"You must go to New York," Sarah reiterated. "You must!"
The truth was I had never told Sarah exactly how poor I was.
In the end I let her go away without telling; at the worst I thought I might borrow from Jerry, who had given up the notion of going to St. Louis, largely no doubt because I had failed to back him up in it completely, and then just at the end changed his mind and went anyway. I knew nothing about it until Jerry wrote me from Springfield, for I had grown shy of going there where all Mrs. McDermott's conversation was set like a trap to catch me in something that would convict Jerry of misdemeanour. Jerry asked me to visit her in his absence, but I put it off as long as possible. I had to settle first about going to Pauline's. I arranged to spend the afternoon there, meaning to come away before dinner and so by leaving Henry to discover my attitude in the circumstance of my having been there without destroying his home, open the way to my meeting him again without embarrassment. To do that I should have left the house before the persuasive smell of the dinner began to creep up the stairs into the warm, softly lighted rooms, but from the beginning of my visit, Pauline, in order that I might not feel her failure to put her affection more cogently, had wound me about as with a cocoon of feminine devices, from which I hadn't been able to extricate myself earlier. I am not blaming her, I am not sure, indeed, seeing how completely she justified herself to Henry Mills by what she had to offer, that I had any right to expect her to understand how completely her playful and charming affectionateness failed of any possible use to me. But I felt myself so far helpless in the presence of it, that I stayed on until the smell of the roast unloosened all the joints of my resolution. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until I found myself at a point where what Henry might think of me became inconsiderable before the possibility of my being put out of the house before dinner was served.
At the same time I could have wept at the indignity of wanting food so much. I remember to this day the wasteful heaping of the children's plates, and my struggle with the oblique desire to smuggle portions of my helping home to Griff, who looked even more of a stranger than I to soup and fish and roast, to say nothing of dessert.
It wasn't until we had got as far as the salad that I had leisure to observe Henry grow rather red about the gills as he fed, and speculate as to how far it was due to his consciousness that I could bring down the pillars of his home with a word, and didn't intend to.
There was nothing said during dinner about my prospects or the stage in general, but when Henry took me out to the car about nine o'clock, he cleared his throat several times as though to drag the subject up from the pit of his stomach, where it must have lain very uneasily.
"You know," he began, "I've been thinking about that scheme of yours of going to New York. I am inclined to think there is something in it."
"I haven't thought about it for a long time," I told him, which was only true in so far as I thought of it as a possibility.
"It would freshen you up a whole lot," Henry insisted. "Everybody needs freshening. I have been taking a little stir about myself." So that was the way he wished me to think of his relation to Cecelia!
"I've given it up," I insisted.