“You don’t know how you surprise me.” Emily looked thoughtful rather than surprised. “You set me to thinking along a new line. I wonder if I shall ever feel that way?”
“Why, of course. Old age without ties in the new generation is a dismal farce for woman or man. We human beings live looking to the future if we live at all. And unless we have children, we are certain to be alone and facing the past in old age. You’ll change your mind, as I have. Some day you’ll begin to feel the longing for children. It may be irrational, but it’ll be irresistible.”
“Well, I think I’ll wait on your experiment. How I love the trolley cars and the tall buildings—they make one feel what a strong, bold race we are, don’t they? And I’m simply wild to get to the office.”
Emily was assigned to the staff of the Sunday supplements—to read papers and magazines, foreign and domestic, and suggest and occasionally execute features. She liked the work and it left her evenings free; but it was sedentary. This she corrected by walking the three miles from the office to her flat and by swimming at a school in Forty-fourth street three times a week.
She gave much time and thought to her appearance because she was proud of her looks, because they were part of her capital, and because she knew that only by the greatest care could she keep her youth. Joan’s interest in personal appearance, so far as she herself was concerned, ended with seeing to cleanliness and to clothing near enough to the fashion to make her a well-dressed woman. It did not disturb her that her hair was slightly thinner than it used to be, or that there were a few small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. But she was not contemptuous of Emily’s far-sighted precautions. On the contrary, she looked upon them as sensible and would have been worried by any sign of relaxing vigilance. She delighted in Emily’s gowns and in the multitude of trifles—collarettes, pins of different styles, stockings of striking and even startling patterns, shoes and boots of many kinds, ribbons, gloves, etc. etc.—wherewith she made her studied simplicity of dress perfect.
“It’s wonderful,” she said, as she watched Emily unpack. “I don’t see how you ever accumulated so much.”
“Instinct probably,” replied Emily. “I make it a rule never to buy anything I don’t need, and never to need anything I don’t have money to buy.”
They took a flat in Central Park West, near Sixty-sixth street, and Joan insisted upon paying two-thirds of the expenses. Emily yielded, because Joan’s arguments were unanswerable—she did use the flat more, as she not only worked there and received business callers, but also did much entertaining; and she could well afford to bear the larger part of the expense, as her income was about eight thousand a year, and Emily had only three thousand. Joan wished to draw Emily into play-writing, but soon gave it up. She had to admit to herself that Emily was right in thinking she had not the necessary imagination—that her mind was appreciative rather than constructive.
“Don’t think I’m so dreadfully depressed over it,” Emily went on. “It is painful to have limitations as narrow as mine, when one appreciates as keenly as I do. But we can’t all have genius or great talent. Besides, the highest pleasures don’t come through great achievement or great ability.”
“Indeed, they do not.”