XX
Now that the lights no longer went out at ten, I did considerable writing at night. I had to work, however, under difficulties, for Lolly had no end of men callers. She had discouraged men calling on her at the Y. W. C. A., but now that we had a place of our own, she liked them to come. As she gaily put it to me one day: "Beaux make great meal tickets, Nora."
And then, too, she liked men. She told me once I was the only girl chum she had ever had, though she had had scores of men chums, who were not necessarily her admirers as well.
Lolly was a born flirt. Hermann was her slave and her shadow now, and so were several newspaper men and editors who seemed devoted to her. There was only one man, however, for whom she cared a "button," so she told me, and that was Marshall Chambers; and yet, she quarreled with him constantly, and never trusted him.
Lolly's men friends were kind to me, too. They tried many devices to entrap me to go with them. It was all I could do to work at night, for even when I shut myself into the inner room, Lolly was always coming in with this or that message and joke, and to urge me to "come on out, like a good fellow, just for to-night." Though, to do Lolly justice, many a time, when she thought the story I was working on was worth while, she would try to protect me from being disturbed, and sometimes she'd say:
"Clear out, the whole bunch of you! Nora's in the throes of creation again."
However, I really don't know how I managed to write at all there. Hermann came nearly every night in those days, and even when Lolly was out, he used to sit in that outer room and wait, poor fellow, for her to return. He never reproached Lolly, though he certainly knew she did not return his love. Hermann just waited, with a sort of untiring German patience and determination to win in the end. He was no longer the gay and flippant "lady-killer." In a way I was glad to have Hermann there at nights, for I was afraid of Chambers. Whenever he found me alone, he would try to make love to me, and tell me he was mad about me and other foolish things.
I asked him once what he would do if I told Lolly. He replied, with an ugly smile, that he guessed Lolly would take his word before mine.
That marked him as unprincipled, and I hated him more than ever. Of course I never told him I disliked him. On the contrary, I was always very civil and joking with him. It's queer, but I have a good streak of the "Dr. Fell" feeling in me. Hermann and I once talked over Marshall Chambers, and his efforts to make love to me. Hermann said that that was one of the reasons he was going to be there when he could. He said that some day Lolly was going to find out, and he (Hermann) wanted to be there to take care of her when that day came. Such was his dog-like affection for Lolly, that, although he knew she loved this man, he was prepared to take her when she was done with the other.