Certainly, dear Jessie, if you feel you were in the wrong, you ought to take the first step toward making up. Probably he was tactless in criticizing you, but I am sure he only did it because he had your true interest at heart. So write him a nice letter and be happy together. Your friend Cynthia hopes it will all come out all right, because she has seen other cases like this where false pride caused great suffering. If he is the right man, he will love you all the more after he gets your letter.
Ann sent up her copy to the composing room, and then going to a telephone booth she called up Fawcett and Company and asked for Mr. Caldwell.
“Mr. Caldwell's not here any longer,” said the girl.
“Serves me right,” said Ann to herself. “Can you tell me where I can find him?” she asked, wondering how it was that one so miserable could still speak in such a pleasant and apparently unconcerned tone of voice.
The Fawcett operator switched her to another wire.
“I'm sorry,” said a stenographer, “Mr. Fawcett left here about two weeks ago. He's got a job out of town—in Boston, I think. I can find out for you in the morning if you'll call again.”
“Never mind,” said Ann.
She had a horror of facing Mr. Sikes in her present wretchedness, so before she went home she wrote him a note, resigning her job, and asking permission to leave as soon as possible.
The next day she had to nerve herself to face his protests, and the friendly remarks of all the staff when the news spread. It was a hideous ordeal, but she managed to get through it smiling. But by evening she was inwardly a wreck. In her present mood, she had an instinctive longing to revisit the shabby little restaurant where she and Arthur had spent so many happy hours. She knew it would give her pain; but she felt that pain was what she needed—sharp, clean, insistent pain to ease the oppression and disgust of what she had been through. Remorse, she felt, is surgical in action: it cuts away foul tissues of the mind. She could not, without preparatory discipline, face her mother's outcry at hearing she had given up her job.