“Oh, you are really good!—I see it now. You’ve always just pretended to be an impossible person. I believe you’d cry easily.”
“Yes, I cry very easily,” Miriam agreed.
“Have you seen Roberta?” asked Drewena suddenly. “She was asking about you.”
“You mean Roberts? No, I haven’t.”
“Well, she’s in a corner, pouting about something. It’s either you, or Carrie—perhaps even myself. She is in a terrible mood to-night. Please don’t have a scene with her. And please, Miriam, remember, this is a drag. I don’t care how masculine they may seem to you,—call them by their feminine names, or address them impersonally as ‘she.’ Do you see Beulah over there in her lavender gown?... He was thirty-nine and three times married before he recognized himself for what he was. Being a flexible character, he slipped quite naturally into his present rôle—that of a tight-fisted, gossipy old dowager, but behind the intermittent lechery of his old and experienced eyes he is a strong man and a gentleman. No one in the everyday world even suspects. They’ve marked him down, in fact, as a devil with the ladies. Kate is a harsher type. He married one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. She bore him a lovely boy. Then one day, Kate became irritated over a trifle and threw his wife across the room. Fortunately, she was not injured; but he went into a ‘break’ or nervous explosion. From that, into a depressive state and out of it in a wild hysteria. Then came his first love—his consulting psychiatrist.... The pattern was woven swiftly enough—and Kate, too, slipped into her niche, not so pleasant a one as Beulah’s, who takes them as she finds them. Kate is now searching desperately. You will not?—” Drewena hesitated. “Forgive me, Miriam. And now, let us visit Roberta. Please give her a smile and I know she will feel better. We must hurry. Sophie will soon be ready for her act, and you must prepare your magic.”
They walked across the floor, both sated—one by boredom, the other by necessity. When they approached Roberta, she stood up, one hand touching the pearls at her throat, the other holding her muff.
“Drewena,” she said quietly, with slow sarcasm, “it would be a pleasure to meet your friend. She is very pretty in yellow. Did Carrie make the dress?” Roberta’s lip curled. Once more her hand moved convulsively in her muff.
Without a word Miriam stepped up close and running her fingers down Roberta’s arm, slipped her own hand well inside the tiny fur. Roberta shook her off; but Miriam, now looking at her friend as though intrigued, said slowly, “Perhaps you’d like another cocktail, Roberta. It will warm you. Your hands are like ice.”
Drewena looked on, but finding the scene too difficult to interpret, shook her head sadly, murmured something about the program and led Miriam away.