Part 1 (2/2)

”Ah, monsieur,” lamented the girl, regretfully, ”one cannot live forever. The Lord has allotted a term.”

She took her change, nodded gayly, and departed.

In the street she pa.s.sed unheeded. She was as ignored by the crowd around her as the colorless shadow at her side. Upon a ma.s.sive woman in a feather boa a dozen men gazed with evident desire, and after the sables enveloping the lady of quality the eyes of the boot-black yearned. But the girl moved among them unnoticed--she was insignificant and easily overlooked.

A violet falling upon the pavement from the breast of a woman in front of her, the girl lifted her skirt, and, to avoid crus.h.i.+ng it, made a slight divergence from her path. Then impulsively she turned to rescue it from the cold sidewalk, but in so doing she stumbled against a man whose heel had been its Juggernaut. A tiny blot of purple marked the scene of its destruction.

Over the girl's face a shadow fell; she glanced up and caught the courteous smile of an acquaintance, and the shadow was lifted. But before her upward glance tended earthward it rested upon an overdriven horse standing in the gutter, and the shadow that returned had gathered to itself the force of a rain-cloud.

An impressionable and emotional temperament cast its light and darkness upon her features, as the s.h.i.+fting clouds cast their varying shades upon an evening landscape. With such a face, her moods must be as evanescent as the colors of a kaleidoscope.

As she neared an electric light she slipped the photograph she carried from its envelope, and surveyed it with warming eyes. She spoke in a soft whisper--

”I shall never sing Elsa--never--never! Lehmann is Elsa. But what does it matter? By the time I reach grand opera I shall have dinners--real dinners--with napkins the size of a sheet and vegetables of curious kinds. Then I'll grow fat and become famous. I may even sing Isolde.”

She broke into a regretful little sigh. ”And Alvary will be too old to be my Tristan.”

At the corner of Twenty-third Street she took a cross-town car. It was crowded, and, with half-suppressed disgust, she rested the tips of her fingers upon a leather strap. The gloves covering the fingers were worn and badly mended, but the touch was delicate.

Something graceful and feminine and fragile in her unsteady figure caused half a dozen men to rise hastily, and she accepted a proffered seat with the merest inclination of her head.

With an involuntary coquetry she perceived that, as the newest feminine arrival, she was being stealthily regarded from behind the wall of newspapers skirting the opposite seat. She raised her hand to her loosened hair, half frowned, and glanced at the floor with demure indifference.

Beside her sat an Irishwoman with a heavy basket and a black bruise upon her temple. The girl looked at the woman and the bruise with an expression of repugnance. The repugnance was succeeded by a tidal wave of self-commiseration. She pitied herself that she was forced to make use of public means of conveyance. The onions in the Irishwoman's basket offended her nostrils.

Her gaze returned to her lap. As daintily as she had withdrawn her person from contact with the woman beside her, she withdrew her finely strung senses from contact with the odor of onions and the closeness of the humanity hemming her in.

She sat in disdainful self-absorption. Her sensitive features became impa.s.sive, her head drooped, the green in her eyes faded into gray, and the lashes obscured them. The shadow of her heavy hair rested like a veil upon her face.

When the car reached Ninth Avenue she got out, walked to Thirtieth Street, and crossed westward. Facing her stood the immense and unpicturesque apartment-house known as ”The Gotham”--a monument of human Philistinism and brownstone-finished effrontery. She entered and pa.s.sed through the unventilated hall to the restaurant at the rear.

As she crossed the threshold, a man seated at one of the larger tables looked up.

”My dear girl,” he said, reproachfully, ”lateness for dinner at The Gotham entails serious consequences. We were just planning a search-party.”

His right-hand neighbor spoke warningly. ”Don't believe him, Miss Musin; he refused to get uneasy until he had finished his dinner.”

”When one is empty,” retorted the first, ”one can't get even uneasy.

Anxiety can't be produced from a void.”

The girl nodded good-evening, took her seat, and unfolded her napkin.

The first gentleman pa.s.sed her the b.u.t.ter, the second the water-bottle.

The first was named Nevins. He was fair and pallid, with a long face that would have been round had nature supplied gratification as well as instinct. His shoulders were high and narrow, suggesting the perpetual shrug with which he met his fate. He was starving upon an artistic career. The second gentleman--Mr. Sellars--was sleek and middle-aged.

Providence had intended him for a poet; life had made of him a philosopher--and a plumber. He was still a man of sentiment.

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