She Buildeth Her House

by Will Levington Comfort

She was conscious at length of the gray of morning, a stifling pressure in her lungs, and the effort to rouse herself. She felt the cold upon her face; yet the air seemed devitalized by some exhausting voltage, she had known before. There was a horrid jangle in her brain, as of two great forces battling to complete the circuit there. A face imploring from a garret-window, a youth in a lion's skin, a rock in the desert and a rock in the Park, the dim hotel parlor and the figure of yesterday among the mountain-peaks—so the images rushed past—until the tortured face of Bellingham (burning eyes in the midst of ghastly pallor), caught and held her mind still. From a room small as her own, and gray like her own with morning, he called to her: "Come to me.... Come to me, Paula Linster.... I have lived for you—oh, come to me!"

She sprang out of bed, and knelt. How long it was before she freed herself, Paula never knew. Indeed, she was not conscious of being actually awake, until she felt the bitter cold and hurried into the heated room beyond. She was physically wretched, but no longer obsessed.... She would not believe now that the beyond-devil had called again. It was all a dream, she told herself again and again—this rush of images and the summons from the enemy. Yesterday, she had been too happy; human bodies cannot endure so long such refining fire; to-day was the reaction and to-morrow her old strength and poise would come again. Quite bravely, she assured herself that she was glad to pay the price for the hours of yesterday. She called for the full series of morning papers, resolving to occupy her mind with the critical notices of the new play.

These were quite remarkable in the unanimity of their praise. The Cross-Cabot combination had won, indeed, but Paula could extract no buoyancy from the fact, nor did black coffee dispel the vague premonitive shadows which thickened in the background of her mind. The rapping of Selma Cross upon her door was hours earlier than ever before. She, too, had called for the morning papers. A first night is never finished until these are out. Paula did not feel equal to expressing all that the play had meant to her. It was with decided disinclination that she admitted her neighbor.

Selma Cross had not bathed, nor dressed her hair. She darted in noiselessly in furry slippers—a yellow silk robe over her night-dress. Very silken and sensuous, the huge, laughing creature appeared as she sank upon the lounge and shaded her yellow eyes from the light. So perfect was her health, and so fresh her happiness, that an hour or two of sleep had not left her eyes heavy nor her skin pallid. There was an odor of sweet clover about her silks that Paula never sensed afterward without becoming violently ill. She knew she was wrong—that every fault was hers—but she could not bear the way her neighbor cuddled this morning in the fur of the couch-covering. Selma had brought in every morning newspaper issued and a thick bundle of telegrams besides. Paula told her, literally forcing the sentences, how splendidly the play and her own work had appealed to her. This task, which would have been a pure delight at another time, was adequately accomplished only after much effort now. It appeared that the actress scarcely heard what she was saying. The room was brightening and there was a grateful piping of steam in the heaters of the apartment.

"So glad you liked it, dear," Selma said briefly. "And isn't it great the way the papers treated it? Not one of them panned the play nor my work.... I say, it's queer when a thing you've dreamed of for years comes true at last—it's different from the way you've seen it come to others. I mean there's something unique and a fullness you never imagined. Oh, I don't know nor care what I'm drowning to say.... Please do look over these telegrams—from everybody! There's over a hundred! I had to come in here. I'd have roused you out of bed—if you hadn't been up. The telephone will be seething a little later—and I wanted this talk with you."

Big theatrical names were attached to the yellow messages. It is a custom for stages-folk to speed a new star through the first performance with a line of courage—wired. You are supposed to count your real friends in those who remember the formality. It is not well to be a day late....

"And did you notice how Felix Larch uncoiled?"

Paula looked up from the telegrams to explain how this critic had been the object of her contemplation the night before.

"He hasn't turned loose in that sort of praise this season," Selma Cross added. "His notice alone, dear, is enough to keep us running at the Herriot until June—and we'll open there again in the fall, past doubt."

Paula felt wicked in that she must enthuse artificially. She forced herself to remember that ordinarily she could have sprung with a merry heart into the very centre of the other's happiness.