She Buildeth Her House

by Will Levington Comfort

"I did not!"

"Anyway, I couldn't get it straight in my mind, then," Charter said hastily. "You're no vulgar woman, mad after colors and dollars. You love your work too much to be one of those insatiable deserts of passion. Nor are you a creature of black evolution who prefers the soul, to the body of man, for a plaything.... You were all that was generous and normally fervent with me.... Let's cut the subject. It does not excuse me for not calling when I came to New York. You were nothing if not good to me."

"Then Villiers paid to find out things about us," she said slowly. "He said you bragged about such matters to your friends."

Charter shivered. "I fail to see how you troubled about a man not writing—if you could believe that about him."

"I didn't see how he could know our places of meeting—any other way. I should never have seen him again, if he hadn't made me believe this of you."

Charter scarcely heard her. The thought was inevitable now that the actress might have represented him to Skylark as one with the loathed habit of talking about women to his friends. The quick inclination to inquire could not overcome his distaste for mentioning a dear name in this room. The radiant, flashing spirit behind the letters did not belong here.... His brain ached with emptiness; he wondered continually how he could ever fill the spaces expanded by the Skylark's singing....

In the brain of Selma Cross a furious struggle was joined. Never before had she been given to see so clearly her own limitations—and this in the high light of her great dramatic triumph. Her womanhood contained that mighty quality of worshiping intellect. This, she had loved in Charter long ago; in Stephen Cabot now. The inner key to her greatness was her capacity to forget the animal in man—if he proved a brain. There is only one higher reverence—that of forgetting brain to worship soul. Perceiving the attitude of Quentin Charter to her old life, it was made clear to her that she must preserve a lie in her relation with Stephen Cabot; if, indeed, the playwright did not learn outside, as Charter had done. It was plain that he did not know yet, since he had not run from her—to a garret somewhere. What a hideous mockery was this night—begun in pride! Distantly she was grateful that Paula Linster was at hand to be restored, but her own mind was whipped and cowed by its thoughts—so there was little energy for another's romance.... Charter had made no comment on her last remark. She realized now that his thoughts were bearing him close to the truth.

"You say they forced you to cast out your enemy," she declared hoarsely. "I cast out mine of my own accord. If there is palliation for you, there should be for a woman in her first experience. You asked me to stretch my imagination about a drink-reaction making you avoid me. I ask you, how is a woman, for the first time alone with a man—to know that he is different from other men? Add to this, a woman who has come up from the dregs—for years in the midst of the slum-blooms of the chorus? What I heard from them of their nights—would have taxed the versatility of even Villiers—to make me see him lower than I expected! I ask you—how did I know he was an exception—rather than the rule among the Glowworms?"

"I'm rather glad you said that," Charter declared quickly. "It's a point of view I'm grateful for. Do you wonder that the life from which you have risen to one of the regnant queens has become inseparable in my mind with shuddering aversion?"

In the extremity of her suffering, her mind had reverted, as an artist's always does when desperately pressed, to thoughts of work—work, the healer, the refuge where devils truly are cast out. Even in her work she now encountered the lash, since Charter despised it. Literally, she was at bay before him.