“Why not leave him?” Mary asked as there came a pause.
“Without any one else to marry?” Trudy’s eyes were wide open in surprise.
“Must you have someone waiting to pay your board bill?”
“I couldn’t go to work again.”
“I thought you worked rather hard right now.”
“That’s different. I’m working to have a good time. And I’m a wonder; everyone says so. The clubmen are so nice to me. Beatrice has done a great deal, even if Steve hates us and acts as if we were poison.... He isn’t happy.”
Mary knew she was flushing. “Tell me some more about yourself.”
But Trudy was not to be swerved from the other topic. “Beatrice makes fun of him and she flirts shamefully. She has half a dozen flames all the time. One was a common cabaret singer; she had him for tea when Steve wasn’t there. Now she is tired of him. You see, she had to have someone to take Gay’s place! I don’t think Steve flirts with any one; he isn’t that sort. He’s so intense he will break his heart in the old-fashioned way and then go and be a 157 socialist or something dreadful. They scarcely see each other, and of course Beatrice’s father thinks everything is lovely and they are both perfection. He just can’t see the truth. Steve is a cave man and Beatrice is a butterfly––I’m a fraud––and you’re just an old dear!
“Yes, I am a fraud,” she said, with sudden honesty. “I wouldn’t come to see you unless I wanted something. I want to talk to you with all barriers down. I wish you had ever done some terrible thing or were unhappy. I don’t know why, Mary dear; it’s not as horrid as it sounds. I think it’s because I want to know the real soul of you, and if you showed me how you met troubles and trials, you being so good, I’d be the better woman for it in meeting my problems.”
It was truly a tired, oldish Trudy speaking. In the last sentence Trudy had touched the greatest depths of which she was capable––causing Mary to hint of her one deep secret.