“Poor little car skidded on the way, Gracie deah,” announced Miss Mallard.
Sallie’s throat closed in a hard knot. Her head almost dropped on the table. But not quite. Pride kept it up. Pride and the determination never to let them know how right they were.
Yet Miss Mallard, having resumed her tactics of warfare allowed to slip no opportunity for attack. She teased and tormented and tra-la’d with purring delight, sharp little talons inflicting new wounds.
Sallie began to slink into the dressing-room as if to hide from insinuating smiles. And coming out of the stage door, she fairly ran round the corner to escape the torturing vision of that line at the curb.
The pearls she had recklessly let go. After what he had said, she couldn’t bear to touch them. They curled in her hand like some wriggling reptile. Her first impulse had been to toss the necklace into an ashcan, but eventually she found herself back at the near-pearl shop. A suave salesman after much fingering and testing [279] ]reminded her that they did not refund on merchandise but added that he might be able to resell at a loss if she cared to leave it. Sallie even hated the money—something more than half the amount she had paid—which his smooth hands finally counted into hers.
One thing, though, she did determine in the long nights. There must be a car! Never must they be certain that Jimmie had gone for good! The savings account had long since gone the way of all flesh. And cars, like Pegasus, soar winged in the clouds. June had come gliding into the arms of May while Sallie suffered and waited, lived on bread and milk, and hopelessly priced the cheaper makes.
Other lips, mustached, clean-shaven, young, and not so young, answered Sallie’s plea of “Won’t you smile at me?” Sallie did not hear them. Other eyes sought hers from motors at the curb. Sallie did not know they were there.
She was in her room balancing accounts at 11:30 P. M. When she did sleep, figures whirled through her dreams; figures and Jimmie’s face.
Then in the murky dawn of one June day came an inspiration. Yesterday she had seen a second-hand runabout painted a beautiful blue for only two hundred and fifty dollars, with a week’s trial before buying. Her diamond! She could get enough for that! A few months in which to tear up to the stage entrance and spring out; to display the shining blue body to startled eyes; to make them believe he had come back! Jimmie—who never would! She gazed out through the streaky window pane and for a time the car was forgotten.
[280]
] When the chorus had assembled for the Wednesday matinée, a ring dropped tinkling to the dressing-room floor. Sallie picked it up, proclaimed that the stone had come loose and wore it no more.