“You think I’m changed, don’t you?” she demanded. “Oh! you needn’t trouble to deny it! I am changed. Goodness knows I’ve had enough to change anybody. You didn’t know that I was that dreadful thing—a lady journalist—did you? I am! I’m on the New York Gazette.”
“Good Heavens! You—you don’t mean that you are corresponding for Risdon’s paper. How in the world—”
“That’s what I mean. I’ve been doing it for two years, and working for the Gazette is mighty hard on refinement. I can pretend still if the atmosphere is right. I haven’t forgotten the old airs and graces, and I put them on at times—when I go back to Washington to see dear Aunt Polly or when—well, tonight, for instance, when I had an object. But they don’t fit any more, Mr. Topham; they don’t fit!”
There was a tremble in the girl’s voice that suggested tears and made Topham feel acutely uncomfortable. The darkness hid his distress while he sought unreadily for some response and found none.
Nor did the girl speak again at once. In silence the two walked on through the fragrant night, the massed foliage rising on either side, a network against the sky. Here and there white statues gleamed, ghostly in the darkness, and at long intervals a street lamp cast a circle of yellow light. From off to the right came the noise of running water and the distant creak of oars or of cordage as some huge barge crept slowly along the invisible Spree. Now and then an electric car swept brilliantly along the drive.
At last the girl, with an obvious attempt at flippancy, spoke again.
“The new style comes easy to me,” she said; “so easy that I guess it must be nearer my real self than the older one you used to know. I like it, though I know I ought to be ashamed of it. I look back on the old days as—as a divorceè looks back on her first honeymoon, I suppose—as a mighty pleasant time but not for her any more.”
“But—but why—”
“Don’t you know. Hadn’t you heard about father? Really? Well, he lost his place in the War Department and then the panic came along and took his money; and then his health failed; and it was up to sister Eleanor and poor silly me to look after him and Aunt Polly. There was nobody else to do it, you see. Sister Eleanor got a job as social secretary to one of those wild western senators, but nobody seemed to want yours truly. I couldn’t get a Government post because dad had been in the service so long that he had lost his residence in Kentucky, and of course nobody from the District has a chance for appointment. So at last it came down to a choice between seeing dad and Aunt Polly suffer and becoming a reportress—how I used to loathe them! Mr. McNew liked my style and sent me over to write up Europe six months ago. I’ve lived and dad has had some comforts and I don’t think Europe has suffered much. Anyway, it’s got to take its chance. I made friends with Lady Ellen in England, and she invited me to visit her in Berlin, and here I am. They like me because I am ‘so American’—when I want to be.”
“American! I thought you were very English tonight. You had the accent pat.”