"Make me a woman, Jewel, make me a woman! Open the door, make me a woman!" Perspiration almost blinded him. Make her a woman!... She was the stronger ... as strong as death....
The door slowly opened. Mona fell into his arms, still sobbing: "Make me a woman, Jewel, make me a woman"....
Mona on reaching her home didn't go into the dining-room; instead she rang for her maid and bade her bring tea and toast to the studio; she had a headache, and please let her mother and father know that she wouldn't come down to dinner. Then she went to her mirror and carefully searched as if she were seeking something. Her features were not discomposed, her expression as usual; perhaps she was a trifle paler than her wont, otherwise—rien! Yes, her eyes seemed as if they had been well-washed, as if a beneficent rain had carried away all the signs of discontent, rebellion, unhappiness. Mona tried to imagine herself supremely happy. She wasn't. Then impatiently snapping her fingers she looked at her doll on the bed: "It's frightfully over-advertised, Dolly, that's what love is." Dolly only stared, sphinx-wise.
VII
One evening Ulick leaned over Dora's balcony. He had called unannounced, and found her in anything but an amiable mood. "It's you, is it?" was her reception. He had not been very attentive of late, and Dora, despite her kittenish airs, was strictly business in her methods. With her, one nail replaced another. The devil take the hindmost. If you haven't any money, you needn't come around. Time is money. What are you here for? When you're dead, you're dead a long time. She was fond of repeating this chaplet of pearly wisdom as she faced her favourite work of art, framed and hung on the alcove of her bedchamber: "Rock of Ages cleft for me" was the legend this lovely picture bore. Dora, who wasn't particularly imaginative, saw herself as the attudinizing female who so closely clung to the cross in a typhoon that would have sunk a fleet, but didn't disturb her chaste draperies. She impressed Dora. A vague notion nestled in the recesses of her conscience that she wasn't precisely leading a noble life, and that the necessary rock of ages for her was a comfortable bank account.
He was not disturbed by her cool phrase. It wasn't a novelty. He stared at the town and thought that when the softer and richer symphony of the night arrives, when the jarring of one's ego by the innumerable racking noises has ceased, when the city is preparing to forget the toilsome day, then the magic of New York begins to operate; its missing soul peeps forth in the nocturnal transfiguration. However, not on Broadway, with its thousand lights and lies, not in opera-houses, theatres, or cafés, but from some perch of vantage must the nocturnal scene with all its mysterious melancholy beauty be studied. He saw a cluster of blazing lights across at the West Side Circle, a ladder of fire the pivot. Further down theatre-land dazzled with its tongues of flame. Literally, a pit, white-hot. Across in the cool shadows of the east are level lines of twinkling points. The bridges. There is always the sense of waters not afar. The hotels are tier upon tier starry with illumination. The Avenues, long shafts of bluish-white electric globed fire. The monoliths burn as if to a fire-god their votive offerings. In the moonlight mansions on Fifth Avenue seemed snow-driven. The Synagogue opposite the park, half byzantine, half moresque, might have been mistaken for an Asiatic mosque as it lay sleeping in the moon-rays. The park, as if liquified, flowed in plastic rhythms, a lake of velvety foliage, a mezzotint dividing the east from the west. Sudden furnace bonfires leap up from the Brooklyn side; they are purely commercial; Ulick looked for Whistler's rockets. Battery Place and the Bay are operatic, the stage for a thrilling fairy spectacle. The dim, scattered plain of granite house-tops are like a petrified cemetery of immemorial Titans. At night, he mused, the city loses its New World aspect. It reveals the patina of Time. It is a city exotic, semi-barbaric, the fantasy of an oriental sorcerer who had been mad enough to evoke from unplumbed and forgotten seas the long lost Atlantis....
The buzzing of the annunciator, a man's voice aroused Ulick from his reverie. He hopped into the room where he found Paul. The greeting of the pair was cordial; there wasn't the slightest feeling of jealousy between them, and this was something Dora detested. Competition is the life of cocottes, she declared early and often. In her feline fashion she had tried to arouse the jealousy of Paul and Ulick, but vainly. Ulick was touchy when Easter's name was in the mouth of Paul, and he knew that if Paul ever dared to speak of Mona disrespectfully, he would smash him. But jealousy over Dora? Pas pour trois sous!
Dora was a safe port in emotional storms. When all fruit fails welcome haws, runs the adage. Ulick had been on the jagged edge of ennui ever since the visit of Mona. He hadn't the courage to look into his soul, black with a viler sin. To distract himself, like the man who drinks to forget, he had gone up to Dora's overlooking the fact that it was, for all he knew, Paul's "evening at home." Still, no bones were broken and he shook Paul's hand and said bienvenu! Dora glowered. She talked to herself. She went into the kitchen and raised her voice to the new cook. She noisily rattled dishes, pushed the furniture and behaved like a woman misunderstood. She, too, had her grievances. These fellows of hers weren't behaving on the square. Now, what did Ulick Invern mean by coming up when he knew he would run into Paul! Did he do it on purpose, just to annoy her? She whimpered in the pantry as she took down the decanter of whisky and put the glasses on a tray; whatever else might be criticised in her conduct no one ever would accuse her of inhospitality. This consoling idea struck her and to drive it home more securely in her self-esteem she helped herself to a generous drink. It was not the first "hooker" she had drunk that day; in fact, she was admirably intoxicated when Ulick arrived, and she knew that he noticed it. It was her standing grievance against him that he couldn't be persuaded to drink or smoke. It seemed to put him on a pedestal above her and she hated pedestals. Now there was Paul—always half-stewed.... She fetched in the liquor.
They played cards, that is, Dora and Paul wrangled over some game, Ulick interesting himself in a newspaper; there wasn't a book in the apartment fit to open. Dora's dissatisfaction grew apace. Slapping the cards down she called to Ulick: "You're the nice one I don't think. You don't drink or smoke, you can't even play poker. What are you good for anyhow?" Bored, Ulick went into the hall after his hat and stick. The hints of Dora were not cryptic. He felt that three is company, two none, and he determined to leave them to their desperate ennui à deux. But he had counted without Paul.