“Meeting you—that is the real story.”
She pushed away his hand that had lifted to hers.
“You’re all right now. I’m going back. Good night and good luck.”
He made no attempt to detain her.
That night Pidge lay for a long time without sleep. She was forlorn and troubled and restless, but underneath it all there was a queer little throb of happiness, like the recent night of the two letters. It would not be stifled. Every time she could get still enough, she was conscious of it, like the song of a bird that kept on and on, but was only audible in the lulls of almost unbroken traffic. She awoke in the night with the thought of him speeding westward on his train.
The next night when she came home there was another letter from Los Angeles, another check dropped out, and a clipping, which she read first—the wedding announcement of “Adolph Musser, the noted metaphysician, and Mrs. Hastings, wealthy widow of the late Rab Gaunt Hastings, firearms manufacturer of New England, at the Byzantine,” etc.
Pidge didn’t have her guard up. The choke and the shame were too swift for her self-control. For the first time in many days the tears broke, the extra scaldy sort. If she had only been permitted to keep that first check uncashed for a few days longer!...
The next was a day of dullness and misery, a May day of rain. Crossing Broadway, as she hurried to luncheon, she passed Rufus Melton in the crowd. Her lips parted to call, but she checked in time. He hadn’t seen her. She found herself standing loosely in the traffic, her hand to her mouth, until a taxi driver roared at her, and she swung into the stream of people again and reached the curb.
XIV
ISOLATION
PIDGE was leveled with personal shame. Try as she would, she was as lacking in the ability to detach herself from Melton, as from the influence of her father. She had felt the boy’s power over her, and knew innately that she would feel it again; that this sort of thing wasn’t a mere touch and go; that meetings like this, which appear sporadic on the surface, have twined roots beneath. She had been taught from a child that nothing merely happens. The incentive that made her lend him the fifty dollars, which she had held uncashed for nearly a month, did not mean to her now a mere impulsive mistake. It was a symbol of a giving to this boy—of a blind but eager something out of the depths of her heart.