“Yes,” she murmured.
“And when you want help come to me, or call for me, and if I were at the ends of the world I’d hear you and come.”
She turned completely away without answering and, opening her door, vanished into her room.
For the next three or four days she looked much the same. Mrs. Garcia, junior, talked about the green wall-paper, and Mrs. Garcia, senior, cooked her Mexican dainties, which were so hot with chilli peppers that only a seasoned throat could swallow them. Mariposa tried to eat and to talk, but both efforts were failures. She was secretly distracted by apprehensions of Essex’s next move. She thought of his face as he had raised his hand to his smitten cheek, and shuddered at the memory. She lived in daily dread of his reappearance. The interview had shattered her nerves, never fully restored from the series of miserable events that had preceded and followed her mother’s death. When she heard the bell ring her heart sprang from her breast to her throat, and a desire to fly and hide from her persecutor seized her and held her quivering and alert.
Barron’s anxiety about her, though not again openly expressed, continued. He was certain that some blow to her peace of mind had been delivered by the man he had seen in the hall. He did not like to question her, or attempt an intrusion into her confidence, but he remembered the few words she had dropped that evening. The man’s name was Essex, and he was a friend of Mrs. Willers’. Barron had known Mrs. Willers for years. He had been a guest in the house during the period of her tenancy, and though he did not see her frequently, had retained an agreeable memory of her and her daughter.
It was therefore with great relief that, a few days after his meeting with Essex, he encountered her in the heart of a gray afternoon crossing Union Square Plaza.
Mrs. Willers was hastening down to The Trumpet office after a morning’s work in her own rooms. Her rouge had been applied with the usual haste, and she was conscious that three buttons on one of her boots were hardly sufficient to retain that necessary article in place. But she felt brisk and light-hearted, confident that the article in her hand was smart and spicy and would lend brightness to her column in The Trumpet.
She greeted Barron with a friendly hail, and they paused for a moment’s chat in the middle of the plaza.
“You’re looking fresh as a summer morning,” said the mining man, whose life, spent searching for the mineral secrets of the Sierra, had not made him conversant with those of complexions like Mrs. Willers’.
“Oh, get out!” said she, greatly pleased; “I’m too old for that sort of taffy. It’s almost Edna’s turn now.”