They turned startled, inquiring, daunting faces upon her. It was the baptism of fire to Lydia. The battle, inevitable for her, had begun. She faced it; she did not take refuge in the safe, silent lie which opened before her, but her courage was a piteous one. In her utter heartsick shrinking from the consequences of her answer she had a premonition of the weakness that was to make the combat so unequal. “It was not Paul,” she said, pale in the doorway; “it was Daniel Rankin.”
BOOK II
IN THE LOCOMOTIVE CAB
CHAPTER XI
WHAT IS BEST FOR LYDIA
The girls who were to be débutantes that season, the “crowd” or (more accurately to quote Madeleine Hollister’s racy characterization) “the gang,” stood before Hallam’s drug store, chattering like a group of bright-colored paroquets. They had finished three or four ice-cream sodas apiece, and now, inimitably unconscious that they were on the street corner, they were “getting up” a matinée party for the performance of the popular actress whom, at that time, it was the fashion for all girls of their age and condition to adore. They had worked themselves up to a state of hysteric excitement over the prospect.
A tall brown-eyed blonde, with the physical development of a woman and the facial expression of a child of twelve, cried out, “I feel as though I should swoon for joy to see that darling way she holds her hands when the leading man’s making love to her—so sort of helpless—like this—”
“Oh, Madeleine, that’s not a bit the way. It’s so!”