"I guess you know it, Miss Lilly, that with all the honors we got by our daughter, we're still blain, respegtable beoble."

"Of course--"

"For fifteen years in one business in one neighborhood we've such a standing that from three blocks around they come to my husband he should keep their savings. My girls--I can say it on a bible--more than anything around them was always respegtability."

"But why--"

"If I'm mistaken, Miss Luella, and blease G.o.d I should be, then excuse me for a foolish old woman, but is--is everything all right with you, Miss Luella?"

"Mrs. Neuga.s.s, I--What do you mean?"

"I took you in for a student, a girl alone from her home town, but not once since you're with us--I can't help it I got eyes--so much as a postal card. All right, I said time and time again to my husband, she don't have friends to come and call on her, because she's a stranger in New York. Neither did my Millie have so many friends, I guess, the first few weeks in Munich. But no letters--not a line! I know _goys_ ain't so strong on family ties, but once in a while a letter--"

"I don't quite see where the matter of my correspondence can be of interest to you, Mrs. Neuga.s.s."

"No, but it is of interest to me if everything is all right with you. If everything is over and above-board, as the saying is, Miss Luella!"

There was a throb to the silence, as she sat upright there in bed, that seemed to shape itself about her, like a trap. She buried her face suddenly into her hands.

Then Mrs. Neuga.s.s rose, edging around the back of her chair as if to get clear of even propinquity.

"I'm right?" she cried, hoa.r.s.ely and rather coa.r.s.ely. "I'm right, then?

I took into my home a bad girl?"

"No!--No!--No!--"

Out of bed, her feet hastily into slippers and fumbling into her kimono so that the flow of her hair went down inside it, Lilly approached Mrs.

Neuga.s.s, her gesture toward her and entreating.

"Mrs. Neuga.s.s, you're horribly wrong in what you suspect. You must listen to me--"

"You can exblain nothing to me except to get your clothes packed. How it goes to show you never can tell beoble from looks. Even my husband, who never gets deceived in human nature, 'She's a refined, intelligent girl to have around,' he says. My stepdaughter! A girl I am as careful with as if she was still eighteen, should go out of her way to get you before Auchinloss! No wonder he says it you are limited and that you fall just short of fine talent. You don't deserve it no better. Ain't you ashamed?

You bad girl, you! I'm only sorry for the mother you say you got--your poor mother!"

"Mrs. Neuga.s.s, this is outrageous! You haven't the right to speak to me like this! It was wrong, I admit, to--to deceive you. But I had my reasons--you wouldn't have taken me in. I'm not what--what you think I am!"

"I don't care what you are and what you ain't. I only want you to pack your bags and go."

"I won't go until you've heard me out!"

"We're respegtable beoble!"

"Oh, I know, Mrs. Neuga.s.s, your kind of respectability. I was reared on it. It's the cruelest respectability in the world. It has no outlook except through the narrow little bars of the small decencies you have erected about yourselves."

"That fine talk don't save a girl's skin when she's in such a fix like you!"

"I've more claims to your precious kind of respectability than you--than you think!"

"I don't _think_ no more. I know! I don't say it's the nicest thing I should have looked once through your things. Even then I must have felt it in my bones. That little dress with the nursery rhyme on the yoke--how it was I didn't get suspicious then? All of a sudden last night, though--even while you was singing, it come over me, all these weeks I must have been blind."

"I tell you I'm a married woman. I was married last July in the Leffingwell Rock Church in St.--in a city I don't care to name. I suppose that const.i.tutes me a moral woman in your world of cautious morality. But in my eyes I'm a moral leper. Not because I did not marry, but because I did. Married for every reason in the world except love. No marriage ceremony in the world can condone the immorality of that!

Society may, but G.o.d doesn't. From your point of view, then, I'm a respectable woman. From mine, I'm rotten."

"I don't know what it is you're talking aboud. If you are what you say you are, what does it mean living around in decent beoble's houses in a condition like yours? It's an insult to my daughters you should be here.

The right kind of a married woman don't live around New York in such a way like you. There is something very crooked in the woodpile."

"If that is what bothers you, won't you please, dear Mrs. Neuga.s.s, sit down and let me tell you the whole story? I need you--"

"The whole story, Miss--Mrs. Parlow--or whatever it is you call yourself--ain't what bothers me. All I want is you should go while my husband is down in his store and my daughter in her position. I am ashamed they should know. I'm lucky yet I saved myself from having a disgrace in the house a few weeks from now."

"Oh, Mrs. Neuga.s.s, be careful! You may have cause some day to--"

"A singer she wants to be! Is it any wonder, miss, you got no luck? A girl like you don't deserve it. I'm sorry enough for your poor mother.

Married or no married, I want you should leave here. Quick, you bad girl, you! I'll wait outside till you go."

So Lilly was subjected to the bitter, the unspeakably vulgar humiliation of gathering her belongings like any culprit servant girl, cramming them, blind with tears and frenzy, into the suitcase and valise, tears scalding down and rolling over her hands as she dressed.

As she staggered finally down the hallway, the two bags grating the walls and her hat awry from haste, Mrs. Neuga.s.s stood at the door, holding it open.

"Here," she said, "is your rent back for four days--"

"Don't you dare, Mrs. Neuga.s.s, to offer me that! Only let me out, please, from this outrageous predicament."

"You got righd. It is a outrageous predicament. Ach! shame on you! Such a fine, clean-looking girl like you. Indeed, you don't got to ask to be let out twice."

Thirty minutes later, and because her wildly beating brain could figure out no alternative, Lilly sat on a bench in the waiting room of the Grand Central Station, bags at her feet, trying to subdue her state of trembling.

Eleven o'clock moved around largely on the station clock. She was due at the Broadway Melody Shop. Still she sat on, the palpitating surface of her gradually slowing its throb. The reverberating terminal, then at the excavating state of its gigantic reconstruction, rang to the crash of steel with the fantastic echo of tunnel and of blasting. Its constant conglomerate of footfalls reduced to the common denominator of a gigantic shuffle, it swelled toward the noonday schedule, with more and more rapid comings and goings. A light snow was announcing itself in little white powderings across overcoat shoulders and in the crevices of derbys.

The new brown coat enveloped her warmly enough, but she shivered as she sat, at the same time committing the paradox of unb.u.t.toning and flinging its double-breastedness away from the beating of her very being. After a while she gave over her bags to the obliging eye of a shawled Polish girl on the bench beside her and crossed to the Information Bureau. A clerk gave her precedence over two men.

Yes, there was a St. Louis train out at two-five. Another at six.

She returned and sat in the midst of a third bustling hour. A young woman with an infant, and a whole archipelago of luggage surrounding her, finally replaced the Polish girl. She was as fadely and straggily pretty as a doll that has been left lying on the lawn throughout a night of heavy dews. Every so often the tiny head would spring back from the soft fount of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, a cry rising thin and spiral as smoke.

"Sh-h-h, baby! He won't eat," she said, plaintively. "It's just terrible; we've tried everything and he won't eat."

Lilly put out her hand toward the small ball of head, but withdrew it.

"Poor little baby!"

"My sister's gone to the matron to get him some barley water before he gets on the train. There is a grand matron here at the station. I left him with her all morning while we shopped, and he never whimpered. The barley water was her idea. He won't eat. It's terrible. He 'ain't gained in six weeks. The doctor says we've just got to keep trying until we hit a formula that agrees with him."

"Formula? How funny! Sounds like chemistry."

The young mother cast a commiserating eye.

"I'd hate to tell you what it sounds like about two P.X. I've been on a visit to my mother in Brooklyn, but he yelled so of nights the whole flat was kicking. You ain't, by any chance, taking the two-five St.