But out on the stairs she paused. Anger was giving place to fear. It was, first of all, a fear of the other woman dressed like that, and then it was a fear not less agonizing of the loss of her six a week.
Her six a week was all that stood between Jennie and the not very carefully veiled contempt of the family. In the testing to which the past half year had subjected them all, Jennie had not made very good. Six a week had been her measure. For obscure reasons which none of them could fathom, she had proved incapable of really lucrative work. She had tried to get employment with other artists who would leave her free for her hours with Wray, but she had failed. She had failed, too, in stores, factories, offices, and dressmaking establishments. Perhaps they saw she was only half hearted in her attempts; perhaps her air of helplessness told against her. "She was too much like a lady," had been one employer's verdict, and possibly that was true. Whatever the reason, she seemed a creature not primarily meant to work, but to be utilized in some other way. The question was as to that way. "You're splendid to love," little Gladys had whispered one day, when Jennie was crying to herself, and much in her recent experience confirmed this opinion. In her applications for something to do, it had more than once been made plain to her that money could be made by other means than by punching a time clock at seven.
But she couldn't retrace her steps and go back to Wray. She thought of it. She had chosen to descend by the stairs instead of by the lift which served the huge studio building, in order to give herself the chance of changing her mind. She went down a few steps and stood still, then a few more steps and stood still. If it had been only a question of the money she might have swallowed her pride and returned to throw herself at his feet.
But there was the other woman—dressed like that! He had dared to invoke her. Well, let him invoke her. Let him paint her; let him do anything he liked. She, Jennie, would break her heart over it; but it would be easier to break her heart than go back.
And yet not to go back made her feet like lead as she dragged herself down the interminable steps.
[CHAPTER VII]
"Shall I ever go in or out of this door again?"
Jennie lingered on the threshold to ask herself this question, and, as she did so, saw Bob Collingham lift his hat.
For the time being she had forgotten him. That is, she had a way of putting him out of her mind except when, as he expressed it to herself, he came bothering her. Bothering her meant asking her to marry him, which he had done perhaps twenty times. Each time she refused him she considered that it was for good. There was a quality in him that raised her ire—a certainty that, pressed by need, she would one day come to him. That, Jennie said to herself, would be the last thing! She wouldn't do it as long as there was any other possibility on earth. In view, however, of the state of things at home and Wray's cold-bloodedness at the studio it had sometimes seemed to her of late as if earth would not afford her any other possibility.
If she welcomed him now, it was chiefly as a distraction from thoughts which, were she to keep dwelling on them, would drive her mad. Her temperament being naturally happy, anguish was the more anguishing for being so unnatural. The mere necessity of having to strive with Bob called forth in her that spirit of sex-wrestling which was not so much second nature in her as it was first.