“Will you lunch with me?”
“Yes—I have until three.”
It was shortly after one. She talked with animation about her work, her eyes held to a glistening future. She finished her dressing leisurely, with loving touches, abandoning herself completely to the mirror as an old actress might, having conceded the essential importance of attractions. She studied her face and figure as if she were the maid to them. Bessie dressed for the world, not for herself, certainly not for Bellair. Without, in the world—streets, restaurants, theatres—there existed an abstraction which must be satisfied. She had not yet entered upon that perilous adventure of dressing for the eyes of one man. She did not think of Bellair as she lifted her arms to her hair. On no other morning could she have been so far from the sense of him in her room. Empires have fallen because a woman has lifted her naked arms to her hair with a man in the room.
An older woman would have rewarded him for being there; an older woman never would have put on her hat for the street without remembering her humanity. There was something in Bessie that reserved the kiss for the last. Possibly after the last song of the day, a kiss remained. She put on the flowers he brought; even that did not remind her, nor the dress he had bought for her—asking him if he approved, not that she cared, but because she was turning before the glass with the thing upon her body and mind. She would have asked a child the same.
They went to Beathe’s for luncheon, which was also Bessie’s breakfast. There, it may have been that she was ready to forget herself, knowing it would keep for a little. In any event, she seemed to see Bellair as he ordered for her, as if recalling that he had made many things move easily of late, and that it was pleasant to have these matters, even luncheons, conducted by another. Thinking of him, the voyage was instantly associated:
“I said last night that I didn’t like that woman,” she began. “I didn’t mean just that, of course. But a woman can see another woman better than a man. There are women who keep their mouths shut and get great reputations for being wise and all that. They never associate with women. You’ll always find them with men, playing sister and helping and saying little. Men get to think they’re the whole thing——”
“I suppose there are,” said Bellair.
He wished she had not picked up this particular point again; and yet a certain novelty about this impressed him now, and recurred many times afterward—that it was she who had broached the subject.
“Do you think a man knows men better than a woman does?” he asked.
Bessie had not thought of it; she was not sure.