She did not want to work. She had never wanted to work. Working had been only a means of reaching sooner her own life with Paul. The road had run straight before her to that end. But now Paul would not let her follow it; he did not want her to work with him at Ripley; she would have to wait until he made money enough to support her. And she hated work.
Resting her chin on one palm, listening half consciously for her call to interrupt the ceaseless clicking of the sounder, she gazed across the marble counter and the vaulted room; the gesticulating brokers, the scurrying messengers, faded into a background against which she saw again the light and color and movement of the night when she had met Mr. Kennedy. She heard his voice. "What's the use of living if you don't hit the high spots?"
She hurried home at night, expecting she knew not what. But it had not happened. Restlessness took possession of her, and she turned for hours on her pillow, dozing only to hear the clicking of telegraph-sounders, and music, and to find herself dancing on the floor of the Merchants' Exchange with a strange man who had Mr. Kennedy's eyes. On the eleventh day she received a letter from Paul, which quieted the turmoil of her thoughts like a dash of cold water. In his even neat handwriting he wrote:
I suppose the folks you write about are all right. They sound pretty queer to me. I don't pretend to know anything about San Francisco, though. But I don't see how you are going to hold down a job and keep up with the way they seem to spend their time, though I will not say anything about dancing. You know I could not do it and stay in the church, but I do not mean to bring that up again in a letter. You were mighty fine and straight and sincere about that, and if you do not feel the call to join I would not urge you. But I do not think I would like your new friends. I would rather a girl was not so pretty, but used less slang when she talks.
The words gained force by echoing a stifled opinion of her own. With no other standard than her own instinct, she had had moments of criticising Louise and momma. But she had quickly hidden the criticism in the depths of her mind, because they were companions and she had not been able to find any others. Now they stood revealed through Paul's eyes as glaringly cheap and vulgar.
Her longing for a good time, if she must have it with such people, appeared weak and foolish to her. She felt older and steadier when she went home that night. Then, just as she entered the door, the telephone rang and Louise called that Gilbert Kennedy wanted to speak to her.
It was impossible to analyze his fascination. Uncounted times she had gone over all he had said, all she could conjecture about him, vainly seeking an explanation of it. The mere sound of his voice revived the spell like an incantation, and her half-hearted resistance succumbed to it.
Before the dressing-table, hurrying to make herself beautiful for an evening with him, she leaned closer to the glass and tried to find the answer in the gray eyes looking back at her. But they only grew eager, and her reflection faded, to leave her brooding on the memory of his face, half mocking and half serious, and the tired hunger of his eyes.
"Have a heart, for the lovea Mike!" cried Louise. "Give me a chance. You aren't using the mirror yourself, even!" She slipped into the chair Helen left and, pushing back her mass of golden hair, gazed searchingly at her face. "Got to get my lashes dyed again; they're growing out. Say, you certainly did make a hit with Kennedy!"
"Where's the nail polish?" Helen asked, searching in the hopeless disorder of the bureau drawers. "Oh, here it is. What do you know about him?"