CHAPTER XIII
THE TURNING POINT
It was very hard for Patricia to go over to Rosamond's room after breakfast for her hour at the piano, but she did it so bravely that the self-centered Rosamond never guessed how much it cost her.
That was her first unconscious victory over herself.
Next she found that the other girls, from whose comradeship Rosamond's constant presence had barred her, now made room for her in the jolly, hail-fellow style which went straight to her bruised heart and soothed her wounded feelings sooner than she knew.
She kept her place at the little table in the café with Rosamond, of course, but after the first day she did not go into her room at tea-time, going instead into the big room downstairs where the girls and their guests came every afternoon to consume thin bread and butter, and innumerable cups of tea and packs of petite-beurres. Rosamond had thought her own dainty service with an exclusive friend all that could be desired, but Patricia rejoiced in the atmosphere of the club room with its great grand piano and the groups of interested girls, with a sprinkling of equally interested and clever guests. The steaming, gleaming samovar with Doris Leighton's friendly face behind it brought a warmth to her heart the first afternoon that Constance had insisted on her cutting the hour with Rosamond and going with her to the tea-room below.
She found the easy chat and gay banter of the friendly groups the more to her taste, because she had come from a rather trying quarter of an hour in Rosamond's room, where Mary Browne—with an e as she always explained carefully—was being shown the purchases which had seemingly consoled Rosamond for her withdrawal.
Mary Browne, a slim, dark-eyed, good-looking girl with a bored manner, was lounging in a chair, looking with reverent yearning at the articles as they were exhibited—Rosamond trying each on and enlarging on its points of excellence.
Mary Browne, though of the purest blood, was, as she put it, "rather strapped," and wore her shapely garments longer than even Patricia did. Her soul was in the matter, as anyone could see by the way in which she looked at each article, murmuring tensely through her aristocratic teeth, "It's a stair. It's a star."
Patricia had just come from a flying visit to little Rita Stanford, whom she had suspected, from certain little sounds coming over her open transom, to be crying, and the contrast to that heroic little person putting aside her fresh grief to try to be entertaining to the newcomer in her hall made Patricia suddenly rather contemptuous of this worshipful attitude toward the mere accessories of life.