Only once the silence between us was broken. “Down in your luck, kid?” Her grip tightened on my arm. “I’ve been there myself. I know all about it.”
She knew so well, what need had she of answer. The refrain came back to me: “Only themselves understand themselves and the likes of themselves, as souls only understand souls.”
In a darkened side street we paused in front of a brown stone house with shutters drawn.
“Here we are! Now for some grub! I’ll bet a nickel you ain’t ate all day.” She vaulted the rickety stairs two at a time and led the way into her little room. With a gay assertiveness she planted me into her one comfortable chair, attempting no apology for her poverty—a poverty that winked from every corner and could not be concealed. Flinging off her street clothes, she donned a crimson kimono, and rummaged through her soap-box in which her cooking things were kept. She wrung her hands with despair as though she suffered because she couldn’t change herself into food.
Ah! the magic of love! It was only tea and toast and an outer crust of cheese she offered—but she offered it with the bounty of a princess. Only the kind look in her face and the smell of the steaming tray as she handed it to me—and I was filled before I touched the food to my lips. Somehow this woman who had so little had fed me as people with stuffed larders never could.
Under the spell of a hospitality so real that it hurt like divine, beautiful things hurt, I felt ashamed of my hysterical worries. I looked up at her and marvelled. She was so full of God-like grace—and so unconscious of it!
Not until she had tucked the covers warmly around me did I realize that I was occupying the only couch she had.
“But where will you sleep?” I questioned.
A funny little laugh broke from her. “I should worry where I sleep.”
“It’s so snug and comfy,” I yawned, my eyes heavy with fatigue. “It’s good to take from you——”