A fleeting, illusory hint of spring appeared for the moment in that street known among all the world's great avenues—the Champs Elysées, the Nevsky Prospect, the Corso, Unter den Linden—as "The Avenue." Its pavements glistened with a slippery coating of mud that had yesterday been snow, its windows blossomed with hothouse daffodils and narcissi, also with flowery hats and airy garments that made the passer-by shiver by their contrast with the cutting March wind. In and out, among automobiles and pedestrians, darted that fearless optimist, the metropolitan sparrow, busy already with straws and twigs for his spring building.
A girl, moving alone and rather wearily among the chattering throng, caught this hint of changing seasons, and a wave of nostalgia passed over her that was like physical illness. A flower-vendor held out a tray of wilted jonquils. She bought a few of them—only a few, because she must needs be careful of her money—and held them to her face hungrily. They brought to her mind gardens where such flowers were already pushing their fat green buds up out of the fragrant earth—Storm garden, Philip's little patch of bloom—encouraged by a breeze that was full of sunlight. She saw the birds that flitted to and fro over those gardens upon their busy errands: sweet-whistling cardinals, bluebirds with rosy breasts, exquisite as butterflies; the flashing circles of white made by mocking-birds' wings as they soar and swoop. The noisy street faded from her eyes and ears, and she moved among the crowd as if she were walking a Kentucky lane, with the March wind in her hair.
So she was not at all surprised to meet a familiar face, and murmured absently, her thoughts on other matters, "That you, Mag?"
Then she came to herself with a start. The woman to whom she had spoken had passed quickly. Jacqueline wheeled in time to catch a glimpse of her in the crowd; a flashily dressed, too-stylish figure, mincing along on very high heels, and dangling in one hand a gilt-mesh bag. The paint that made a mask of her face, the heavy black rimming her eyes, the very perfume that left its trail behind her, told their own story. But the carriage of the head, the free, country-girl's swing of the shoulders, were unmistakable. It was Mag Henderson.
Jacqueline followed her, half running. She had so longed for the sight of a face from home that the thought of losing her seemed unbearable. It did not matter to Kate Kildare's daughter that this was a woman of the streets, a hopeless derelict. She remembered only that she had once been her faithful, devoted ally.
But it mattered to Mag Henderson. Impossible that she had failed to recognize Jacqueline; impossible that she did not hear the clear, ringing voice crying after her, "Mag, wait for me, wait!"
Her cheeks were flushed with something besides rouge, the loose lips trembled. She, too, knew what it was to be hungry for the sight of a face from home.... Perhaps the recording angel put it down to Mag Henderson's account that she did not once hesitate, did not once look back, moving on so rapidly that at last Jacqueline, impeded by the staring throng, breathless, almost weeping in her disappointment, lost sight of her entirely, and gave up the pursuit.
She went her way, with hanging head. "Mother would have caught her," she thought, "or Jemmy. They'd have made her wait!"
For long afterwards she was haunted by that brief glimpse of the creature who a few months before had been as round and sleek and pretty as a petted kitten; the tragic eyes, old for all their feverish brilliance, the soft cheeks already hollow beneath their paint. However unjustly, Mag Henderson came to typify for Jacqueline the spirit of New York.
Her feet were dragging when she reached the respectable, shabby brownstone front that housed her and her ambitions, together with those of some thirty other more or less hopeful aspirants to fame and fortune, who might be heard as she entered amid much clattering of dishes in the basement dining-room.