She closed the book sharply, suddenly aware of what she did and deeply shamed by it, but the thought of the personal dishonesty of her heedless act was lost in the sharper pang of realization; she saw at last the light in which her actions had appeared to others. She stood still, her face frozen, and a cry sprang to her lips from the depths of hidden passion, the cry of some mortally wounded wild creature who faces death alone. She knew it, she did not need to be told it, but others knew it too! It was the bitter drop in her cup of gall; the wild anguish which swept away all other realities, even the desire for life, amazed her. For one moment she hated Rose with all the strength of her undisciplined soul, the next a great wave of humiliation submerged her being. She turned, forgetting the telephone, forgetting everything but a desire to escape the meeting with Allestree, groped her way to the door like a blind woman and went down stairs. At the foot she hesitated; a step in the street made her fear to meet Robert at the door, and she turned and plunged into the curiosity-shop. She found herself behind the chintz curtain, in the place which evidently served as a living-room for Daddy Lerwick, and she saw a table spread for supper, while the scent of garlic streamed from a pot on the stove. Hurrying across the room she lifted the curtain and entered the shop.
Daddy Lerwick was leaning on the counter talking to a young girl and passing a necklace back and forth in his fat hands. At the sound of Margaret’s step they both turned and looked at her in surprise, a surprise which gave place on his part to servile courtesy. But Margaret scarcely noticed him; instead she saw the pale, worn face of the girl, the pinched misery of her look as she glanced at the stones in Lerwick’s coarse fingers. Margaret’s eyes following hers, lighted, too, on the jewels; it was a topaz necklace, the mate to the bracelet which she had prized so long ago. The intuition of misery, the sixth sense of the soul which—no longer atrophied with selfishness—had suddenly awakened within her, divined the secret. She read the suspended bargain in Lerwick’s eye, the hopeless anguish in the girl’s. It was only an instant; the thought came to her like the opening of a dungeon door on the glare of midday. Then she drew back to avoid an encounter with two more customers who had entered the shop and who began at once to ask the prices of the objects in the windows. Lerwick went forward to answer them; the girl leaned on the counter, hiding her face in her hands; a shiver of misery passed over her and Margaret saw it. Moved by an impulse, as inexplicable as it was unnatural, she touched the shabby sleeve. “What is the matter?” she asked softly.
The young woman looked up startled, but only for an instant, the next the dull misery of her look closed over her face like a mask, though her lip trembled. “He’s offered me fifteen dollars,” she faltered; “I—I suppose I’ll have to take it.”
Margaret quietly put out her hand. “Will you sell it to me?” she said; “I will give more and you will not have to give your name.”
The girl’s cheek crimsoned; she hesitated and gathered the necklace into her hands; the gesture was pathetic, it bespoke the actual pang of parting with an old keepsake.
Margaret saw it. “Come, come with me,” she said and led her back through the door to the studio entrance; she no longer feared to meet Allestree; a new impulse stirred her heart.
Under the light there she opened her purse and hastily counted her money, she had a little over a hundred dollars in small bills. Hurriedly thrusting a dollar or two back into her pocketbook, she pressed the remainder into her companion’s hands, saying at the same time: “Keep your necklace, I do not want it; I only wished to help you save it.”
The young stranger looked at her in dull amazement, stunned by the incomprehensible sympathy and generosity when she had long since ceased to look for either. She drew a long shuddering breath. “Oh, I can’t take so much!” she gasped out, “you—you must keep the necklace!”
Margaret regarded her sadly. “Child,” she replied, “I’m more unhappy than you are; I do not want either the money or the necklace; keep them both!”
“Do you really mean it?” the girl whispered, her eyes fastened on the face opposite in absolute wonder and doubt; “you really mean to give me all this—and you want nothing?”