"Beryl, are you discouraged about—your music?"
Robin put her finger so accurately upon the sore spot that Beryl winced. Robin added: "You ought not to be—you're wonderful!"
"I'm not. You think so 'cause you don't know! I can't get something I used to have. I had it when I played on Christmas night and oh, I felt as though I'd always have it—it just tingled in my fingers and made my heart almost burst and then—it went away. I can't rouse it now. I don't even know—what made it come—inside me. But I do know that I'm as far away from—what I want, really working and getting ahead—as I ever was. Further, way off here. At least when I was in New York I had dear old Jacques Henri to help me!"
Robin's book tumbled to the floor. She had an odd feeling as though Beryl—the first girl friend she had ever had—might be slipping away from her. "You want to go back to New York?" she asked stupidly.
"Of course, silly. There isn't anything, here."
"Then you ought to go. Beryl, you must go. I'm going to give you the rest of the money—what I saved from the Queen's Christmas gift and—and—my allowance. Oh, please, Beryl, don't look like that!"
"Thanks!" Beryl's voice rang cold. "But I'm not reduced to charity, yet. Of course I've been kidding myself that I earn all the money you pay me for living here—with a few clothes thrown in. Don't think I don't know what those horrid creatures at the Mills say about me being proud and too stuck-up to work like Dale and the others. They even taunt Dale. I hate myself when I think of it. And all I'm earning wouldn't keep me very long—if I ever did go to study. Oh, I just hate—hate—hate being poor!" Her voice broke in a great sob.
Robin wanted to throw her arms about her and comfort her but she was afraid for Beryl looked like a different being. And, while she hesitated, Beryl flung herself out of the room.
Robin stared into the fire, little lines of worry and perplexity wrinkling her face. Everything was so stupidly hard; no matter what she tried or wanted to do—she ran up against a wall of pride. Her poor little treasured money that she had kept in the heart-shaped box! If she had had it in her hands then she would have thrown it into the fire.
Oh, for a chance to do something, give something that could not be counted—and spurned—in dollars and cents!