Since she was an outcast, she need not bother about the small restraints the girls felt compelled to put upon themselves in the company of boys.Nobody respected a "bastard," as they called her when they spoke frankly.So with nothing to lose she could at least get what pleasure there was in freedom.She liked it, having this handsome, well-dressed young man making love to her in this grand restaurant where things were so good to eat and so excitingly expensive.He would not regard her as fit to associate with his respectable mother and sisters.In the casts of respectability, her place was with Jeb Ferguson! She was better off, clear of the whole unjust and horrible business of respectable life, clear of it and free, frankly in the outcast class.She had not realized--and she did not realize--that association with the players of the show boat had made any especial change in her; in fact, it had loosened to the sloughing point the whole skin of her conventional training--that surface skin which seems part of the very essence of our being until something happens to force us to shed it.
Crises, catastrophes, may scratch that skin, or cut clear through it; but only the gentle, steady, everywhere-acting prying-loose of day and night association can change it from a skin to a loose envelope ready to be shed at any moment.
"What are you going to do?" asked the young man, when the acquaintance had become a friendship--which was before the peaches and ice cream were served.
"I don't, know " said the girl, with the secretive instinct of self-reliance hiding the unhappiness his abrupt question set to throbbing again.
"Honestly, I've never met anyone that was so congenial.But maybe you don't feel that way?""Then again maybe I do," rejoined she, forcing a merry smile.
His face flushed with embarrassment, but his eyes grew more ardent as he said: "What were you looking for, when I saw you in Garfield Place?""Was that Garfield Place?" she asked, in evasion.
"Yes." And he insisted, "What were you looking for?""What were _you_ looking for?"
"For a pretty girl." They both laughed."And I've found her.I'm suited if you are....Don't look so serious.You haven't answered my question.""I'm looking for work."
He smiled as if it were a joke."You mean for a place on the stage.
That isn't work._You_ couldn't work.I can see that at a glance.""Why not?"
"Oh, you haven't been brought up to that kind of life.You'd hate it in every way.And they don't pay women anything for work.My father employs a lot of them.Most of his girls live at home.That keeps the wages down, and the others have to piece out with"--he smiled--"one thing and another."Susan sat gazing straight before her."I've not had much experience," she finally said, thoughtfully."I guess I don't know what I'm about."The young man leaned toward her, his face flushing with earnestness."You don't know how pretty you are.I wish my father wasn't so close with me.I'd not let you ever speak of work again--even on the stage.What good times we could have!""I must be going," said she, rising.Her whole body was alternately hot and cold.In her brain, less vague now, were the ideas Mabel Connemora had opened up for her.
"Oh, bother!" exclaimed he."Sit down a minute.You misunderstood me.I don't mean I'm flat broke."Susan hastily reseated herself, showing her confusion."I wasn't thinking of that.""Then--what were you thinking of?"
"I don't know," she replied--truthfully, for she could not have put into words anything definite about the struggle raging in her like a battle in a fog."I often don't exactly know what I'm thinking about.I somehow can't--can't fit it together--yet.""Do you suppose," he went on, as if she had not spoken, "do you suppose I don't understand? I know you can't afford to let me take your time for nothing....Don't you like me a little?"She looked at him with grave friendliness."Yes." Then, seized with a terror which her habitual manner of calm concealed from him, she rose again.
"Why shouldn't it be me as well as another?...At least sit down till I pay the bill."She seated herself, stared at her plate.
"Now what are you thinking about?" he asked.
"I don't know exactly.Nothing much."
The waiter brought the bill.The young man merely glanced at the total, drew a small roll of money from his trousers pocket, put a five-dollar note on the tray with the bill.Susan's eyes opened wide when the waiter returned with only two quarters and a dime.She glanced furtively at the young man, to see if he, too, was not disconcerted.He waved the tray carelessly aside; the waiter said "Thank you," in a matter-of-course way, dropped the sixty cents into his pocket.The waiter's tip was by itself almost as much as she had ever seen paid out for a meal for two persons.
"Now, where shall we go?" asked the young man.
Susan did not lift her eyes.He leaned toward her, took her hand."You're different from the sort a fellow usually finds,"said he."And I'm--I'm crazy about you.Let's go," said he.
Susan took her bundle, followed him.She glanced up the street and down.She had an impulse to say she must go away alone; it was not strong enough to frame a sentence, much less express her thought.She was seeing queer, vivid, apparently disconnected visions--Burlingham, sick unto death, on the stretcher in the hospital reception room--Blynn of the hideous face and loose, repulsive body--the contemptuous old gentleman in the shop--odds and ends of the things Mabel Connemora had told her--the roll of bills the young man had taken from his pocket when he paid--Jeb Ferguson in the climax of the horrors of that wedding day and night.They went to Garfield Place, turned west, paused after a block or so at a little frame house set somewhat back from the street.The young man, who had been as silent as she--but nervous instead of preoccupied--opened the gate in the picket fence.
"This is a first-class quiet place," said he, embarrassed but trying to appear at ease.
