he said very bitterly, I thought:
+
+"Nora is seventeen."
+
+Then he laughed shortly, and added: "I don't see how it can hurt her
+to have me for a friend, do you? As far as that goes, even if she does
+imagine herself in love with me, a closer acquaintance might lead to a
+complete cure and disillusionment, a consummation, I presume, much to
+be desired."
+
+He said this with so much bitterness, and even pain, that I ran over to
+him and put my face against his hand.
+
+"Wait a bit, Nora. We'd better get this matter settled once and for
+all," he said. "Either I am to come here, with the understanding and
+consent of these ladies, whenever I choose and without interference of
+any sort, or I will not come at all."
+
+"Then I won't stay, either," I cried. "Margaret, _you_ know that if he
+never comes to see me again, I'll jump into Lake Michigan."
+
+They all laughed at that, and it broke up the strained conversation.
+Margaret said in her big, gay way:
+
+"Of course you can come and go as you please. The rooms are yours, and
+I shouldn't presume to dictate to you." And then she said to mama:
+"Amy, you've had too much wine. Let it alone."
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Everything being made clear, Roger and I went up to his rooms. He shut
+the door, and said that "the two old ones" were all right enough, but
+he had come over 250 miles to see me, and he didn't care a hang what
+they or any one else thought, and that if they'd made any more fuss,
+he'd have taken me away from there without further parley. Then he
+asked me something suddenly that made me laugh. He wanted to know if I
+was afraid of him, and I asked:
+
+"Why should I be?"
+
+"You're right," he replied, "and you need never be, Nora. You can
+always trust me."
+
+I said mischievously:
+
+"It's the other way. I think _you're_ afraid of me."
+
+He frowned me down at that, and demanded to know what I meant, but I
+couldn't explain.
+
+He lighted the logs in the fireplace, and pulled up the big Morris
+chair and a footstool before it. He made me sit on the stool at his
+knee. Then we talked till it was pretty late, and mama popped her head
+in and said I ought to go to bed. I protested that as I didn't have to
+go to work next day, I need not get up early. Roger said she was right,
+and that he must be going.
+
+I had thought he was going to spend Christmas with me, and I was so
+dreadfully disappointed that I nearly cried, and he tried to cheer me
+up. He said he wouldn't go if he could help it, but that his people
+expected him home at least at Christmas. That was the first time he had
+ever referred to his "people," and I felt a vague sense of jealousy
+that they meant more to him than I did. But I did not tell him that,
+for he suddenly leaned over me and said:
+
+"I'd rather be here with you, Nora, than anywhere else in the world."
+
+I sat up at that, and said triumphantly:
+
+"Then you _must_ care for me if that's so."
+
+"Have I ever pretended not to?" he asked.
+
+"You told them down-stairs--"
+
+He snapped his fingers as though what he had said there didn't count.
+
+"Well, but you must be more than merely interested in me," I said.
+
+"Interest is a pretty big thing, isn't it?" he said slowly.
+
+"Not as big as love," I said.
+
+"We're not going to talk about love," he replied. "We'll have to cut
+that out entirely, Nora."
+
+"But I thought you said you wanted me to go on loving you, and that I
+was not to stop, no matter what happened."
+
+He stirred uneasily at that, and then, after a moment, he said:
+
+"That's true. Never stop doing that, will you, sweetheart?"
+
+You see, I was succeeding beautifully with him when he called me
+_that_. He regretted it a moment later, for he rose and began fussing
+with his bag. I followed him across the room. I always followed him
+everywhere, just like a little dog. He took a little package out of
+his bag, and he asked me if I remembered the day in the carriage, when
+he told me to open my mouth and shut my eyes. Of course I did. He said
+that I was to shut my eyes now, but I need not open my mouth. He'd give
+me the real prize now.
+
+So then I did, and he put something about my neck. Then he led me over
+to the mirror, and I saw it was a pearl necklace.
+
+At that time I had not the remotest idea of the value of jewelry. I had
+never possessed any except the ring Dick had given me. In a vague sort
+of way I knew that gold and diamonds were costly things, and of course
+I supposed that pearls were, too. It was not, therefore, the value of
+his present that impressed me, for I frankly looked upon it merely as
+a "pretty necklace"; but I was enchanted to think he had remembered
+me, and when I opened my eyes and saw them, they looked so creamy and
+lovely on my neck that I wanted to hug him for them. However, he held
+me off at arm's length, to "see how they looked" on me.
+
+He said I was not to wear them to work, but only on special occasions,
+when he was there and took me to places, and that he was going to get
+me a little safe in which to keep them. I thought that ridiculous, to
+get a safe just to keep a string of beads in; and then he laughed and
+said that the "beads" were to be only the forerunner of other beautiful
+things he was going to give me.
+
+I had never cared particularly about jewelry or such things. I had
+never had any, and never had wanted any. I liked pretty clothes and
+things like that--but I had never thought about the subject of jewelry.
+I told this to Roger and he said he would change all that.
+
+He was, in fact, going to cultivate in me a taste for the best in
+everything, he said. I asked him why. It seemed to me that nothing was
+to be gained by acquiring a taste for luxurious things--for a girl in
+my position, and he replied in a grim sort of way:
+
+"All the same, you're going to have them. By and by you won't be able
+to do without them."
+
+"Jewels and such things?"
+
+"Yes--jewels and such things." Then he added:
+
+"There need never be a time in your life when I won't be able to
+gratify your least wish, if you will let me."
+
+When he was putting on his coat, he asked me what sort of position I
+had, and I told him it was pretty bad. He said he wished me to go down
+to see Mr. Forman, the president of a large wholesale dry-goods firm.
+He added that he had heard of a good position there--short hours and
+good salary. I was delighted, and asked him if he thought I'd get the
+position, and he smiled and said he thought I would.
+
+He was drawing on his gloves and was nearly ready to go when he
+asked his next question, and that was whether I had made any new
+acquaintances; what men I had met, and whether I had been out anywhere
+with any particular man. He usually asked me those questions first
+of all, and then would keep on about them all through his visit. I
+hesitated, for I was reluctant to tell him about Bennet. He roughly
+took me by the shoulder when I did not answer him at once, and he said:
+
+"Well, with whom have you been going out?"
+
+I told him about Bennet, but only about his coming to see me, his
+reading to me, and of my going to his and Butler's rooms, and to Hull
+House. He stared at me so peculiarly while I was speaking that I
+thought he was angry with me, and he suddenly took off his coat and hat
+and sat down again.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me about this chap before?" he asked me suddenly.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't be interested," I quibbled.
+
+"That is not true, Nora," he said. "You knew very well I would."
+
+He leaned forward in the chair, with his hands gripped together, and
+stared at the fire, and then he said almost as if to himself:
+
+"If I had come on, this wouldn't have happened."
+
+"Nothing has happened," I insisted.
+
+"Oh, yes, this--er--Bennet is undoubtedly in love with you."
+
+"Well, suppose he is?" I said. "What does it matter to you? If you
+don't care for me, why shouldn't other men?"
+
+He turned around and looked at me hard a moment. Then he got up, walked
+up and down a while, and then came over and took my face up in his hand.
+
+"Nora, will you give up this chap if I ask you to?"
+
+I was piling up proof that he cared for me more than he would admit. I
+said flippantly:
+
+"Old 'Dog in the Manger,' will _you_ love me if I do?"
+
+He said in a low voice:
+
+"I _can't_."
+
+I said sadly:
+
+"Is it so hard, then?"
+
+"Yes, harder than you know," he replied.
+
+Then he wanted to know what Bennet looked like. I painted a flattering
+picture. When was he coming? To Christmas dinner, I told him.
+
+It was now very late, and I heard the clock in the hall strike twelve,
+and I asked him if he heard the reindeer bells on the roof.
+
+"Nora, I don't hear or see anything in the world but you," he replied.
+
+"If that's so, you must be as much in love with me as I am with you," I
+told him.
+
+He said, "Nonsense," and looked around, as if he were going to put his
+things on again.
+
+"Stay over Christmas!" I begged, and after staring at me a moment, he
+said:
+
+"Very well, I will, then."
+
+That made me tremendously excited. Mama came down the hall and called:
+
+"Nora, aren't you in bed yet?" I called out:
+
+"I'm going now." Then I seized his hand quickly, kissed it, and ran out
+of the room to my own.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+Early next morning while we were at breakfast, a huge box of flowers
+and a Christmas package from Bennet came for me. It was fun to see
+Roger's face when I was unwrapping the flowers. I think he would
+have liked to trample upon them, he who did not love me! They were
+chrysanthemums, and the other present was a beautiful little painting.
+Mama asked Hamilton to hang it for us, and he said curtly that he
+didn't know anything about such things.
+
+Christmas morning thus started off rather badly, for any one could see
+he was cross as a sore bear, which, I don't mind admitting, gave me a
+feeling of wicked joy. To make matters worse, mama began to talk about
+Dick. I tried to change the subject, but she persisted, and wanted to
+know when I had heard from him last and whether he was still as much in
+love with me as ever. There was no switching her from the subject, so I
+left the table, and pretended to fool with the books in the library. He
+followed me out there, and his face was just as black!
+
+"So," he said, with an unpleasant laugh, "you've been having little
+affairs and flirtations right along, have you? You're not the naïve,
+innocent baby child you would like me to think, eh?"
+
+"Now, Roger, look here," I said. "Didn't you tell me you weren't going
+to scold me any more, and you said I could do as I pleased, and be
+independent and--"
+
+"I supposed you would be candid and truthful with me; I didn't suppose
+you'd be carrying on cheap little liaisons--"
+
+When he got that far, I turned my back on him and walked out of the
+room.
+
+I adored him, but I was not a worm.
+
+I went back to the kitchen, and watched Margaret clean the turkey and
+make the stuffing. I thought I was much interested in that proceeding,
+but all the time I was wondering what he was doing, and soon I couldn't
+stand it any longer, and I went back to the living-room, which was also
+our library, but he was not there. I went up-stairs, with "my heart in
+my mouth," fearing he had gone. I found him, if you please, in my room.
+He was looking at the photographs on my bureau.
+
+I came up behind him, slipped my hand through his arm, and rubbed my
+cheek against his sleeve. I could see his face in the mirror opposite
+us slowly softening.
+
+"Are you still angry with me for nothing, Roger?" I asked.
+
+"Was this fellow Lawrence in love with you, too?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"All men aren't like you," I said slyly. "Some few of them do like me."
+
+He took that in as if it hurt him.
+
+"He's in Cuba, you say?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"You hear from him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where are his letters?"
+
+I couldn't show him the letters, I said. So then he tried to free
+himself from my hand, but he couldn't; I held so tightly.
+
+"It wouldn't be square to Dick to show you his letters," I said.
+
+"So it's 'Dick,' is it?" he sneered.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Yes, just as it was 'Fred' with O'Brien."
+
+"O'Brien wasn't in love with you."
+
+"Oh, well, maybe Dick isn't. He just thinks he is."
+
+"Any understanding between you?"
+
+I hesitated. I really think he would have taken pleasure in hurting me
+then for that long pause. I said at last:
+
+"He asked me to wait for him, but I'm not going to, if you'll come lots
+to see me."
+
+"Did you promise to?"
+
+Again I paused, and this time he caught up my face, but savagely, by
+the chin.
+
+"Well?"
+
+I lied. I was afraid of him now.
+
+"No," I said.
+
+For a man who did not love a girl he was the most violently jealous
+person I have ever known. When he got through questioning me about
+Dick, he started in all over again about Robert Bennet. I foresaw that
+we were to have a pretty quarrelsome Christmas, so I tried my best to
+change the subject.
+
+I showed him all the photographs on my bureau, of my father, my mother,
+and my thirteen brothers and sisters, and told him about each of them.
+He listened with seeming politeness, and then swept the whole matter
+aside with:
+
+"Hang your family! I'm not interested in them. Now, about this
+Bennet--" and he started in all over again.
+
+Finally, thoroughly exasperated, I turned on him and said:
+
+"You have no right to question or accuse me like this. No man has that
+right unless I specially give it to him."
+
+He said roughly:
+
+"Give me the right then, Nora."
+
+"Not unless you care for me," I said. "You say you are only interested
+in me. Well, say you love me, and then I'll do anything you wish. I
+won't look at or speak to or think of any other man in the world."
+
+"Well, suppose I admit that. Suppose I were to tell you that I do love
+you, what would you want then, Nora?"
+
+"Why, nothing," I said. "That would be everything to me, don't you see?
+I'd go to school then, just as you want me to, and I'd study so hard,
+and try to pull myself up till I was on your level--"
+
+"Oh, good God!" he said, "you are miles above me now."
+
+"Not socially," I said. "In the eyes of the world I'm not. I'm just a
+working-girl, and you're a man in--in--fashionable society, rich and
+important. I guess you could be President if you wanted to, couldn't
+you?"
+
+"Oh, Nora!" he said, and I went on:
+
+"Yes, you might. You can't tell. Suppose you got into politics. You
+said your grandfather was governor of your State. Well, why shouldn't
+you be, too? So don't you see, to be your wife, I'd have to--"
+
+"To be--what?" he interrupted me, and then he said sharply and quickly:
+
+"That's out of the question. Put all thought of anything like that out
+of your head. Suppose we change the subject right now. What do you say
+to a little sleigh-ride?"
+
+I nodded and I tried to smile, but he had hurt me as hard as it is
+possible for a man to hurt a woman.
+
+It was not that I looked upon marriage as such a desirable goal; but it
+was at least a test of the man's sincerity. As he had blundered on with
+his senseless jealousy of men who did want to marry me, I had dreamed
+a little dream.
+
+We had our ride, and then dinner in the middle of the afternoon. Bennet
+was there for dinner. He thought Mr. Hamilton was our new lodger, and
+before him at least I did conceal my real feelings. Anyhow, I confess
+that I felt none too warmly toward Roger now. He had descended upon me
+on this Christmas day, and while putting his gifts on my neck with one
+hand, he had struck me with the other. Do not suppose, however, that my
+love for him lessened. You can soothe a fever by a cooling drink; you
+cannot cure it.
+
+Bennet had to go immediately after dinner, and I went with him as
+far as the door. All our rooms on the ground floor ran into one
+another, so that from the dining-room one could see directly into the
+reception-hall. Bob--for I always called him that--led me along by the
+arm, and suddenly mama clapped her hands loudly, and he seized me and
+kissed me! I was under the mistletoe. Roger knocked over his chair, and
+I heard him swear. Bob also heard, but neither of us cared.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+That Christmas visit of Roger's was the first of many in that house.
+From that time he came very frequently to see me, sometimes three
+or four times a month; in fact, a week rarely passed without his
+appearing. All of his visits were not so tempestuous as the one I have
+described, but he was a man used to ruling people, and he wished to
+govern and absorb me utterly. Well, I made a feeble enough resistance,
+goodness knows. I was really incredibly happy. I always used to come
+home from work with the excited hope of finding him there, and very
+often he was, indeed.
+
+Of course he was exacting and at times even cruel to me. He really
+didn't want me to have any friends at all, and he not only chose all my
+clothes, but he tried to sway my tastes in everything. For instance,
+Bennet had cultivated in me a taste for poetry. Roger pretended that he
+didn't care for poetry. He said I would get more good from the books
+he had chosen for me, and just because, I suppose, Bennet had read
+aloud to me, he made me read aloud to him, sometimes my own stories,
+sometimes books he would select; but never poetry.
+
+The first thing he would always say when he came in, after he had
+examined my face, was:
+
+"What's my wonderful girl been reading?"
+
+Then I'd tell him, and after that I'd have to tell him in detail
+everything that had happened through the week, several times sometimes.
+He knew, of course, that Bennet came regularly to see me, and he used
+to ask me a thousand questions about those visits; and I had a hard
+time answering them all, particularly as I did not dare to tell him
+that every day Bennet showed by his attitude that he was caring more
+for me. He asked me so many questions that I once asked him seriously
+if he was a lawyer, and he threw back his head and laughed.
+
+I had secured a very good position through his influence, for I was
+private secretary to the president of one of the largest wholesale
+dry-goods firms in Chicago. I had easy hours, from ten till about four.
+I had no type-writing at all to do, for another girl took my dictation.
+What is more, I received twenty-five dollars a week.
+
+Besides my good position, Fortune was smiling upon me in other ways.
+The Western magazine began to run my stories. I was the most excited
+girl in Chicago when the first one came out, and I telegraphed to Roger
+to get the magazine.
+
+And now I must record something about Robert Bennet. He had been pushed
+from my pages, just as he was from my life, by Roger, and yet during
+all this time I really saw more of him than of Roger himself. The day
+I paid him back the money he lent me he told me he loved me. Now, I had
+for him something the same feeling I had for Fred O'Brien--a blind sort
+of fondness rather than love, and overwhelming gratitude. It was not
+so much because of the money he had lent me, but for the many things
+he was always trying to do for me. In a way he and Mr. Butler tried
+to educate me. They planned a regular course of reading for me, and
+helped me in my study of English. I should not have dared to admit it
+to Roger, but those boys were really doing more for me than he was, and
+they wished me to enter Cornell, and wrote to certain professors there
+about me.
+
+It's a fact that nearly every man (and some women) who became
+interested in me during this period of my career seemed to think
+himself called upon to contribute to my education. I must have been
+truly a pathetic and crude little object; else why did I inspire my
+friends with this desire to help me? And everybody gave me books. Why,
+that Western editor, after he had met me only once, sent me all sorts
+of books, and wrote me long letters of advice, too.
+
+But about Bennet. When he told me he loved me--and it is impossible
+for me to say in what a manly way he declared himself--I was too
+overwhelmed with mingled feelings, and I was such a sentimental,
+impressionable little fool, that I did not have the strength to refuse
+him. The first thing I knew, there I was engaged to him, too!
+
+It was a cruel, dishonest thing for me to accept him. I see that now;
+but somehow, then, I was simply too weak to tell him the truth--that I
+loved another man. Well, then, as I've said, I was engaged to Bennet.
+
+In a psychological way it might be interesting to note my feelings at
+this time toward both Hamilton and Bennet. I truly was more afraid for
+Bennet to find out about Hamilton than for the latter to find out about
+Bennet. To Roger I could have defended my engagement; but how could
+I have justified myself to Robert Bennet, whose respect and liking I
+desired very much? Indeed, they were now a potent influence in my life,
+a clean, uplifting influence.
+
+Robert Bennet had unconsciously given me a new ideal of life. My own
+crude, passionate views were being adjusted. It was slowly dawning
+upon me that, after all, this thing we call convention, which I had
+previously so scouted, is in fact a necessary and blessed thing, and
+that the code which governs one's conduct through life is controlled
+by certain laws we cannot wilfully break. I had just grown, not like a
+flower, but like an unwieldy weed. Robert Bennet and George Butler were
+taking me out and showing me a new world. I was meeting people who were
+doing things worth while, sweet women and big men, and there were times
+in my life when I realized that the spell under which Roger held me
+was an enchantment that in the end could lead only to degradation or
+tragedy.
+
+Nevertheless, I could no more break away from his influence than the
+poor victim of the hypnotist can from the master mind that controls
+him. What is love, anyhow, but a form of hypnotism? It's an obsession,
+a true madness.
+
+Yet Roger Hamilton, in his way, had not deceived me. He had never
+once professed to love me. On the contrary, he had denied that very
+thing in the presence of Mrs. Kingston and Mrs. Owens. Perhaps if he
+had cared for me, if he had given me even some slight return, my own
+passion for him, from its very force, would have spent itself. But he
+did not. He kept consistently to his original stand. I was his special
+protégé, his wonderful girl, his discovery, his oasis, and compensation
+for everything else in life, which he said was sordid, nasty, and
+wrong. But that was all I was, it seems, despite his incomprehensible
+jealousy, and his occasional unaccountable moods of almost fierce
+tenderness toward me.
+
+There were few times that he called me by endearing terms. Twice, I
+think, I was his "sweetheart," and several times I was his "precious
+girl." Once I was his "poor little darling," and I was always his
+"wonderful girl."
+
+Nor was he a man given to demonstrations of affection. My place was
+always on the stool at his knee. I used to put my head there, and look
+with him into the fire. He never took me in his arms during those
+days, though I was always clinging to his hand and arm. He kissed my
+hands, my hair, and once my arms when I was in a new evening gown that
+he had chosen for me; but he never kissed my lips.
+
+I loved him blindly and passionately. I used to save things that he had
+touched--absurd things, like his cigar-butts, a piece of soap he had
+used, his gloves, and a cap he wore on the train. He hunted everywhere
+for it, but I did not give it up. I was like a well-fed person, with an
+inner craving for something impossible to possess.
+
+On my eighteenth birthday Roger gave me a piano. He had already given
+me many jewels, some of them magnificent pieces that I never wore
+except when he was there. I kept them locked up in the little safe.
+The piano, however, troubled me more than the jewels. It was big and,
+therefore, impressed me. When I protested to him about accepting it,
+he declared that he had bought it for himself as much as for me, but
+he arranged with a German named Heinrach to give me vocal lessons,
+and with a Miss Stern to teach me the piano. Heinrach said I had an
+exceptionally fine contralto voice, but I think Roger told him to say
+that. However, I enjoyed the lessons, though I soon realized that my
+voice was just an ordinarily good contralto. Roger said it was good
+enough for him, and that he wanted me to sing to him only. He chose all
+my songs, French, German, and English.
+
+If I stop here to tell of the attentions and proposals I received from
+other men at this time, I'm afraid you will agree with Lolly that my
+head was a bit turned. But, no, I assure you it was not. I realized
+that almost any girl, thrown among men as I was, half-way good-looking,
+interesting, and bright, was bound to have a great many proposals. So
+I'll just heap all mine together, and tell of them briefly.
+
+One of the chief men in the firm where I worked asked me to marry him.
+He was a divorcé, a man of forty-five, but looked younger. He said
+he made fifteen thousand dollars a year. He wanted me to marry him
+and accompany him on a trip he was to make to England to buy goods. I
+refused him, but--away from Roger, I confess there were the germs of a
+flirt in me--I told him to ask me again as soon as he got back. I might
+change my mind. Before sailing, he brought his young son, a youth of
+twenty, to see me. Papa had scarcely reached the English shores before
+the son also proposed to me! He was a dear child.
+
+An insurance agent offered himself to me as a life policy.
+
+An engineer, a politician (Irish), and two clerks in our office were
+willing to take "chances" on me.
+
+A plumber who mended our kitchen sink proposed to me just because I
+made him a cup of tea.
+
+I had a proposal from a Japanese tea merchant who years before had been
+my father's courier in Japan. Now he was a Japanese magnate, and papa
+had told me to look him up. He made a list of every person he had ever
+heard me say I did not like, and he told me if I would marry him, he
+would do something to every one of them.
+
+A poet wrote lovely verse to me, and the Chicago papers actually
+published it. Finally, that Western editor proposed to me upon his
+fourth visit to Chicago, and I am ashamed to confess that I accepted
+him, too. You see, he had accepted my stories, and how could I reject
+him? He lived far from Chicago, and the contemplated marriage was set
+for a distant date, so I thought I was safe for the present.
+
+I was now, as you perceive, actually engaged to three men, and I was in
+love with one who had flatly stated he would never marry me. I lived a
+life of not unjoyous deceit. I had only a few qualms about deceiving
+Roger, for with all these other men proposing to me, I resented his
+not doing so, too. However, I was by no means unhappy. I had a good
+position, a charming home, good friends, a devoted admirer in Bennet,
+and was not only writing, but selling, stories, with quite astonishing
+facility. Add to this my secret attachment to Roger, and one may
+perceive that mine was not such a bad lot. But I was dancing over a
+volcano, and even dead volcanos sometimes unexpectedly erupt.
+
+Bob was not an exacting fiancé. As he worked at night, he could
+not often come to see me; but he wrote me the most beautiful
+letters--letters that filled me with emotion and made me feel like a
+mean criminal, for all the time I knew I could never be more to him
+than I was then.
+
+Like me, he was an idealist and hero-worshiper, and in both our cases
+our idols' feet were of clay. I deliberately blinded myself to every
+little fault and flaw in Roger. His selfishness and tyranny I passed
+over. It was enough for me that for at least a few days in the month he
+descended like a god into my life and permitted himself to be worshiped.
+
+I made all sorts of sacrifices and concessions to his wishes. Time and
+again I broke engagements with my friends, with Bob and with others,
+because unexpectedly he would turn up. He never told me when he was
+coming. I think he expected some time to surprise me in doing some of
+the things he often accused me of doing, for he was very suspicious of
+me, and never wholly trusted me.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+It was Bennet's letters that finally got me into trouble with Roger.
+I had been engaged to him only a little more than two weeks, and I
+must have dropped one of his letters in Roger's sitting-room, for on
+arriving home from work one afternoon I found that he had come in my
+absence, and, as Margaret warned me before I went up-stairs, seemed to
+be in a "towering rage" about something.
+
+He was walking up and down, and he swung around and glared at me
+savagely as I stood in the doorway. He had a paper in his hand
+(Bennet's letter), and his face was so convulsed and ugly and accusing
+that involuntarily I shrank back as he came toward me. I have never
+seen a man in such an ungovernable rage. He did not give me a chance
+to say anything. There was nothing of which he did not accuse me. I
+was a thing whose meaning I did not even know. He, so he said, had
+been a deluded fool, and had let himself be led along by a girl he had
+supposed too good to take advantage of him. Yet all the while, while I
+was taking gifts--yes, the clothes on my back--and other favors, even
+my position, which I kept only because of Mr. Forman's obligations to
+him, I had, it seems, given myself to another man!
+
+The accusations were so gross and monstrous and black that I could not
+answer him. I knew what was in Bennet's letter--terms of endearment,
+expressions of undying love, _and_ (this is where I came under the
+judgment of Roger) the desire to see me soon again and hold me in his
+arms.
+
+Yes, Bob had held me in his arms,--he believed I was to be his
+wife,--but I was not the thing Roger accused me of being. My relations
+with Bennet were as pure as a girl's can be. It would have been
+impossible for a girl to have any other kind of relations with a man
+like Bennet. I stood bewildered under the storm of his accusations and
+cruel reproaches, and the revelation of the things he had done for me
+without my knowledge or consent. At first, as he denounced me, I had
+flinched before him, because I was aware of having really deceived him,
+in a way; but as he continued to heap abuse upon me, some rebellious
+spirit arose in me to defy him. I had not had an Irish grandmother for
+nothing.
+
+I waited till he was through, and then I said:
+
+"You think you are a man, but I declare you are a brute and a coward.
+Yes, it is true, I am engaged to Mr. Bennet, and I defy you to say to
+him what you have said to me."
+
+Then I fled from his room to my own. I locked myself in there. He came
+knocking at my door, and rattling at the handle, but I would not open
+it, and then he called out:
+
+"Nora, I am going away now--forever--never to come back, you
+understand. You will never see my face again unless you come out and
+speak to me now."
+
+But I would not open my door. I heard him going down-stairs and the
+slam of the front door. Now I realized what had happened. He had
+actually gone! Never before had he left me like this. I opened my door,
+went down-stairs, and then I saw him waiting for me in the living-room.
+I tried to run back, but he was too quick for me. He sprang after me,
+caught me in his arms, and half carried me up to his room. There he
+locked the door, and put the key into his pocket. I wouldn't look at
+him, I wouldn't speak to him. He came over, and tried to put his arms
+about me, but I shoved him away, and he said in a voice I had never
+heard from him before:
+
+"So I've lost you, have I, Nora?" And then, as I would not answer him:
+"So Bennet cut me out. That's it, is it?"
+
+I said:
+
+"No; no one cut you out but yourself. You've shown yourself to me just
+as you are, and you're ugly. I _hate_ you!" and I burst into tears.
+
+He knelt down beside me. I was sitting on the edge of the big Morris
+chair, and all the while he talked to me I had my face covered with my
+hands.
+
+"Listen to me, Nora. I know I've said things to you for which I ought
+to be horsewhipped; but I was nearly insane. I am still. I don't know
+what to think of you, what to do to you. The thought that _you_, whom
+I have cherished as something precious and different from every one
+else in my life, have been deceiving me all these months drives me
+distracted. I could _kill_ you without the slightest compunction."
+
+I looked at him at that, and I said:
+
+"Roger, you don't think I've done anything wrong, do you?"
+
+"I don't know what to think," he said. "It is a revelation to me that
+you were capable of deceiving me at all."
+
+"But I am only _engaged_ to Bob; that's all."
+
+"Only _engaged_! In heaven's name! what do you mean? Do you intend to
+marry this man?"
+
+"No, I never did; but--"
+
+I was beginning to soften a bit to him. I could see his point of view.
+He was holding me by the arms so I couldn't get away from him, and when
+you are very close like that to a man you love (almost in his arms) you
+cannot help being moved. I was, anyway, and I said:
+
+"I'll try and explain everything to you, if you won't be too angry with
+me."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"Well, you know when I got that fifty dollars, and gave up my position?
+Well, I spent it all and got down to ten cents, and I couldn't get
+work, and I was nearly starving--honestly I was. That last day I didn't
+have any dinner and hardly any luncheon or breakfast. Well then, I met
+Bob, and I told him--that very first night--and he lent me ten dollars,
+and insisted that I should take something from him each week till I got
+a position."
+
+"In God's name, why did you not ask _me_?"
+
+"I _couldn't_, Roger; I couldn't."
+
+"Why not? Why not?"
+
+"Because--because--I _loved you_. I could take help from a man I didn't
+love, but not from one I did."
+
+I began to sob, and he sat down in the Morris chair, and lifted me up
+on his knee, but he held me off, so I could continue with my story.
+
+"Go on now."
+
+So then I told him everything: how, later, when I at last returned
+the money to Bennet, he had proposed to me, and how I couldn't help
+accepting him. "And, anyway," I finished, "engagements are nothing. I'm
+engaged to two other men as well."
+
+I thought this was my chance to make a reckless clean breast of
+everything.
+
+He tumbled me out of his lap at that, stared at me, gasped, threw back
+his head, and burst into a sort of wild laughter, almost of relief.
+Then suddenly he pulled me up into his arms, and held me hard against
+his breast for the longest time, just as if he were never going to let
+me go again, and then I knew just as well as anything that he did love
+me, even though he wouldn't admit it. So, with that knowledge, I was
+ready to forgive him for anything or everything.
+
+You see, things were all turned about now, and I was in the position of
+the accuser and not of the accused, and that despite the attitude he
+pretended to assume. He wanted to know if all three of my friends had
+kissed me, and I had to admit that they had, and tell him just how many
+times. Dick had kissed me just that one time, Bob four times, and the
+Western editor just once. It was a bitter pill for Roger to swallow,
+and he said:
+
+"And I have been afraid to touch you."
+
+"That's not my fault," I said. "You can kiss me any time you wish."
+
+He didn't accept my hint or invitation. He was walking up and down now,
+pulling at his lip, and at last he said:
+
+"Nora, get your things all packed. I'll have to take you with me."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I'm obliged to go abroad on a certain pressing matter. I came here
+to-day specially to be with you before leaving. I see I can't leave you
+behind."
+
+"Do you mean--" I said, and for one delirious moment I imagined
+something that was impossible.
+
+"I mean simply that, though it will be devilishly inconvenient, I shall
+be obliged to take you with me. I can't trust you here."
+
+That thought still persisted in my foolish head, and I said:
+
+"Roger, do you mean that we are going to be married?"
+
+He stared at me a moment, and then said shortly:
+
+"No. That's impossible."
+
+I swallowed a lump that came up hard in my throat, and I could not
+speak. Then after a moment I said:
+
+"You want to take me, then, because you are afraid some other man might
+get me, not because you want me yourself."
+
+He said, with a slight smile:
+
+"The first part of your statement is certainly true; the second part is
+questionable."
+
+"I'm not going," I told him.
+
+"Oh, yes, you are."
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not."
+
+"Are we to have another combat?"
+
+"I'm not going."
+
+"Can't leave your fiancé?" he asked.
+
+"I'm just not going, that's all."
+
+"What do you intend to do, then, while I'm gone?"
+
+"Just what I'm doing now."
+
+"You intend to continue your--er--engagement?"
+
+"No; I'll break that off." I looked at Roger. "I owe that to _him_."
+
+"H-m! Owe nothing to me, eh?"
+
+My eyes filled up. I did owe much to him. He came over, picked my face
+up by the chin, and then drew me back to the seat by the fireplace,
+seating himself in the Morris chair, with me on the stool. He talked
+very gently to me now, and as if he were speaking to a child; but I
+could think only of one thing--that he was going away and I _could_ not
+go with him. Why, he had not even told me he loved me, and though a few
+moments before I had believed he did, now the torturing doubts came up
+again. If he loved me, would he not want to marry me? Other men, like
+Bob and Dick, did.
+
+"Roger, tell me this," I said. "Suppose I went to school and then to
+college, would I be like--other girls--I mean society girls--girls in
+your class?"
+
+"You're better than they are now. You are in a class all by yourself,
+Nora."
+
+"Don't answer me like that. You know what I want to know. Would I be
+socially their equal, for instance?"
+
+"Why, naturally. That's a foolish question, Nora."
+
+"No, it isn't. I just want to know. Now, supposing I got all
+that--that--culture--and everything, and I had nice manners, and
+dressed so I looked pretty and everything--and you wouldn't be a bit
+ashamed of me, and we could say my people were all sorts of grand
+folks,--they really are in England--my father's people,--well, suppose
+all this, and then suppose that you really loved me, just as I do you,
+then wouldn't I be good enough to be your wife?"
+
+"Nora, why do you persist about that? I tell you once and for all that
+that is absolutely out of the question. I'm not going to marry you. In
+fact, I can't."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I won't go into details. Let it suffice that there are reasons, and
+put the idea out of your head."
+
+So, after that, there was nothing more for me to say; but he realized
+I would not go with him. When he at last resigned himself to this,
+he made me promise that while he was gone I would not only break my
+engagements with Bennet and the Western editor and Dick, but that I
+would in no circumstances let any man kiss or touch me, or make love to
+me in any way. He said if I'd promise him that, he'd be able to make
+his trip to Europe without undue anxiety, and that he would come back
+just as soon as he could.
+
+"All right, then," I said; "I cross my neck."
+
+I wrote three letters that night, all of which he read. If he had had
+his way, I would have rewritten them and worded them differently. He
+thought I ought to say: "Dear Mr. Bennet," "Dear Mr. Lawrence," etc.,
+instead of "Dear Bob," "Dear Dick." My letters were virtually the same
+in each case. I asked to be released from my engagement; but I begged
+Bob to forgive me, and I said I should never forget him as long as I
+lived. Roger argued with me a whole half-hour to take that out. But I
+didn't, and I even cried at the thought of how I was hurting this boy
+who loved me. I was so miserable, in fact, that Roger said we'd go out
+and hear some music, and that would cheer me up.
+
+Conscience is a peculiar thing. We can shut it up tightly, and delude
+ourselves with diversions that infatuate and blind us. I did not think
+of Bob while Roger was with me. I put on my prettiest dress, one of
+the dresses I now knew that he had paid for! It was a shimmering,
+Oriental-looking thing that had the stamp of Paquin upon it, and I had
+a wonderful emerald necklace, and a wreath of green leaves, with little
+diamonds sprinkled like dew over it, in my hair. Roger said that there
+was no one in the world like me. I suppose there was not. I certainly
+hope there was not. I was a fine sort of person!
+
+I think it was the Thomas Orchestra we heard. I forget. I should have
+enjoyed it, I suppose, in ordinary circumstances, but I could not
+think of anything that night except that Roger was going away and that
+I might never see him again. And I thought of all the accidents that
+occurred at sea, and even though he was holding my hand under the
+program, I felt that I was the most unhappy girl in the world.
+
+We couldn't stop to have even a little supper after the theater, for he
+was taking a train to New York, whence he was to sail.
+
+His man Holmes (it was the first time I had ever seen him) was at the
+house when we got back, and had his bag and everything ready, waiting
+for him. I thought as he was going away on such a long trip he would
+at least kiss me good-by, and I could not keep from crying when, after
+we got in, he said right before Holmes, who _wouldn't_ leave the room:
+
+"I'll have to rush now. Be a good girl."
+
+Then he said I was to go down to Mr. Townsend's (his lawyer's) office,
+and he would tell me about some arrangements he himself had made for
+me, and I was to write to him every day, though he said nothing about
+writing to me. He wrote down an address in London where I was to send
+my letters. The only thing he did that approached a caress was that,
+when his man went ahead of him down the stairs, he stopped in the upper
+hall, lifted my face, and gave me a long, searching look. Then he said:
+
+"I'm not likely to think about anything but you, darling." Then he went
+quickly down the stairs, leaving me sobbing up there.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+I had enough to occupy my thoughts now without thinking of Bennet.
+Passionately as I loved Roger, I perceived that night, in a dim sort of
+way and with a burning remembrance of his brutality to me, that I was
+fast becoming the infatuated victim of one who was utterly unworthy.
+He had not hesitated to denounce and accuse me of things of which I
+was certainly incapable of being guilty. Though he had said I was his
+cherished and precious girl, and he knew I was a good girl (in the
+sense the world calls good), yet he did not consider me worthy of being
+his wife. It irritated him, that poor aspiration of mine. Yet other
+men, better men than he, men who, I do not doubt, though not possessing
+his great wealth, were his social equals,--Bennet and my editor,--had
+not thought me beneath them. I puzzled and tortured myself over it, but
+I could find no answer.
+
+No one could deny that I was a clever girl. I was not the genius
+O'Brien and perhaps Roger believed, but I certainly was above the
+average girl in intelligence. Not many girls of eighteen are writing
+stories and having them accepted by the magazines. And yet, queerly
+enough, beyond my one precocious talent, I was in many ways peculiarly
+gullible and stupid. Why, the girls at the Y. W. C. A. teased me in all
+sorts of ways because of this, and Estelle used to say a blind beggar
+could sell me a gold brick at any street corner, and I would believe
+every word he said. This peculiar streak of credulousness in me was, I
+suppose, the reason I never found out anything about Mr. Hamilton.
+
+He never talked to me about his business or home affairs. I knew he
+was president of half a dozen big firms, because I saw his name on
+stationery. Sometimes he talked to me about his horses and dogs,--he
+had many of these,--but he always said my little dog Verley, which
+he had never given back to me, and which was not, after all, a
+thoroughbred, was his inseparable companion. Even Mrs. Kingston and
+Mama Owens and Lolly knew more about this man than I did.
+
+Love, it seems, is not only blind, but deaf, dumb, and paralyzed. I
+heard nothing, I knew nothing, and, what is more, I would have believed
+nothing that was not good of him. Surely a faith like that is deserving
+of some reward!
+
+There is an adage of my mother's land something like this, "Our actions
+are followed by their consequences as surely as a body by its shadow."
+That proverb recurred to me in the days that followed.
+
+The morning after Roger went, our bell rang before I was up. Our
+servant "slept out," and had not yet arrived. So Margaret went down,
+grumbling about the girl, supposing she had lost her key. As I didn't
+have to be at my office till ten, and as I had been up late, I turned
+over to go to sleep again, when I heard Margaret at my door. She came
+in in her bath-robe. She said Mr. Butler was down-stairs, and wanted to
+see me at once.
+
+I don't know what I thought. I know I felt panic-stricken and afraid.
+Roger had sent my note to Bob by messenger the previous evening, so he
+had had it over night. I slipped on a dressing-gown quickly and went
+down-stairs.
+
+Butler was sitting stiffly in the middle of the reception-hall, and as
+I came down he stood up, though he did not touch the hand I held out to
+him. He said abruptly:
+
+"What did you do to Bennet?"
+
+I felt like an overtaken criminal. I could not say a word. I could not
+look at the face of Bennet's friend. He said:
+
+"Bob had a dinner engagement with me at a friend's house last night.
+He didn't turn up. I feared something was wrong. In fact, I've feared
+for Bob ever since he became infatuated with you." Butler did not mince
+his words; he just stabbed me with them. "He has been walking about the
+city like a madman all night long. What did you do to him?"
+
+"Oh, George," I said falteringly, "I had to break it off."
+
+As if distinctly to cut me for calling him "George" (I had always
+called him that), he addressed me as "Miss Ascough."
+
+"Miss Ascough, were you ever really engaged to Bennet?"
+
+He asked that as if the thought of it was something not at all to his
+liking. I nodded.
+
+"And you broke it off, you say?"
+
+Again I nodded.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I didn't love him," I said truthfully.
+
+I was so nervous and conscience-smitten and unhappy, and the room was
+so cold, that I was seized with a shivering fit, and could hardly keep
+my teeth from chattering; but Butler did not seem at all moved by my
+condition.
+
+"May I ask if you were 'in love,' as you call it, with him when you
+accepted him?"
+
+I shook my head. I could not trust myself to speak.
+
+"Why did you accept him, then?"
+
+"He had been good to me," I faltered.
+
+"Oh, I see. It was his reward, eh?" He sneered in my face. "I came
+here," he said, "with some idea of patching up things. I wanted to help
+Bennet. He's in a bad way."
+
+What could I say? After a while he said:
+
+"Will you go back with me? I have him at our rooms."
+
+"It would do no good."
+
+"You mean you could not be made to reconsider the thing? You may be
+mistaken. You may care for him, after all. There are few like him, I
+assure you. You're dead lucky to have a man like poor Bennet care for
+you. He's of the salt of the earth."
+
+"I know; but--I can't deceive him any longer. I'm--in love--with
+another man."
+
+There was a long silence after that, Butler just staring at me. Then he
+asked:
+
+"Been in love long?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Before you met Bennet?"
+
+Again I nodded.
+
+He laughed bitterly.
+
+"Personally I suspected you from the first. I had an intuitive feeling
+that there was something under cover about you. I never could see what
+Bennet saw in you. He was head and shoulders above you in every way.
+You're not in his class at all. I don't mean that in the cheap social
+sense--simply morally. Bennet's been my friend for years. I know him.
+There's no one like him. It's damned hard luck, I can tell you, for me
+to see him come up against a proposition like you. According to your
+own story, you must have deceived him from the first. Women like you--"
+
+He stopped there, for I was crying so bitterly that mama came in to see
+what the trouble was. Margaret was listening all the time at the head
+of the stairs. Butler then just clapped his hat on his head, picked up
+his stick, and went.
+
+And that was the opinion of me of one of the brightest men in the
+United States, a man who subsequently became internationally famous.
+Nothing could have equaled the contempt of his looks or his cutting
+words. He had stripped me bare. For one startling moment the scales
+dropped from my eyes. I _saw_ myself! And I shrank before what I
+saw--shrank as only a weak coward can.
+
+O'Brien had called me a "dead-game sport"; Roger once said I was a
+"mongrel by blood, but a thoroughbred by instinct"; Lolly had called me
+a "snake"; but George Butler, that keen-sighted, clear-headed man, knew
+me for something to be despised! What did I think of myself? Like every
+one else, I was capable of staring wide-eyed at my own shortcomings
+only for a little while, and then, like every one else, I charitably
+and hastily and in fear drew the curtains before me, and tried to hide
+myself behind them.
+
+I pitied Bennet, whom I had hurt; but I had a vaster pity for myself,
+whom Roger had hurt.
+
+Perhaps it will not be out of place for me to say here that Bennet
+achieved all that I tried to do. Such fame (if fame I may call it) as
+came to me later was not of a solid or enduring kind. My work showed
+always the effect of my life--my lack of training, my poor preparation
+for the business of writing, my dense ignorance. I can truly say of my
+novels that they are strangely like myself, unfulfilled promises. But
+Bennet! He climbed to the top despite me, and there he will always be.
+
+It may well be believed that the days that followed were unhappy ones
+for me. Not only had I lost my two best friends, Bennet and Lolly, but
+Roger had disappeared, as it were, completely from my life.
+
+I went to Mr. Townsend's office, as he had told me to do, but I did not
+accept the "arrangements" that Roger had made for me, and this despite
+the very earnest exhortations of his lawyer. I did not want, and I
+would not touch, the money that Roger had directed should be put in
+banks for me. He ought to have known I would not do that.
+
+All day long my face burned. Something within me, too, was burning
+like a wild-fire. A thousand thoughts and ideas came rushing upon me.
+Everything that Roger had ever done for or said to me recurred to my
+mind, and jumbled with these thoughts came others of Bennet.
+
+His was the most honest heart in the world. The little he had done for
+me had all been open and above board. He had not even declared his love
+for me until the day I was out of his debt, and free, therefore, to
+give him an honest answer.
+
+But Roger! When I would not take what he tried to force upon me, he had
+found tricky channels through which they would fall upon me, anyway,
+and then had taunted me with their possession!
+
+When I got home from work that night I asked Margaret if she knew that
+Roger had been paying for most of my clothes. She answered, with a
+chuckle:
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"What made you think that?" I asked.
+
+"Because no girl working as you are could afford such things. That
+Paquin gown alone is easily worth two hundred dollars, if not more."
+
+"I paid twenty for it," I said.
+
+She laughed. I told her about the shop where there were "bargains," and
+she, as Lolly had done, laughed in my face.
+
+"No shop," she said, "could give you a bargain in sables such as you
+have."
+
+I had a brown fur set. I did not know they were sables. I had been less
+than a year in America. I was just eighteen. I came from a large, poor
+family. I did not know the value of clothes or jewels any more than
+poor, green Irish or Polish immigrant girls would know it in that time.
+What could I know of sables?
+
+We lived very quietly now. I had to stay at home, as I had promised
+Roger to go out with no one till he returned. And then, of course,
+Bennet and Butler no longer came, and I abandoned my music lessons. I
+had never taken more than a half-hearted interest in them.
+
+A restless spirit possessed me at this time, and I could not settle
+my mind to anything. I used to wander about Roger's rooms, with my
+thoughts disjointed and jumbled. I thought I was brooding over his
+absence, and then again I thought I was worrying about Bob. Then one
+day as I stood staring into the leaping flames of that fireplace,
+almost like an inspiration there came to me a great idea for a story.
+
+For an hour I sat staring into the flames, the story slowly taking root
+in my mind, and the fascinating plot and characters unraveling before
+me. It was ten o'clock at night when I began to write, and I worked
+without stopping till the dawn.
+
+That was how I began to write my first novel. I lived now with only one
+avid thought in my mind--the story I was writing. It infatuated me as
+nothing I had ever done before had infatuated me.
+
+I resigned my position, and took a half-day place. I had a little over
+a hundred dollars saved, and the new position paid me seven dollars a
+week. As I supplied my own type-writer, I had the privilege of taking
+outside work in the afternoons.
+
+I think Mr. Forman was really relieved when I told him I had decided to
+go, though he asked me anxiously whether I had consulted Mr. Hamilton
+about it. I said that I had written and told him. I had done my work
+there adequately (he gave me an excellent reference), but he had
+dismissed a faithful secretary, to whom he was attached, to make a
+place for me at Mr. Hamilton's request. I never knew this when I took
+that position, else I would not have taken it.
+
+I left because of what Roger had said, for one thing. I preferred not
+to be under obligations to him for my position. Besides, I wanted a
+little more time in which to write my novel. The seven a week just paid
+for my board, and I had enough saved to carry me along otherwise.
+
+My new position was in a school, a sort of dramatic school where
+calisthenics, fencing, and other things were also taught. I had a
+chance to see something of the young men and women who were studying
+there, mostly of wealthy families. The courses were very expensive. A
+great many Chicago society women took fencing lessons there, and one
+of them was kind enough to offer to pay for lessons for me. I would
+have liked to learn, but I could not afford the time. Every minute
+that I had away from the school I gave to my precious novel. I used
+to get home about two. I'd have a glass of milk and a cracker for my
+luncheon, and then I would write until six. Then came dinner, and then
+again I wrote, sometimes till as late as midnight. I wrote my novel in
+twenty-two days. It is impossible for me to describe my delight and
+satisfaction when I put the last word to my manuscript.
+
+Then for a long time I sat by the fire and re-read my story, and it
+seemed to me I had created a treasure. Roger, who professed to know
+something about palmistry, had averred there was a gold-mine in my
+hand, and he said that it was he who was going to put it there; but
+when I read my story that night I had a prophetic feeling that my mine
+would be of my own creating.
+
+I now had to revise and type-write my story, no light task.
+
+Outside of the work I did for the school, I had secured bits of
+copying for a few people in the building; but I had made very little
+above my salary. The head of the school was an imposing and majestic
+woman of about fifty, very handsome and charming and gracious in her
+manner, though I always resented the difference between her tone to
+me and that she assumed to her pupils and the people who frequented
+her studios--she called them studios. She had a little salon in a way.
+Nearly all Chicago's important people, and especially the celebrities,
+came to her "afternoons." I had a chance to see authors who had
+"arrived."
+
+There was one very tall woman who wore glasses and talked through her
+nose. She was very well known at that time, having had a witty serial
+published in the very magazine that bought my first little story.
+She was much sought after, and was suffering from a bad case of what
+O'Brien always called "the big head." She looked and talked as if she
+were a personage of great superiority, and her sharp retorts and witty
+comments, always a bit malicious, were quoted everywhere in Chicago. I
+think she believed me to be one of her many silent admirers. I was not.
+I knew that when one has reached a stage of complete satisfaction with
+oneself, one has reached one's limitation. Chicago's popular writer at
+the zenith of her fame was not to me a particularly attractive object.
+
+Then there was a celebrated Western author who was a giant in size
+and a giant in heart. I secretly adored him both as a writer and as a
+man. He wore his straight hair rather long, and though his face was
+becoming florid and full, he had a fine, almost Indian-like, profile.
+He was tremendously popular in Chicago, and Mrs. Martin, my employer,
+flattered and courted him despite his careless and rather grimy clothes
+and utterly unmanicured nails. Behold the measure of my sophistication!
+I who knew not the meaning of the word "manicure" less than a year
+before, took pride in my own shining nails now, and remarked the
+condition of those of a great author!
+
+There was another less famous, but more exclusive, author who
+fascinated me chiefly because he had a glass eye. I had never before
+seen a glass eye.
+
+I have mentioned the authors because they interested me more than
+the artists, sculptors, musicians, and actors and actresses who also
+came to these studios where I worked. The building itself was full of
+artists' studios.
+
+Do not think of me as being one of this distinguished "set." I was,
+in fact, simply on the outskirts, a rather wistful, perhaps envious,
+and sometimes amused observer of these great people who had obviously
+"arrived."
+
+Few of these celebrities noticed me. Several of the artists asked me to
+pose for them. I did not pose, because I had no time. I did go up to
+the studio of a hunchback artist who painted divinely and had a pretty
+wife and an adorable baby. I became very friendly with that lovely
+family, and even shyly confessed to them that I wrote. Just fancy!
+I, who only a few months before had forced every one to listen to my
+poems, now when I was in contact with people who did the very things I
+wished to do, experienced a panic at the thought of their finding out
+about it or of revealing myself to them!
+
+Even Mrs. Martin never suspected me. I was simply a stenographer who
+had come to her from a mercantile firm. The only thing about me that
+ever appealed to her was my looks. Think of that! She said to me one
+day as I was going out:
+
+"Miss Ascough, you look like a poster girl. Where did you get your hat?"
+
+I told her, and she raised her eyebrows.
+
+"Well," she said, studying me through her lorgnon, "your hair looks
+astonishingly well against that silver fur. Have you ever thought of
+going on the stage?"
+
+I replied that I had not.
+
+She regarded me speculatively a moment, and then said:
+
+"There are worse-looking girls than you in the choruses."
+
+I told her I could sing a little. Whereupon she said:
+
+"Oh, I don't mean sing or act. However, you'd better stick to what
+you're doing until my season closes, and then, if you're a good
+girl"--she smiled very graciously--"I'll see what I can do for you."
+
+Her season ended in June. You perceive I had something to look forward
+to!
+
+And now I come to the author who was the cause of my discharge from
+this place.
+
+Mrs. Martin herself had brought him to my desk and introduced him to
+me. He had with him a thick manuscript when he asked me, with a very
+charming smile, if I would type-write for him. You may be sure I was
+glad to get this extra work, as my funds were running low. So I put
+aside the copying of my own novel, and went hard to work upon the play
+of this Chicago author. It was a closely written manuscript, a play
+in six acts. He required eight copies, only four of which were to be
+carbons. In order to get the work done as soon as possible and resume
+the copying of my own story, I went down to the office three nights and
+worked till eleven.
+
+As I have said, there were six acts, and each was of forty pages. So,
+you see, it was a fairly big manuscript. A public stenographer would
+have charged at the rate of five cents a folio,--that is, one hundred
+words,--and there were about two hundred and eighty words to a page.
+She would also have charged about two cents a page for the carbon
+copies. I made out my bill for five cents a page, and did not charge
+for the carbon copies.
+
+The author had been coming every day and going over the work as I did
+it, and he had me not only bind his play, but rule parts of it in red
+ink--the descriptive parts. I felt mightily pleased when I handed him
+the completed manuscript. Rather apologetically I proffered him my bill.
+
+He took the latter, and looked at it as if much surprised and pained,
+and then said:
+
+"Why, Miss Ascough, I brought this to you as a friend of Mrs. Martin."
+
+I said:
+
+"Yes, that's why I did not charge for the carbons, and made you just a
+half-rate."
+
+"There seems to be some mistake," he replied. "I understood from Mrs.
+Martin that you would do this work just as if it were for her."
+
+"Do you mean," I said, "for nothing?"
+
+He made a gesture with his hands, as much as to say, "Don't put it so
+baldly."
+
+I stared at him. I could not believe that any one would be mean enough
+to let me do all that work for nothing. He was a greatly admired
+author. His play seemed, in my youthful judgment, a fine thing, and yet
+was it possible that he would impose upon a poor working-girl? Could
+he really believe that I, who was being paid only seven dollars a week
+for my morning services, would have worked afternoons and evenings to
+type-write his play without charge?
+
+He put his play in a large envelop, and then he said:
+
+"I appreciate very much what you have done, and I am pleased with your
+work. I shall make a point of recommending you to friends of mine." He
+cleared his throat. "I've also brought you a little present in token of
+my appreciation." He took from his coat pocket a book, one of his own.
+"It's autographed," he said, smiling, and gave it to me.
+
+I held his book with a thumb and forefinger, as if it were something
+unclean, and then I deliberately dropped it into the waste-paper-basket.
+
+He turned violently red and walked into Mrs. Martin's studio.
+
+I had started in aimlessly to change the ribbon,--I had worn out one
+for his play,--when Mrs. Martin sailed majestically from her room and
+up to my desk.
+
+"Miss Ascough," she said, "I won't require your services any further.
+You may leave at once."
+
+I shrugged my shoulders, sneered, and laughed right up in her face, as
+if the loss of such a job as that was a matter of supreme indifference
+to me. She became as red as her friend, and walked haughtily back to
+her private quarters.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+I carried my machine home. Machines are heavy things. A sort of rainy
+snow was falling, and though it was only four in the afternoon, it was
+beginning to grow dark. The streets were in a bad state with slush and
+mud and ice, and I got very wet on my way to the car, for I couldn't
+put up an umbrella, as I had to carry my machine under one arm and my
+manuscript under the other.
+
+As soon as I walked into our house, Margaret called out from the
+dining-room:
+
+"Mr. Hamilton is here." Then he got up--he was having tea with
+them--and came over to me. I had the type-writer in my hand, and I
+don't know whether I dropped it or set it down on the floor.
+
+I hadn't had any luncheon, I was soaked through. I had worked for weeks
+on my novel, and, besides the office work, I had type-written that
+long play. I had been working day and night, and I had been insulted
+and discharged. I was tired out, cold, and wet. Add to this the sudden
+shock of seeing Mr. Hamilton, and you will understand why even a
+healthy girl of eighteen may sometimes faint.
+
+It was only a little faint, and I came to while Roger was carrying me
+up-stairs; but I did not move, for his face was against mine.
+
+Mama had come up with us, and when Roger set me on the couch, she
+said she'd take charge of me. She told him to go down-stairs and have
+Margaret make me a toddy, and to bring it up on a tray with my dinner.
+I felt like a big baby to have her fussing over me and taking off all
+my wet things. I had a lovely pink eider-down dressing-gown that she
+had made me, and she forced me to get into that and into dry stockings
+and slippers.
+
+By this time Roger and Margaret came up with the tray, and all three
+were doing things for me. Roger himself mixed me a drink. It was hot,
+with brandy and lemon in it. As soon as I drank it, it went right to my
+head, for I had eaten nothing since morning, and I tried to tell them
+about Mrs. Martin's discharging me, and how that author had not paid me
+for all my work.
+
+Cloudy as my head was and stumblingly as I talked, I won their
+sympathies. Roger said that the author was a mean little sneak, a
+cursed small cur, and that he'd like to kick him all over the town.
+
+Then, because I started to cry, they tried to make me eat something and
+drink some coffee; but I was so sleepy I could not keep my eyes open.
+The first thing I knew, I was in my bed.
+
+I slept and slept; I slept till ten o'clock the next day. The first
+thought I had was that Roger must have gone. I never dressed so
+quickly, and I ran to his room and knocked; but he was not there.
+
+Margaret also had departed for work, but I found mama in the kitchen.
+She was making me an oyster stew, a thing for which I had acquired a
+liking. As soon as I appeared, she cried:
+
+"You bad girl, what did you get up for? Here's a note for you."
+
+With hands trembling with excitement, I read Roger's first letter to
+me. It was like him, those two brief, laconic sentences:
+
+
+     Back by noon. Stay in bed.
+
+     ROGER.
+
+
+Stay in bed! I never felt better in my life. I had my stew, and then I
+went up-stairs and finished copying my novel.
+
+At noon to the minute Roger returned. He had all sorts of things for
+me: flowers,--orchids, mind you!--squab, fruit, jelly, and magazines.
+One would think I was an invalid, and I had to laugh at his look
+of disapproval when he discovered me busy at work. He said I was
+incorrigible.
+
+He made no effort that day to conceal his feelings from me. It was not
+that he petted or caressed me; but he fussed over me all day, kept
+me right by the fire, and brought up my luncheon to me, as he said
+the lower floor was draughty. He kept feeling my head to see if I was
+feverish. I think I gave him a good fright the night before. He said
+he ought to have returned to Richmond the previous night, as there was
+important business there that needed his attention. He'd been obliged
+to keep the wires scorching all the morning. He would have to get away
+that night, however; but he wanted to make absolutely certain that I
+had recovered.
+
+He said that he had been obliged to hasten his return, neglecting
+certain business in Europe, because I had not written to him as
+I promised to do. I did write him once, but the letter must have
+miscarried. However, he was not in a scolding mood that day, and every
+minute I thought he was going to pick me up in his arms.
+
+He wanted to know if I had missed him, and I tried to pretend that I
+hadn't, that I had been absorbed in my writing. He looked so solemn
+over that and so far, far away from me that I wanted instantly to put
+my arms about his neck, and I debated with myself how I could reach
+him. I pulled up the stool in front of him, stood on it, and in that
+way reached his face. I gave him a quick kiss, and then jumped down. I
+thought he would laugh at that, but he didn't. I did though; but while
+I was laughing I suddenly thought of something that frightened me,
+and I asked him if he had had a fine time in Europe, and added that I
+supposed he had seen many lovely women.
+
+I had a vague idea that France was simply brimming with fascinating,
+irresistible, and beautiful sirens whom no man could possibly resist,
+and the thought that Roger had been there made my heart almost stop
+beating; but not for long, for he said very gravely:
+
+"I never noticed anything nor any one. My mind was engrossed with one
+thought only--my _own_ little girl in Chicago."
+
+Then he asked me if I realized that he had spent fewer than ten days in
+Europe, and that he had come here to me before even going to his home.
+
+"Goodness!" I said slyly, "you _are_ interested in me, aren't you?"
+
+He looked at me queerly then, and he said:
+
+"Nora, I'm 'dippy' about you."
+
+"Is that slang for love, Roger?" I asked, which made him laugh, and
+then he tried to frown at me; but he could not. So he changed the
+subject abruptly, and made me tell him about all the things that had
+happened to me while he was away.
+
+He said I was a "precious angel" for giving up Bennet, and that Butler
+was a "conceited pup," and I was a "little idiot" to mind anything
+he said. He wished _he_ had been there. He said Mrs. Martin was a
+sycophant and a kowtowing old snob, and that he knew her well; and as
+for my going on the stage! One would think I was considering jumping
+off the face of the earth.
+
+I told him he was pretty nearly as bad as the little Japanese, and he
+laughed and said:
+
+"That Jap's all right. By George! I like his idea. It would give me
+peculiar satisfaction to wring the necks of one or two people we know,"
+and he clapped his fist into his hand.
+
+I said mischievously:
+
+"Well, you know that Jap hated those enemies of mine because he loved
+me."
+
+Roger chuckled, and said I might sit on that stool and hint till
+doomsday, but he was not going to tell me he loved me till he was good
+and ready.
+
+"When will that be?" I asked, and he said solemnly, with mock gravity:
+
+
+     "'I'm sure I don't know,'
+     Said the great bell of Bow."
+
+
+"My father always said that there was no time like the present," I
+replied.
+
+He laughed, but said seriously:
+
+"Nora, if you play with fire, you'll be burned. Burns leave scars.
+Scars are ugly things, and I love only pretty things, like my precious
+little girl."
+
+"Aha!" I said triumphantly, "then you admit it at last."
+
+He burst out laughing and said:
+
+"Trapped! Help!"
+
+After a while he wanted to hear my novel. So then I read it to him, my
+beautiful story.
+
+I read it well, as only an author can read his own work--not well in
+the sense of elocution, but with every important point brought out.
+It took me two and a half hours to read it, and when I was through,
+twilight had settled. I had read the last words chiefly by the light
+of the blazing fire. Roger got up, and walked up and down the room. I
+watched him from my seat on the stool by the fire. Then he suddenly
+came back to me, seized my manuscript, and made a motion as if he would
+consign it to the flames. At that I screamed, like an outraged mother,
+and caught at it, and he stood towering over me, watching me curiously.
+
+"I wanted to try you then, Nora," he said. "Now I know that I have a
+bigger rival in your work than any man. What am I to do?"
+
+I held my novel out to him.
+
+"Burn it if you wish to, then. It represents only the product of my
+fancy; but _you_ are my life," I said.
+
+"Do you mean that?" he asked me, and I replied:
+
+"Oh, yes, I do, I do."
+
+"If I asked you to give up your writing, as I asked you to give up
+Bennet, would you do it for me?"
+
+"Yes, everything and every one, Roger," I replied, "if only you will
+love me. Won't you?" In a voice full of emotion, he then said:
+
+"Can you doubt it?"
+
+A moment later he seemed to regret having revealed himself like that,
+and he swiftly made ready to go. He was taking an early train for
+Richmond. His man was waiting for him at some hotel. I wanted to go
+down to the door with him, but he would not let me, and we said good-by
+before mama, who had come up to say dinner was ready. He didn't kiss
+me, but I kissed him right before mama, on his hand and sleeve. If I
+could have reached his face, I would have kissed him there. He kept
+smoothing my hair. He said he would be back very soon, that he would
+never stay away from me long now.
+
+I watched him from the window. The rain of the previous day had frozen
+on the trees, and everything was glistening and slippery. A wind was
+coming from the north, and the people went along the street as if blown
+against their will.
+
+Roger looked up before getting into the cab and waved to me at the
+window, and I thought, as once before I had thought, as I watched his
+carriage disappear, that perhaps it would always be like this. He would
+always go. Would there ever come a day when he would not come again?
+
+That was on the twenty-sixth of February. He could not have stayed in
+Richmond more than a few hours, for at ten o'clock the following night
+he came back to me.
+
+I was running over some new pieces at the piano when I heard the bell
+ring; but I had no idea it was he until he came into the room without
+knocking. There was something about his whole appearance and attitude
+that startled me. His face had a grayish, haggard look, as if he had
+not slept. I ran up to him, but he held me back and began to speak
+rapidly:
+
+"Nora, I've only a few minutes in Chicago. I must catch the 11:09
+back to Richmond. It's after ten now. My cab's at the door. This is
+what I've come for. I want you to go to-morrow, on as early a train as
+you can get, to a little hunting-lodge of mine in the Wisconsin woods.
+Holmes [his valet] will come and take you, and I want you to stay there
+for a week or ten days."
+
+The oddness of his request naturally puzzled me, and of course I
+exclaimed about it, and wanted to know why he wished me to go there. He
+said irritably:
+
+"What does it matter why? I want you to go. I insist upon it, in fact."
+
+"But what will I do up there?" I asked.
+
+"Anything you wish. Write, if you like. I've a man and woman there.
+You'll not be entirely alone. The change will do you good."
+
+"Aren't you going to be there, too?"
+
+"I'm afraid not. I'll try to get there for the weekend if I possibly
+can."
+
+"But I don't want to go to a place all alone, Roger."
+
+"I tell you, you won't be alone. I have a man and a woman there, and
+Holmes will take you."
+
+"But I don't see the sense in going away out there in the middle of
+winter."
+
+"I particularly want you to go. Are my wishes nothing to you, then? I
+want you out of Chicago for a few days. You've not been well and--"
+
+"I never felt better in my life."
+
+"Nora, I want you to go. You must go. Do this thing to please me."
+
+As, puzzled, I still hesitated, he began to promise that he would
+join me there the next day, and when I still did not assent, he tried
+coaxing me in another way. He said he'd bring Verley and a hunting-dog,
+and he'd teach me how to ride horseback and to shoot. He had horses,
+too, somewhere near there; a big stock farm, I think. I told him I
+didn't want to shoot or kill things.
+
+By this time he had worked himself up to a state of exasperation at my
+stubbornness, and his request really seemed to me so ridiculous and
+capricious that I began to laugh at him, saying jokingly:
+
+"You're worse than a dog in a manger: you're a Turk. You want to shut
+me up in a box."
+
+"That's true enough," he replied. "I wish I'd done it long ago."
+
+He was standing very tall and stiff by the door, with his coat still
+on, and his arms folded grimly across his breast. I looked at him, and
+a half-mischievous, half-tender impulse overwhelmed me. I went closer
+to him, and put my hands on his folded arms as I said:
+
+"I'll go, Roger, if you'll take me in your arms and kiss me."
+
+He gave me _such_ a look at that, and then his face broke, and he
+opened his arms. I went into them. I don't know how long I was in his
+arms. I never wanted to leave them again.
+
+I presently heard his voice, low and husky, and felt he was trying to
+release himself from my hands. He said:
+
+"I must go. I'll miss my train."
+
+"O Roger, please don't leave me now!" I begged.
+
+"I must," he replied, and then he went quickly out of the room. I
+followed him into the hall, though he was striding along so swiftly I
+could not keep pace with him. Just where the stairs began, I caught at
+his arm and held him.
+
+"O Roger, you do love me, don't you?" I asked sobbingly, and he said
+hoarsely:
+
+"Yes, I _do_."
+
+Then he went down the stairs, and I after him. At the door he said I
+must go back; but I was still clinging to his hand, and when he opened
+the door I, too, went out.
+
+Snow was falling densely, and the great north wind had brought on its
+wing a blizzard and storm such as Chicago had seldom known; but Roger
+and I, in that porch, saw nothing but each other.
+
+He kept urging me to go in, saying I would catch my death of cold, and
+stooping down, and without my asking him this time, he took me in his
+arms and kissed me again and again.
+
+"I love you, Nora," he said. "You're the only thing in the world I have
+ever loved. I swear that to you, darling."
+
+Then he kissed me again, opened the door, and turned me back.
+
+"Roger, tell me just this, at least," I pleaded. "Is there any other
+woman in your life?"
+
+The question was out now. Like a haunting shadow that I dared not face
+there had always been that horrible thought in my mind, and now for the
+first time I had voiced it. With his arms still about me, looking down
+into my face, he said:
+
+"No; no one that counts. I swear that, too, Nora."
+
+Then I went in. I was like one in a beautiful trance. That room
+seemed to me the loveliest place on earth. Everything about it spoke
+of him. He had chosen the softly tinted Oriental rugs, the fine
+paintings,--there were paintings by great masters there,--my piano, and
+the great long table where I wrote. He had chosen all these things for
+me, and now I knew why he had done it. He loved me; he had said so at
+last.
+
+I went about the room touching everything, and gathering up little
+things of his--papers and books; I went into his bedroom, and found his
+bath-robe. I put it on, and for the first time--though he had said the
+rooms were mine, I had not used them--I threw myself down there in the
+room where he had slept and all night long I lay dreaming of him.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+The next day found Chicago enveloped in one of the worst snow-storms
+that had ever come out of the north. Of course the idea of my going to
+the Wisconsin woods was out of the question. It was impossible even to
+leave the house. All the trains were stalled, and many wires were down.
+I could not have gone, even had I tried. So I was obliged to remain at
+home, and even Holmes did not appear at the house, though he telephoned
+to say he would be up as soon as the storm stopped.
+
+Shut in as we were in a great city caught in the paralyzing grip of a
+snow-storm, I did not come out of my exalted mood of intense happiness.
+All through that long day, when I had nothing to do but to watch the
+blinding snow and the vehicles and people that had dared to venture
+out, I was with Roger, alone, this time, never to be parted again.
+All the barriers were down between us. All we knew was that we loved
+each other. What did anything else matter? My work? Ah, it was a poor,
+feeble little spark that had fluttered out before this vast flame in my
+heart. I had no room, no thought, for anything else.
+
+I loved. I had loved for many months in hunger and work and pain, and
+now at last the gods had rewarded me. My love was returned; Roger
+loved me. That was the most wonderful, the most beautiful, the most
+miraculous thing that had ever occurred in the world.
+
+The telephone was ringing all day, and so was the door-bell. Mama, who
+wandered in and out to chat with me about the storm or other things,
+kept grumbling. She said some one had been trying to get Margaret on
+the long-distance telephone all day, but Margaret had to go out on a
+case. Whoever it was, he would leave no message.
+
+Once I answered the telephone myself, and though the voice sounded as
+if it was far away, I fancied the voice was Roger's. Oh, I had only him
+on my mind! It was some one for Margaret, and when I said:
+
+"I'm Miss Ascough. Can't I take a message?" he replied:
+
+"No," and rang off.
+
+Margaret came in about five, and when we told her about the telephone,
+she seemed much mystified, and called up the information bureau and
+asked who had called her, and the bureau said Richmond had been calling.
+
+Naturally, we were surprised that the calls were really from Richmond,
+and we were sure it must be Roger. Mama said he was probably anxious
+about me, but I could not help wondering why, if it was he on the
+telephone, he had not spoken to me. Margaret said it was probably his
+secretary or a clerk, and when I spoke of the voice, she said all
+Southern voices were alike.
+
+She was called out again as soon as she had changed her clothes; but it
+was only in the neighborhood, and she had only thrown a shawl about her
+and run out, saying I was to take any messages that came.
+
+So when a telegram came, I signed for it, and then, though it was
+addressed to Margaret, I opened and read it, thinking it might be
+important. I couldn't for the life of me understand it, and I handed it
+to mama. She read it, glanced at me, and then said that Margaret would
+probably understand.
+
+It was really from Roger, but why he should telegraph Margaret not to
+let me see some papers, I could not understand. This was the telegram:
+
+
+     On no account let Nora see the papers.
+
+
+While I was puzzling over this, Margaret came in, and I gave her the
+telegram. She took a long time to read it, and then she said carelessly
+that he referred to some papers,--deeds and things like that,--and he
+probably wished to surprise me.
+
+It was a poor sort of explanation, but it satisfied me. I was too far
+up in the clouds to give the matter much thought, so Margaret and mama
+and I had dinner together. I prepared spaghetti, a dish of which they
+were fond, and which I made better than any one else. However, I burned
+the spaghetti,--let it go dry,--and mama said:
+
+"You're a nice cook, with your mind away off in Richmond."
+
+Margaret was in the pantry, but I knew she was listening. I said, after
+giving mama a squeeze for forgiving me about the spaghetti:
+
+"You're going to find out a thing or two about him soon. You don't know
+what a beautiful character he has, and you know very well no man ever
+had a nicer smile than Roger."
+
+Mama nodded, and went on stirring what she was cooking.
+
+"You're a foolish old angel," I went on. "You just don't like him
+because you're fond of me. Well, if it weren't for me, you would like
+him, wouldn't you, Mama?"
+
+She said:
+
+"It may be a case of prejudice, dearie, but he's got to 'show' me
+first, though."
+
+"Oh, he will," I assured her. "You'll see." Then I added: "Anyhow,
+you'll admit that he does care for me, won't you?"
+
+"Any one can see with half an eye that he's head over heels in love
+with you; but--"
+
+Margaret had come out of the pantry, and she banged some things down so
+noisily that we both jumped.
+
+"For heavens' sake! don't talk about that man!" she said.
+
+Then mama and I laughed, and we had dinner. I had been up-stairs only a
+few minutes after dinner when I heard Margaret at the telephone again.
+I went down to learn what the trouble was. As I was going down I heard
+her say:
+
+"It's impossible. A dog couldn't go out in a storm like this." Then
+after a moment, she added, "I said I'd do what I could," and then: "You
+needn't thank me. It's not on your account, d---- you!" She hung up the
+receiver.
+
+"Who was that?" I asked. She answered savagely--she she had never
+spoken so crossly to me before:
+
+"None of your business!" and slammed out into the kitchen.
+
+The storm abated during the night, and by morning it had ceased; but
+the city was still snow-bound, though workers were out all night
+clearing the streets, and an army of snow-shovelers went from house
+to house as soon as daylight came. They began ringing our door-bell
+as early as six o'clock, and that awoke me; so I dressed and went
+down-stairs. Margaret was ahead of me. I went to the porch to get the
+papers, but she was irritable because I opened the door and let in the
+cold. She said she wished to goodness I'd stay in my own room.
+
+At breakfast we were without the papers, and Margaret told mama they
+had not come. The storm had probably prevented their delivery. I said
+I didn't mind running out to the nearest newsstand, but she said:
+
+"For heaven's sake! Nora, find something to amuse yourself with without
+chasing wildly round! Now the storm's over, that man Holmes will be
+here, and you'd better get ready."
+
+So, though I thought we'd have some difficulty in getting a
+train,--none was running on time,--I packed the few things I intended
+to take with me.
+
+If any one sees anything particularly immoral in my calmly preparing
+to go on a trip with this man, I beg him to recall all of my previous
+experiences with him. He had never done anything that caused me to fear
+him, and now he could do nothing that would have been wrong in my eyes.
+
+I was love's passionate pilgrim. I could not look ahead; I turned not a
+glance back; I only thrilled in the warmth of the dear present.
+
+About ten, Holmes arrived. He said we could get a train at eleven and
+one at four. The four o'clock one would be better, as by that time
+the snow would be cleared off; but Mr. Hamilton had telephoned and
+telegraphed instructions that we should take the very first train.
+
+So, then, with my bag packed, I came down-stairs, and went to the
+kitchen to say good-by to Margaret and mama. When I opened the door,
+they sprang apart, and I saw the morning paper in their hands; mama
+was crying. All of a sudden I had a horrible fear that something had
+happened to Roger, and I sprang over and tried to take the paper from
+mama. She tried to put it behind her, and we struggled for the sheet,
+but Margaret cried out:
+
+"For God's sake! let her have it! We may as well end this."
+
+And then I had the paper.
+
+It was on the front page, so important was he, that vile story. I saw
+his face looking up at me from that sheet, and beside him was a woman,
+and under her picture was another woman. The type danced before me, but
+I read on and on and on.
+
+And this was my love, my hero, my god--this married man whose wife
+was divorcing him because of another woman; whose husband in turn had
+divorced her because of him, Roger Avery Hamilton. I read the sordid
+story; I read the woman's tale in court, of his many infidelities,
+which had begun soon after their marriage, of the fast life he had led,
+and of his being named as co-respondent by his best friend in Richmond,
+whose wife had admitted the truth of the charge, and had been cast out
+by her husband.
+
+This wife of his, of whose existence I had never even dreamed, said
+in an interview that although she did not believe in divorce and had
+endured her husband's infidelities for years, she was now setting him
+free for the sake of the other woman, whom he was in honor bound to
+marry. They had all been friends, they were of the same social set,
+and the relations between this woman and Hamilton, his wife declared,
+had existed for three years, and still continued.
+
+If one's body were dead, and the mind still alive, how might that
+vital, mysterious organ find utterance through the paralyzed body? I
+have often wondered. Now I was like one dead. There was no feeling in
+any part of my body but my poor head, and through it surged, oh, such
+a long, long, weird procession of all the scenes of my life since I
+had left my home! It seemed as if every one I had ever known danced
+like fantastic shades across my memory, each one in turn beckoning to
+me or beating me back. And through that throng of faces, blotting out
+the black one of Burbank, the sensual one of Dr. Manning, the kind,
+grotesque face of O'Brien, and the rough, honest mask of Bennet, like
+a snake _his_ bitter face rose, and stared at me with his half-closed,
+cruel eyes.
+
+I was before the fireplace where I had often sat with him. Some one,
+mama or Margaret, had brought me there. They fluttered in and out of
+the room like ghosts, and they spoke to me and cried over me, but I do
+not know what they said. I had lost the power of hearing and of speech.
+I tell you I was dead--dead.
+
+Then that little valet of his came up to the room and asked me if I was
+ready!
+
+"Go away! Go away!" I murmured peevishly when he came around in front
+of me and looked at me curiously. Then Margaret came in and called
+shrilly at him:
+
+"You get out of here--you and your d---- master!"
+
+That commotion, I think, roused me slightly, for I went to my room, and
+I took from my lower drawer all of the foolish little things of his
+that I had collected at various times and treasured. I gathered them up
+in a large newspaper, carried them into his room, and dumped them into
+the fire.
+
+Then I took that newspaper and spread it out on the desk, and I read
+the story all over again, slowly, because my brain worked like a clock
+that has run down and pulls itself to time only in spasmodic jerks. I
+found myself studying the picture of that woman who was not his wife. I
+cared nothing about the wife, but only of that other one, the woman his
+wife said he still loved.
+
+She was all the things that I was not, a statuesque beauty, with a form
+like Juno and a face like that of a great sleepy ox. Beside her, what
+was I? Women like her were the kind men loved. I knew that. Women like
+me merely teased their fancy and curiosity. We were the small tin toys
+with which they paused to play.
+
+I crushed that accursed sheet. No, no, she was not better than I. Strip
+her of her glittering clothes, put her in rags over a wash-tub, and she
+would have been transformed into a common thing. But I? If you put
+_me_ over a wash-tub, I tell you _I_ would have woven a romance, aye,
+from the very suds. God had planted in _me_ the fairy germs; that I
+knew.
+
+But rage! What has it ever done to heal even the slightest hurt or
+wound? Oh, I could tramp up and down, up and down, and wring my hands
+till they were bruised, but, alas! would that bring me any comfort?
+
+I went back to my own room, and I packed not my clothes--those clothes
+he had paid for, but my manuscripts. They at least were all my own.
+They filled my little old black bag--the bag I had brought from Canada.
+
+Margaret came to my door, and when she knocked I controlled my voice
+and said:
+
+"I am busy. Go away."
+
+"O Nora dear, Mr. Hamilton is on the 'phone," she said. "He is calling
+from Richmond. He wants to speak to you, dearie."
+
+"I will never speak to him again," I declared.
+
+"O Nora," she said, "he is coming to you now. He is taking a special
+train. I am sure he can explain everything. He says that he can, dear."
+
+"Everything is explained. I know _now_," I replied. Yes, that was true.
+I did know now.
+
+I went stealing down the stairs on tiptoe. They had relaxed their
+guard, and I had watched for this moment as craftily as only one can
+who is insane, as indeed I was.
+
+Outside the cold wind smote me. Snow was piled high on all sides.
+I passed along through great banks of it, and I climbed over sodden
+drifts and gigantic balls that children had rolled, and with my little
+black bag I went down to the beach. Where it began, I do not know, for
+I thought the white caps on the water, breaking against the shore, were
+great drifts of snow; and I went plodding on and on till I came to the
+water.
+
+A policeman who had spoken to me when I turned down toward the lake
+must have followed me, for suddenly he came behind me and said roughly:
+
+"Now, none of that," and I turned around and looked at him stupidly,
+only half seeing him.
+
+He took me by the arm and led me away, and he asked me what was my
+trouble, and when I did not answer (how could I, who could scarcely
+speak at all?) he said:
+
+"Some fellow ruin you?"
+
+Ruin!
+
+That word has only one meaning when applied to a woman. I had not been
+ruined in the sense that Chicago policeman meant, but, oh, deeper than
+that sort of ruin had been the damnatory effects of the blow that
+he had dealt me! He had destroyed something precious and fine; he
+had crushed my beautiful faith, my ideals, my dreams, my spirit, the
+charming visions that had danced like fairies in my brain. Worse, he
+had ruthlessly destroyed Me! I was dead. This was another person who
+stood there in the snow staring at the waters of Lake Michigan.
+
+Where was the heroic little girl who only a little more than a year
+before, penniless and alone, had fearlessly stepped out into the
+smiling, golden world, and boldly challenged Fate? I was afraid of that
+world now. It was a black, monstrous thing, a thief in the dark that
+had hid to entrap me.
+
+O Roger, Roger! I loved you even as my little dog had loved me. If
+you but glanced in my direction, I was awake, alert. If you smiled at
+me or called my name, my heart leaped within me. I would have kissed
+your hand, your feet; and when you were displeased with me, ah me! how
+miserable I was! There was nothing you touched I did not love. The
+very clothes you wore, the paper you had read and crushed, the most
+insignificant of your personal belongings were sacred to me. I gathered
+them up like precious treasures, and I hoarded them even as a miser
+does his gold. I was to you nothing but a queer little object that
+had caught your weary interest and flattered your vanity. You saw me
+only through the cold eyes of a cynic--a connoisseur, who, seeking for
+something new and rare in woman, had stumbled upon a freak.
+
+The policeman said:
+
+"I could run you in for this, but I'm sorry for you. I guess you went
+'dotty' for a while. Now you go home, and you'll feel better soon."
+
+"I have no home," I said.
+
+"That's tough," he replied. "And you look nothing but a kid. Are you
+broke, too?"
+
+"No," I said, though I really was.
+
+"Have you any friends?"
+
+I thought painfully. Mama and Margaret were my friends, but I could not
+go back there. _He_ was coming by a special train. O'Brien? O'Brien was
+in New York. Bennet? I had stabbed Bennet even as Roger had stabbed me.
+
+Who, then, was there?
+
+Lolly; there was Lolly.
+
+Drifts of feathery snow kept flying down from the housetops as the
+policeman and I passed along, and as icicles came crashing down upon
+the sidewalks he led me out into the middle of the road.
+
+We came to Lolly's door, and the policeman rang the bell. I don't
+know what he said to the woman when she answered the door, but I ran
+by her and up the stairs to Lolly's room, and I knocked twice before
+she answered. I heard her moving inside, and then she opened the door
+and stood there with her blue eyes looking like glass beads, and a
+cigarette stuck out between her fingers. And I said:
+
+"O Lolly! _Lolly!_" She stood aside, and I went in and fell down on my
+knees by the table, and threw out my arms upon it and my head upon them.
+
+I felt her standing silently beside me for a long time, and then her
+hand touched my head, and she did a strange thing: she went down on her
+knees beside me, lifted up my face with her hand, just as Roger used to
+do, and stared at me. Then she threw her arms about me and drew me up
+close, and I knew that at last Lolly had forgiven me.
+
+She could cry, but not I. I had reached that stage where tears are
+beyond us. They precede the rainbow in our lives, and my rainbow had
+been wiped away. I was out in the dark, blindly groping my way, and it
+seemed to me that though there were a thousand doors, they were all
+closed to me.
+
+I was now sitting on a chair opposite Lolly. I had the feeling that I
+was crumpled up, crushed, and beaten. My mind was clear enough. I knew
+what had befallen me, but I could not see beyond the fog.
+
+"I could have told you about him long ago," said Lolly, after a while.
+
+I said mechanically:
+
+"You spared me. I did not you."
+
+"No, you did the right thing," Lolly replied. "If I had told you then
+what I knew--that Hamilton was a married man--I might have saved you
+this."
+
+There was silence between us for a time, and then Lolly said:
+
+"Did you know that Marshall Chambers is married? He married a rich
+society girl--a girl of his own class, Nora."
+
+"Lolly, I don't know what to do. I think I am going to die," I said.
+
+Lolly threw down her cigarette, and came and stood over me.
+
+"Listen to me," she said. "I'll tell you what _you_ are going to do,
+Nora Ascough. You are going to brace up like a man. You're going to be
+a dead-game sport, as O'Brien said you were. _You_ have something to
+_live_ for. You can start all over again. I wish that I could, but _I_
+have cashed _my_ checks all in."
+
+I looked up at her. There was something in her ringing voice that had
+a revivifying effect upon me. It aroused as the bugle that calls a
+soldier to arms.
+
+"What have I to live for that you have not?" I asked her.
+
+"You can _write_," she said. "You have a letter in your pocket
+addressed to posterity. Deliver it, Nora! Deliver it!"
+
+"Tell me how! O Lolly, tell me how!"
+
+"Get away from this city; go to New York. Cut that man out of your
+brain as if he were a malignant cancerous growth. Use the knife of a
+surgeon, and do it yourself. Soldiers have amputated their own legs and
+arms upon the battle-field. You can do the same."
+
+She had worked herself up to a state of excitement, and she had carried
+me along with her. We were both standing up now, our flashing eyes
+meeting. Then I remembered.
+
+"I have no money."
+
+She dipped into her stocking, and brought up a little roll.
+
+"There, take it! I'll not need it where I'm going."
+
+Then I told her I had no clothes, and she filled her suitcase for me.
+
+"Now," she said, "you are all ready. There's a train leaving about
+seven. You'll get to New York to-morrow morning. O'Brien will be there
+to meet you. I'll telegraph to him after I've put you on the train."
+
+"Come with me, Lolly."
+
+"I can't, Nora. I'm going far away."
+
+O Lolly! Lolly! little did I dream how far. Two weeks later, riding
+in an elevated train, I chanced to pick up a newspaper, and there I
+learned of Lolly's suicide. She had shot herself through the heart
+in a Chicago hotel, leaving a "humorous" note to the coroner, giving
+instructions as to her body and "estate."
+
+I was in the Chicago train whirling along at the rate of sixty miles an
+hour. I lay awake in my berth and stared out at a black night; but in
+the sky above I saw a single star. It was bright, alive; and suddenly I
+thought of the Star of Bethlehem, and for the first time in many days,
+like a child, I said my prayers.
+
+
+
+
++-------------------------------------------------+
+|Transcriber's note:                              |
+|                                                 |
+|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.  |
+|                                                 |
++-------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59565 ***