Next she had gone to high school in Toledo, where for the first time she had judged her local admirers by the standards of the city, a metropolis to her. There it had been another upward circle—students in the university, young lawyers, scrub doctors, embryo merchants, demigods by comparison. This first taste of the life of the city had decided her. She returned to her home but once—to leave it forever. She had sought a little capital and had obtained a few hundred dollars. There she had learned that her mother had been divorced, married again, and that it was quite hopeless to apply to her. She had had an enormous success on that return, with her city clothes and her imposing manners. The grocer's clerk had given up in despair at first sight; the others had hung back awed, realizing that she was not stuff for them. And here she had taken her first confidence, her first belief in her star—in her star, which was not stationary, but which should travel.
She had given, as excuse against the frantic objections of her aunt, that she must prepare herself to earn her living by stenography. She started zealously to equip herself, going to Cleveland and taking a modest hall bedroom at four dollars a week, board included. She continued firm in this resolve for exactly two weeks. But application was against her volatile nature. Besides, her masculine acquaintance had assumed such proportions that she could find no time for work. And suddenly she had met Josh Nebbins, press-agent for a local theater.
She had been attracted to him immediately by his shoes—patent leather with chamois tops, that looked like spats and distinguished him from the common herd. He wore a colored handkerchief in his breast-pocket, English style, red or green shirts, and coats with curious pointed cuffs, which she felt only a New York tailor could have imagined. He had had the greatest influence on her life. He had shown her the easy way to things people coveted, analyzing the philosophy of her sex with his shrewd philosophy of life, contemptuous, successful and witty.
"Play the game, kid—play the game," he would say to her. "The world's full of soft suckers ready to fall for a pretty pair of lamps, and yours are A1 flashers. Make 'em give you what you want! Follow my tips and I'll show you how. And say, don't for one moment think you have to give up anything for what you get. No, sir, not Anno Domini, U. S. Ameriky!"
She had taken his tips, followed his leads. She had soon learned how to acquire whatever she needed. If it was a dress, there was always an admirer in a wholesale store who frantically insisted on the privilege of making a present. Another placed a carriage at her disposal, grateful for the privilege of her company when it pleased her. Other presents were easily convertible.
Nebbins had even changed her name. She had been called Flossie, a contraction from Florence. He had disapproved and invented Doré, and she had accepted enthusiastically. She had a strange intuition that what he did would result for her good, and obeyed implicitly—yes, with even an uneducated admiration. They had become engaged. She would have married him, but he was too much in love not to be proud. He wanted three thousand in the bank, and so they had waited.
Through his offices, she had begun as a super in the local stock company, advancing to an occasional speaking part. She had been at home at once on the stage; she felt born for this. The next season she had entered another stock company playing a circuit, as a regular member. She had wept desperately on leaving Nebbins, completely under his ascendency. She had even offered at the last moment to throw up everything and marry him. He had refused honestly. She had not seen him since.
This memory tortured her. She had soon progressed to where she had seen him in true perspective, or rather in his ridiculous lights. She quickly grew ashamed of the romance. It was something she would have blotted from her life, the more so because at the bottom she felt an obligation, and it revolted her to think that what she was become had, at a critical moment, depended on a Yankee press-agent named Josh Nebbins, who wore ridiculous patent leather shoes with chamois tops!
She was ashamed, and at the same time she was afraid—afraid lest at some time this persistent man, to whom her word had once indiscreetly been given, should surge up out of the past and claim her! He had been the only man from whom she had ever directly accepted money. It had not been much,—a hundred dollars given as a reserve; they were engaged to be married; he had silenced her objections,—but still the fact remained. She had a thousand times resolved to pay it back—to rid herself of this fetter of the past. She had never done so. This was her greatest reproach.
From Nebbins on, the way had not been difficult. She had never saved much money, nor continued long in one opportunity; but she had learned confidence, and how easy opportunities rise for a pretty girl with audacity and wit. But always, in her progress from city to capital, from capital to metropolis, she felt a shadowy crowd of men, reproachful and embittered. She had never been affected by the pangs she had awakened, nor paused to think that there could be any wrong in using whatever presented itself to her—never before. But to-night, alone, facing her first defeat, revolted and stricken, she felt guilty—horribly guilty; and as her faith was simple, and God had always appeared to her as a good friend, she sought His reasons in her past, and said to herself: