"What!"
She grasped me by the coat lapels and shook me. Yes! That weak little woman shook me, while her face went perfectly livid.
"'He'd have felt badly,' eh? Man! Man! Didn't you see! Are you blind? Why, he asked me to go with him. He asked me to marry him. Think of it—that great, wonderful man asked me to be his wife—me—Olive Marceau, the dancer! Oh, oh! Isn't it funny? Why don't you laugh?"
I didn't laugh. I stood there, picking pieces of fur out of my cap and wondering if ever I should see another woman like this one. She paced about over the skin rugs, tearing at the throat of her dress as if it choked her. There were no tears in her eyes, but her whole frame shook and shuddered as if from great cold, deep set in her bones.
"Why didn't you go?" I asked, stupidly. "You love him, don't you?"
"You know why I didn't go," she cried, fiercely. "I couldn't. How could I go back and meet his mother? Some day she'd find me out and it would spoil his life. No, no! If only she hadn't recovered—No, I don't mean that, either. I'm not his kind, that's all. Ah, God! I let him go—I let him go, and he never knew!"
She was writhing now on her bed in a perfect frenzy, calling to him brokenly, stretching out her arms while great, dry, coughing sobs wrenched her.
"Little one," I said, unsteadily, and my throat ached so that I couldn't trust myself, "you're a brave—girl, and you're his kind or anybody's kind."
With that the rain came, and so I left her alone with her comforting misery. When I told Kink he sputtered like a pinwheel, and every evening thereafter we two went up to her house and sat with her. We could do this because she'd quit the theater the day the boat took Prosser away, and she wouldn't heed Eckert's offers to go back.
"I'm through with it for good," she told us, "though I don't know what else I'm good for. You see, I don't know anything useful, but I suppose I can learn."