And so she couldn't make it. There was nothing to prevent her, though, from endeavoring to discover whether or not Don Carey were guilty. If he were—Clancy would pass that bridge when she came to it.
Meantime, she was supposed to be earning a salary of fifty dollars a week. A few minutes ago, she had told Sally Henderson that she had begun checking up the Carey household effects. She had not meant to deceive her employer. She'd work very hard to make up for the delay that her own affairs had caused.
The Careys' house was not "cluttered up," despite the artistic nature of its mistress. Clancy, who knew what good housekeeping meant—in Zenith, a dusty room means a soiled soul—pursed her lips with admiration as she passed from room to room. Two hours she spent, checking Sophie Carey's list. Then she let herself out of the house, locked the front door carefully behind her, and walked over to Sixth Avenue, into the restaurant where she had met Sophie Carey last Thursday morning.
Only that long ago! It was incredible. Whimsically ordering chicken salad, rolls, tea, and pastry, Clancy considered the past few days. It was the first time that she had been able to dwell upon them with any feeling of humor. Now, her analysis of Spofford's words, more than the words themselves, having given her confidence, she looked backward.
She wondered, had always wondered, exactly what was meant by the statement that certain people had "lived." She knew that many summer visitors from the great cities looked down upon the natives of Zenith and were not chary of their opinions to the effect that people merely existed in Zenith.
Yet she wondered if any of these supercilious ones had "lived" as much as had Clancy Deane in the last week. She doubted it. Life, in the argot of the cosmopolitan, meant more than breathing, eating, drinking, and sleeping. It meant experiencing sensation. Well, she had experienced a-plenty, as a Zenither would have said.
From what had meant wealth to her she had dropped to real poverty, to a bewilderment as to the source of to-morrow's dinner. From the quiet of a country town she had been tossed into a moving maze of metropolitan mystery. She, who had envied boys who dared to raid orchards, jealous of their fearlessness of pursuing farmers, had defied a police force, the press——
And she'd liked it! This was the amazing thing that she discovered about herself. Not once could she remember having regretted her ambitions that had brought her to New York; not a single time had she wished herself back in Zenith. With scandal, jail, even worse, perhaps, waiting her, she'd not weakened.
Once only had she been tempted to flee the city, and then she'd not even thought of going back to Zenith. And she knew perfectly well that had Spofford failed to visit her this morning, and had some super-person guaranteed her against all molestation if she would but return to her Maine home, she would have refused scornfully.
Perhaps, she argued with herself, it was too much to say that she'd enjoyed these experiences, but—she was glad she'd had them. Life hereafter might become a monotonous round of renting furnished apartments and houses; she'd have this week of thrills to look back upon.