"Just got in from the tract. Sold a couple of twenty-acre pieces."
"Well, well, is that so? Fine work, fine work! Keep it up. It's a pleasure to see a young lady doing so well. Well, well, and so you've been out on the tract! I wonder if you've seen Gilbert yet?" His shrewd old gossip-loving eyes were upon her. She turned to her message on the counter, and after a pause of gazing blindly at it, she scrawled, "H. D. Kennedy," clearly below it. "Send collect," she said to the girl, and over her shoulder, "Gilbert who? Not my husband?"
Yes. Monroe had run across him in San Francisco, and he was looking well, very well indeed. Had asked about her; Monroe had told him she was in San José. "But if you were on the tract, no doubt he failed to find you?"
"Yes," she said. "I've been lost to the world for three days. Showed my prospect every inch of land between here and Patterson. You know how it is. I'm all in. Well, good-by. Good luck." As she crossed the lobby to the elevator she heard her heels clicking on the mosaic floor, and knew she was walking with her usual quick, firm step.
CHAPTER XVIII
Sleep was impossible. Helen's exhausted nerves reacted in feverish tenseness to the shock of this unexpected news of Bert. From long experience she knew that in this half-delirious state she could not trust her reasoning, must not accept seriously its conclusions, but she could not stop her thoughts. They scurried uncontrolled through her brain as if driven by a life of their own. She could only endure them until her over-taxed body crushed them with its tired weight. To-morrow she would be able to think.
In the square hotel room, under the garish light that emphasized the ugliness of red carpet and varnished mahogany furniture, she moved about as usual, opening the windows, hanging up her hat and coat, unfastening her bag. She did not forget the customary pleasant word to the bell-boy who brought ice-water, and he saw nothing unusual in her white face and bright eyes. This hotel saw her only on her return trips from the tract, and she was always exhausted after making or losing a sale. She locked the door behind him, and began to undress.
Paul must not be involved. She must manage to shield him. A sensation of nausea swept over her. The vulgarity, the cheap coarseness of it! But she must not think. She was too tired. Why had she blundered into such a situation? What change had the years made in Bert? Her thoughts, touching him, recoiled. She would not think of Paul. To have the two in her mind together was intolerable, it was the essence of her humiliation. Married to one man, bound to him by a thousand memories that rushed upon her, and loving another, engaged to him! No fine, self-respecting woman could be in such a position. But she was. She must face that fact. No, she must not face it. Not until she was rested, in command of herself.
She bathed, scrubbing her skin until it glowed painfully. Cold-cream was not enough for her face and hands. She rubbed them with soap, with harsh towels. At midnight she was washing her hair. If only she could slip out of her body, run away from herself into a new personality, forget completely all that she was or had been!
This was hysteria, she told herself. "Only hold on, have patience, wait. The days will go past you. Life clears itself, like running water. It will be all right somehow. Don't try to think. You're too tired."