“Come in,” Enid’s contralto voice called impatiently. “Oh, it’s you, darling. How cunning you look! Turn around so I can see how that new bob looks from the back. Oh, charming! Max is a robber, but he does know the art of cutting hair. Isn’t she precious, Linda?”
Sally, dressed in a deceptively simple little frock of dark blue French crepe which half revealed her slender knees, whirled obediently. The heavy, silken masses of her black hair had long since been ruthlessly sacrificed to the shears, and now with the new Parisian cut, later to be the rage in America and known as the “wind-blown bob,” she looked like an impudent little gamin, amazingly pretty and pert.
Her clear white skin contradicted the effect of the impish hair-cut, however, and persisted in making her look appealingly feminine.
“To think she can eat anything she wants and still keep that figure!” Enid exclaimed with humorous envy. “I’d give my soul to be able to eat bread and candy again.” But she looked at her own tiny body, no bigger than an ethereal 12-year-old girl’s and smiled with satisfaction. “What did you want, darling? Linda and I are awfully busy.—Oh, by the way, you mustn’t forget Claire’s tea this afternoon. You’re going to Bobby Proctor’s luncheon at the Ritz, too, aren’t you? Like the social whirl, sweet?”
“It still frightens me a little,” Sally confessed with a slight shiver. “Mother,” she began with a desperate attempt at casualness, “you’re sending David an invitation, aren’t you? You promised, you know—”
Enid frowned and pretended to consult the copy of the long list which she had been checking when Sally interrupted. “Is David Nash’s name on the list, Linda? Never mind. I’ll look for it. And Linda, will you please run down and tell Randall that Mrs. Barrington will be here for luncheon today? He’ll have to have gluten bread for her. Thank you, dear. I don’t know what I should do without you, Linda, you priceless thing!”
When the secretary had left the room, Enid turned to Sally, who was standing beside the desk, twisting her hands nervously. “Darling, I’ve counted so on your not holding me to that foolish promise I made two years ago. You must realize that David—dear and sweet and good as he undoubtedly is—belongs to your past, a past which I want you to forget as completely as if it had never existed.”
Sally opened her lips to speak, but the futility of the retort she was about to make overwhelmed her. How could she forget those twelve lonely, miserable years in a state orphanage? And how could her mother possibly expect her to forget David, who had been her only friend, her “perfect knight” when such dreadful trouble as Enid, in her sheltered life, could hardly imagine, had made her a hunted, terror-stricken fugitive from “justice”? David to whom she was “half married,” David whom she would always love, even if she never saw him again? But she would see him!
“Please don’t get that sulky, stubborn look on your face, Sally!” Enid spoke almost sharply. “I am thinking of David, too. Do you really think it would be fair to him to ask him to come to New York merely for a party, to see the girl he cannot hope to marry make her debut in a society to which he could never belong? Don’t be utterly selfish, darling! Think of me a little, too! David knows—the truth. You must know it would be painful for me to see him, after the story I told you in his presence. I want to forget, Sally, and just be happy, now that I have my daughter with me—” The lovely voice trembled with threatened tears, and the cornflower-blue eyes pleaded almost humbly with implacable sapphire ones.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Sally answered steadily. “But—you promised. I’ve done everything you asked me to do for more than two years. I kept my promise not to write to David, because all the time I was counting on you to keep yours.”