It was a small restaurant, very plain but neat, and at this hour of the late afternoon the man from Park row and the woman who had once been the toast of capitals from the Irish Sea to Suez sat across one of its small tables undisturbed by other patrons. Only a waiter stood across the room and a cat rubbed against his ankles.
In her mourning she made a wonderfully appealing picture, as she gazed down at her plate, even though her lowered lashes half-masked the mismated beauty of her eyes. Suffering had laid a veil of transparent pallor over the brilliant vividness of her coloring—a coloring that her lover had once likened to the gorgeousness of the Mosque of Omar. Yet, by this, her beauty was rather enhanced than lessened as though Nature, the master-painter, had retouched a picture already wondrous, softening its colors with a tone more spiritual. Both face and figure had lost something of roundness and the hand that lay on the table was slenderer of finger and wrist, but Mary Burton had not been robbed of her beauty, and when she spoke, very low and hesitantly, one realized that out of her voice no single golden note was missing. She might still be truthfully advertised as one of the world's rare beauties.
"I know," she said softly, "that you make that suggestion in true kindness—and I know how great my need is. If I am to save my mother and father from starvation, I must do something, and yet—" She paused and shuddered. "Maybe it's all foolish and over-fastidious, but your suggestion sets every nerve in me on edge. It's not very different after all from your Sunday editor's suggestion—except in the spirit of its making."
"Still, there is a difference," he assured her. "The footlights are between and they give a sense of separation—and protection. Was Herron—the Sunday man—particularly obnoxious? He's not human, you know—he's just an efficient machine."
The fingers of the hand that lay on the table trembled a little and Mary's eyes as they met his were clouded with distress.
"I hadn't supposed such things could be," she said. "He was very impersonal about it all—and he grew enthusiastic as he outlined what he wanted." Her words came slowly in a detached voice, though as she spoke her delicate features responded to the shiver of disgust that ran through her shoulders and at times her lips quivered. "He wanted me to write it all—telling about every man abroad, especially with a title, who had ever—been nice to me. He wanted pictures of me; all sorts of pictures, in evening-gowns, in polo togs—in bathing-suits. He wanted a chapter on how much my clothes used to cost—all my clothes. He said the women would 'eat that up.'" She stopped and a wan smile crept into her eyes, as she added, "I am using his words, Mr. Smitherton. But I could stand that. I sat through it. I couldn't afford to lose any chance if it was a chance I might decently take. But it was when he wanted his picture, too, Jefferson's—"
She had to stop there for a moment and a mist came to her eyes which she resolutely kept from overflowing in actual tears as she went on. "It was when he wanted me to write down all his words and publish his letters that I realized I couldn't fight even starvation that way."
"The damned brute!" muttered Smitherton. "The unspeakable beast!"
"To do him justice," admitted the girl generously, "I think he forgot, in visualizing those pages which the women would 'eat up,' that it was actually me he was talking to—it was just outlining work to a reporter. He said something about 'sob-stuff,' too. To me, Mr. Smitherton, he spoke of all these terrible, hideous things, that I lie awake remembering, as 'sob-stuff'—and I knew that the worst of them were times that made sobs impossible—when even tears wouldn't come."
"I had no idea it had been that bad." Smitherton's sympathy was genuine and spontaneous.