It restored Ginger not only to herself but to her lover. Whether they ever came together again, whether she ever saw him again, sitting perched in her high balcony seat in Carnegie Hall, all the pride and criticism and bitterness were cleansed away; she went to him once more as she had gone to him on Aleck’s bridge; she found harmony in harmony.
“You are radiant,” said Mary Wiley to her as they came away from Carnegie on an afternoon of dazzling snow. “I knew you would love Tschaikowsky. You look—my dear, did you love it so much?”
Ginger fell into step beside her. “Let’s walk, shall we? Yes; I loved it. But I was thinking just then about—Mary, I would like to go to Boston.”
“Would you, really? How warmly mother will approve of you for that chaste desire!”
“Mary, there is some one in Boston I must see. I was unjust, and ignorant, and—mean. Mean and stupid. Now I’m going to Boston and tell him so.”
Mary Wiley smiled at her. “I think that’s big and fine, Virginia. Shall I go with you—to Boston, I mean? I’ve been wanting to run down for a day or two, to see my cousin Sarah; she is ill again. There’s a mousy little hotel just across the street from her house where you could stay. Let me see ... my young aliens would adore not being Americanized for a few days; suppose we go Monday and come back on Friday? That will give you time for a little sedate sight-seeing to please mother—and for—for your own affairs.” She smiled sunnily at her. “My dear, I’m very glad. I’ve been sure that there was some one.”
Ginger shook her head, her color mounting. “I don’t know, Mary; I’m not sure of anything, except that I must go—and tell him.”
“I’ve known there was some one,” said Mary Wiley. There had been some one, with her, once, but he had not come home from France. Mrs. Wiley had wept when she told Ginger about it, but if Mary Wiley ever wept she made her tears turn the wheels of her serene and selfless activities.
Aunt Fan lifted her plucked eyebrows when she learned that her niece was going to Boston. “I should say it would be much better form just to drop him a line—one of those postcards with a picture of the hotel on it—and say—oh, ‘West is East,’ or something kind of cute like that, and wait for him to make the first move!” Aunt Fan was feeling a trifle acid; she and Jim Featherstone were getting on each other’s nerves again, and in spite of being so triumphantly active she had gained six pounds.