Alice halted for a moment, frowning at this signboard as though it were something surprising and distasteful which she had never seen before. Yet it was conspicuous in a busy quarter; she almost always passed it when she came down-town, and never without noticing it. Nor was this the first time she had paused to lift toward it that same glance of vague misgiving.
The building was not what the changeful city defined as a modern one, and the dusty wooden stairway, as seen from the pavement, disappeared upward into a smoky darkness. So would the footsteps of a girl ascending there lead to a hideous obscurity, Alice thought; an obscurity as dreary and as permanent as death. And like dry leaves falling about her she saw her wintry imaginings in the May air: pretty girls turning into withered creatures as they worked at typing-machines; old maids “taking dictation” from men with double chins; Alice saw old maids of a dozen different kinds “taking dictation.” Her mind's eye was crowded with them, as it always was when she passed that stairway entrance; and though they were all different from one another, all of them looked a little like herself.
She hated the place, and yet she seldom hurried by it or averted her eyes. It had an unpleasant fascination for her, and a mysterious reproach, which she did not seek to fathom. She walked on thoughtfully to-day; and when, at the next corner, she turned into the street that led toward home, she was given a surprise. Arthur Russell came rapidly from behind her, lifting his hat as she saw him.
“Are you walking north, Miss Adams?” he asked. “Do you mind if I walk with you?”
She was not delighted, but seemed so. “How charming!” she cried, giving him a little flourish of the shapely hands; and then, because she wondered if he had seen her coming out of the tobacco-shop, she laughed and added, “I've just been on the most ridiculous errand!”
“What was that?”
“To order some cigars for my father. He's been quite ill, poor man, and he's so particular—but what in the world do I know about cigars?”
Russell laughed. “Well, what DO you know about 'em? Did you select by the price?”
“Mercy, no!” she exclaimed, and added, with an afterthought, “Of course he wrote down the name of the kind he wanted and I gave it to the shopman. I could never have pronounced it.”