She was caressing her hair with the military brushes, not raking it as was her custom.
“‘Let’s walk over,’ I said. ‘I want to stop at a place on the Avenue.’ As we went down Forty-Second Street, I rained a loose line of chatter along. I told you to-day would be my turn to talk. We got to Charlette’s before I had stuck in any background. When I saw the good old grey-silk-curtained windows, I began to get a bit shaky. But I turned to him and said: ‘We got to the end—rather sudden, last night. Men don’t like to work back, but you know—and intimated as much—that women are different that way.’ He opened the door for me, looking sort of at sea, and we came in. ‘All I ask of you,’ I said, ‘is to stand here and watch me.’ ‘The last part is something I can never omit,’ he said.
“You know Charlette’s—never many customers floating around, but oh, how they do bleed ’em when they come! I breezed forward, and the first person I ran into was Fanchon O’Brien. She tucked me into her flesh Georgette waist with a few motherly kisses, and the next minute somebody had passed the glad word and cutters, basters, fitters and designers came out and fell around me. I won’t go into details of Old Home Week at Charlette’s. When I broke away, Phil followed me to the door and on the other side I didn’t give him a chance to speak.
“‘Did you see all the poor little rats hailing me as a kindred soul?’ I said. ‘I worked in that place from twelve years old up, from messenger-girl to designer. I was a poor little rat when I started—but when I finished, I was pretty proud of myself.’ I looked up at him, and he was looking at me, sort of scowling, as if to make everything add up right,—but not one bit changed. ‘I should think you would be proud,’ he said. ‘I am proud of you—I shall be prouder when I can realise it more fully.’ He didn’t say anything till we got over to Hanley’s. Then he took in the name again as we went in. ‘Hanley’s!’ he said. ‘Funny——’ He didn’t say anything more and I let him look at me till we got put in our places by a waiter. Then I said: ‘You’ve forgotten what was to me one of the most important points in the Brushwood Boy. The little kid he met in the theatre who supplied the foundation of his dreams—was the same person as the woman he found. The girl had grown up; but she was the same one; she had been the kid.’
“Joy, he said nothing for two or three minutes steady, till the waiter came and he told him to bring anything, but get out. Then he said—‘I—see now! The valiance and potential beauty I saw in the spirit of the little girl who brought me back to myself—the shining hardness of the cabaret singer, whom I pitied as drawn in and around by her past and inevitable future environment—I discarded that hardness, and all that went with it, and built on the valiance and beauty. And you were discarding and building in reality—as I, with all the idiotic finality of a man, never thought you could!’
“Joy—I didn’t think I’d built. Before—he thought I was worse than I was. Last night, seeing me ooze around his sister’s drawing room, he thought I was better than I am. I began to tell him this, and he stopped me.
“When I first knew you—I knew you were better than I,’ he said. ‘As I see you now, you have all but put yourself beyond me. I have led a life of which I am ashamed; the dusty corners of which no one shall ever know, or try to sweep out. You have led a life of which you can say you are not ashamed; a life of striving against odds, from which you came out on top; a life of which to be proud.
“Joy—I was ashamed at that. For since the war—you know how I’ve been—Building, he thought! When I’d just been growing into the ways of his world. Excitement-Eating! That was the main thing I’d been growing on. I began to tell him—and he wouldn’t let me. ‘What has happened is not mine now. It is for what is to be that I plead. With your future mine, and mine yours, you can help me to forget the years we might not have esteemed so lightly.’”
Jerry had finished, at the same time that she had snapped the last catch together in her green evening gown—the same green sequin affair that she had worn that terrible night they had looked for Sarah. . . .
“Well—and then what happened the rest of the afternoon?” Joy drew out from lungs that had been deserted of breath.