CHAPTER XVII
ALL ROADS LEAD TO EAST ORANGE
The next day Winifred set about her new purpose of finding some other occupation than that connected with the stage, though she rose from bed that morning feeling ill, having hardly slept throughout the night.
First, she read over once more the “agent’s” letter, and was again conscious of an extremely vague feeling of something queer in it when she reflected on the lateness of the hour of the rendezvous—eight in the evening. She decided to write, explaining her change of purpose, and declining the interview with this nebulous “client.” She did not write at once. She thought that she would wait, and see first the result of the day’s search for other employment.
Soon after breakfast she went out, heading for Brown’s, her old employers in Greenwich Village, who had turned her away after the yacht affair and the arrest of her aunt.
As she waited at the crossing where the cars pass, her eyes rested on a man—a clergyman, apparently—standing on the opposite pavement. He was not at the moment looking that way, and she took little notice of him, though her subconsciousness may have recognized something familiar in the lines of his body.
It was Fowle in a saintly garb, Fowle in a shovel hat, Fowle interested in the comings and goings of Winifred. Fowle, moreover, in those days, floated on the high tide of ease, and had plenty of money in his pocket. He not only looked, but felt like a person of importance, and when Winifred entered a street-car, Fowle followed in a taxi.
There was a new foreman at Brown’s now, and he received the girl kindly. She laid her case before him. She had been employed there and had given satisfaction. Then, all at once, an event with which she had nothing more to do than people in China, had caused her to be dismissed. Would not the firm, now that the whole business had blown over, reinstate her?