“I want to make this confession,” she insisted, strong in her purpose, yet breaking under womanly weakness. “I must cleanse my soul of—of evil—mustn't I?” her anguished eyes begged comfort of Seraphine.
“You are right, dear child,” the medium answered gently, “but wait a little. Sit over here by me. We have plenty of time.” She took her friend's icy hand in hers and drew her protectingly to a place beside her on the sofa.
“To cheer you up, Pen,” laughed Bobby, “and create a general diversion, I'll tell a story myself—you'll see the kind of confession stuff we generally put over in our little group of unconventional thinkers. Attention, folks! Harken to the Tale of Dora the Dressmaker! Which proves that the way of the transgressor, as observed on Manhattan Island, is not always so darned hard.”
Then she told her story in the most approved Greenwich Village style, with slangy and cynical comments, all of which were received with chortles of satisfaction by the men and with no very severe disapproval by the ladies—except Seraphine.
“Dora was a pretty, frail looking girl—but really as strong as a horse,” began Bobby gleefully, “one of those tall blondes who can pass off for aristocrats without being the real thing. She came from a small Southern town and had married a man who was no good. He drank and chased after women; and, in one of his drunken fits, he was run over on a dark night at the railroad crossing—fortunately.”
Penelope stirred uneasily at the memories in her own life conjured up by this picture.
“Dora had the usual small town collection of wedding cut glass and doilies, which she put away in the attic, after husband's decease; and, with them, she also put away all respect and desire for the married state. She was through with domesticity and all that it represented, and made up her mind to devote the rest of her life to earning as big a salary as she could and having the best time possible.”
The rest of the story was a sordid account of this girl's effort to combine business with pleasure, as men do, and of her startled discovery one day, just at the moment of her greatest success—she had been offered the position of head designer in a wholesale dress house with coveted trips to Europe—that she was about to become a mother.
Penelope sighed wearily as she listened. Could she never escape from this eternal sex theme?
“You see,” Bobby rattled on, “Dora knew she couldn't go to roof gardens and supper parties alone, and she couldn't keep a chap on a string without paying—so she paid. Of course she camouflaged this part of her life very daintily, as she did everything else, but going out evenings was as important to her as her business ambition was.”