Spenser was out now, was working all day and in the evenings at Sperry's office high up in the Times Building.So, Susan had freedom for her dressmaking operations.To get them off her mind that she might work uninterruptedly at learning _Lola's_ part in "Cavalleria," she toiled all Saturday, far into Sunday morning, was astir before Spenser waked, finished the dress soon after breakfast and the hat by the middle of the afternoon.When Spenser returned from Sperry's office to take her to dinner, she was arrayed.For the first time he saw her in fashionable attire and it was really fashionable, for despite all her disadvantages she, who had real and rare capacity for learning, had educated herself well in the chief business of woman the man-catcher in her years in New York.
He stood rooted to the threshold.It would have justified a vanity less vigorous than Susan or any other normal human being possessed, to excite such a look as was in his eyes.He drew a long breath by way of breaking the spell over speech.
"You are _beautiful!_" he exclaimed.
And his eyes traveled from the bewitching hat, set upon her head coquettishly yet without audacity, to the soft crepe dress, its round collar showing her perfect throat, its graceful lines subtly revealing her alluring figure, to the feet that men always admired, whatever else of beauty or charm they might fail to realize.
"How you have grown!" he ejaculated.Then, "How did you do it?""By all but breaking myself."
"It's worth whatever it cost.If I had a dress suit, we'd go to Sherry's or the Waldorf.I'm willing to go, without the dress suit.""No.I've got everything ready for dinner at home.""Then, why on earth did you dress? To give me a treat?""Oh, I hate to go out in a dress I've never worn.And a woman has to wear a hat a good many times before she knows how.""What a lot of fuss you women do make about clothes.""You seem to like it, all the same."
"Of course.But it's a trifle."
"It has got many women a good provider for life.And not paying attention to dress or not knowing how has made most of the old maids.Are those things trifles?"Spenser laughed and shifted his ground without any sense of having been pressed to do so."Men are fools where women are concerned.""Or women are wise where men are concerned."
"I guess they do know their business--some of them," he confessed."Still, it's a silly business, you must admit.""Nothing is silly that's successful," said Susan.
"Depends on what you mean by success," argued he.
"Success is getting what you want."
"Provided one wants what's worth while," said he.
"And what's worth while?" rejoined she."Why, whatever one happens to want."To avoid any possible mischance to the _grande toilette_he served the dinner and did the dangerous part of the clearing up.They went to the theater, Rod enjoying even more than she the very considerable admiration she got.When she was putting the dress away carefully that night, Rod inquired when he was to be treated again.
"Oh--I don't know," replied she."Not soon."She was too wise to tell him that the dress would not be worn again until Brent was to see it.The hat she took out of the closet from time to time and experimented with it, reshaping the brim, studying the different effects of different angles.
It delighted Spenser to catch her at this "foolishness"; he felt so superior, and with his incurable delusion of the shallow that dress is an end, not merely a means, he felt more confident than ever of being able to hold her when he should have the money to buy her what her frivolous and feminine nature evidently craved beyond all else in the world.But----When he bought a ready-to-wear evening suit, he made more stir about it than had Susan about her costume--this, when dress to him was altogether an end in itself and not a shrewd and useful means.He spent more time in admiring himself in it before the mirror, and looked at it, and at himself in it, with far more admiration and no criticism at all.Susan noted this--and after the manner of women who are wise or indifferent--or both--she made no comment.
At the studio floor of Brent's house the door of the elevator was opened for Susan by a small young man with a notably large head, bald and bulging.His big smooth face had the expression of extreme amiability that usually goes with weakness and timidity."I am Mr.Brent's secretary, Mr.
Garvey," he explained.And Susan--made as accurate as quick in her judgments of character by the opportunities and the necessities of her experience--saw that she had before her one of those nice feeble folk who either get the shelter of some strong personality as a bird hides from the storm in the thick branches of a great tree or are tossed and torn and ruined by life and exist miserably until rescued by death.She knew the type well; it had been the dominant type in her surroundings ever since she left Sutherland.Indeed, is it not the dominant type in the whole ill-equipped, sore-tried human race? And does it not usually fail of recognition because so many of us who are in fact weak, look--and feel--strong because we are sheltered by inherited money or by powerful friends or relatives or by chance lodgment in a nook unvisited of the high winds of life in the open? Susan liked Garvey at once; they exchanged smiles and were friends.
She glanced round the room.At the huge open window Brent, his back to her, was talking earnestly to a big hatchet-faced man with a black beard.Even as Susan glanced Brent closed the interview; with an emphatic gesture of fist into palm he exclaimed, "And that's final.Good-by." The two men came toward her, both bowed, the hatchet-faced man entered the elevator and was gone.Brent extended his hand with a smile.
