"How ripping!"

Beatrice was all animation, and she gave Miss Flinks no peace until she learned all the details, and the rumour about the actress who had rented an expensive town house for the season and a debutante who was being rushed to a retreat to prevent her marriage to a gypsy violinist who had already taught her the drug habit.

Trudy telephoned the latter part of the afternoon, and as it was a gray, blowy day with nothing special to do to revive one's spirits Beatrice urged her to come in for tea--tea to be c.o.c.ktails and b.u.t.tered toast.

Within a few moments she appeared--a symphony of blonde broadcloth set in black furs, very charming and chic, and so solicitous about Aunt Belle's recently removed mole and the scar left by the electric needle, and so admiring of the two newly beautified ladies that they were quite won in spite of themselves.

"Were you near here when you telephoned?" Beatrice asked, curiously.

"You weren't ten minutes getting here and you look as spick and span as if you had stepped out of a bandbox."

"Look outside and you'll see that Gay and I have had a true case of auto-intoxication!"

Outside the window there proved to be a smart, selfish roadster, battleship-gray with vivid scarlet tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs.

"Well!" Beatrice said in astonishment. At this identical moment she began to envy Trudy. She was really ashamed of the fact, nor did she understand why she should envy this bankrupt yet progressive little n.o.body in her homemade bargain-remnant costume. The reason was that Beatrice's latent abilities longed to be doing something, achieving something, capturing, inventing, destroying, earning if need be--but doing something. The daughter of Mark and Hannah Constantine could not help but have the germ of great ability within her, sluggish and spoiled as it might be; and it must perforce duly manifest itself from time to time. Beatrice realized that Trudy felt a greater joy and satisfaction in displaying this not-paid-for cheap machine--having sat up half the night to make the shirred curtains--than Beatrice ever could feel in her tapestry-lined, orchid-adorned limousine. So she began to envy Trudy just as Trudy envied her. Trudy had done nothing but struggle to be able to live, as she termed it; Beatrice had never been allowed to struggle!

"We owe for all but the left back tire," Trudy said before any one had the chance to hint of the fact; "but Gay has to have it for his new business, and it is such a joy! I hope you approve, Beatrice. And what a darling gown!"

There was nothing left for Beatrice but to order the c.o.c.ktails and toast, and for Aunt Belle to agree smilingly with Trudy's clever suggestions.

Trudy never came to see Beatrice unless she gained some material point or had one in view, and the point she had come to gain this afternoon was of no small importance. In her own fashion she managed to inform her hostess that Gay had received an order from--well, it was a tremendous secret and he would be terribly cross if he knew she told even her dearest Bea and her sweet Aunt Belle, but she just couldn't help it--he had an order from Alice Twill, who thought she was going to beat everyone in town to the greatest sensation of the year: To have the barn of a Twill mansion remodelled, decorated and so on, from coal bin to cupola, until it was an exact copy of a French palace--she really forgot just which one. ... Yes, Alice's aunt in Australia had died and left her everything; Alice said she was not going to wait until she was on crutches before she spent it. Gay was simply out of his head trying to plan the thing and Alice was to move to a hotel for several weeks until a newly furnished wing was ready to be inhabited.

There was no reason why New York persons should have their homes like palaces and chateaux and so on, and turn their noses up at upstate residences. Alice was going to show them. And--this very subtly--Gay had said that if only Beatrice could have the authority to redecorate her father's home into an Italian villa Alice Twill would be the loser when comparisons were made--since the Constantine house had twice the possibilities and so on, and Beatrice twice the taste. And what an achievement it would be; a distinct civic improvement!... Yes, Gay was working with the best firms in New York, and there was no doubt of his success in the enterprise.

Before she left, Trudy had almost secured Beatrice's promise that the Constantine house should be made into an Italian villa and that, if she so decided, Gay should have the commission. There was a place at Frascati she had always admired, and they could use some ideas from a show place in Florida.

Had Trafalgar terminated differently Napoleon would have been no more surprised or jubilant than Trudy, who fairly skidded home to the new and more pretentious apartment, where she found Gay in one of his sneering, sulky moods and quite angry to think Trudy was carrying the day.

"How do I know Alice Twill will really come across?" he began. "And I suppose you've got the machine covered with mud, too. Anyway, what do I know about decorating? I work on my reputation and everyone's sympathies and I'm in fear all the time some real decorator will turn up and show my hand or else refuse to work under me and split commissions. You're too d.a.m.ned optimistic."

"If I wasn't optimistic where would we be? Starving," she said with no attempt at politeness. Common courtesies between them had long since been dispensed with. "I've gotten you nearly everything you have, and if you'll do as I say I'll go right on getting things for you. But you're lazy and jealous--that's what's the matter."

He gave a sneering little laugh. "Why, you poor n.o.body, people only tolerate you because of me. They roar behind your back."

"Do they? They pity me because I'm married to such a weak fish! Men are nice to you because of me--and there isn't a woman I've met that I have not made afraid of me. Beatrice hasn't the will power of a slug; you can hand her flattery in chunks as big as boulders and she swallows them without choking. It's her husband who sees through us."

"What--the goat tender? Oh, beg pardon--treading on someone else's toes. Or didn't they have goats in Michigan?"

"We'll never hang together another year," she said, recklessly. "The first chance I have to exchange you for a real man your day is over."

"You think any one else would marry you?"

"I don't think. I just go ahead grabbing everything I can, and when a person has to grab for someone else as well as herself it keeps them moving."

"You're a crude and impossible little fool."

Without warning Trudy's hand shot out, and on Gay's cheek rested a red mark for the greater part of the evening.

A half hour later he was trying to apologize, having bucked himself up to it with brandy, in order to borrow enough money to play pool with that same evening.

CHAPTER X

After Gay left, Trudy put on her things and trudged over to Mary's house. Gay had driven off in the car and she was glad he had. Like Steve the day of the funeral, she did not wish to drive but to have the nervous outlet of walking.

Trudy was seldom angry. But when she found Mary in the old library, the same true-blue, good-looking thing with just a little coldness of manner as Trudy tried to enthuse over her, Trudy felt ashamed. And she was angry far more often than she was ashamed.

"Where is Luke?" she asked, taking off her things and lying down wearily on the sofa. "Oh, Mary mine, you don't know how good it is to be here again, to be able to talk--really talk to someone."

"Luke is at basketball----" Mary began, stopping as she discovered that Trudy was in tears. "Why, what is it?" as Trudy sobbed the harsh, long sobs of a tormented and frail mind.

"You ought to hate me--selfish, insincere hypocrite--cheat--liar. Oh, I hate myself! I hate him, and Bea, and all of them! They aren't worth your blessed little finger. Mary, Mary, please stay quite contrary and never change. Never get to be a Gorgeous Girl, will you? ... Nerves, I suppose; and I haven't had the right things to eat." She sat up and began smoothing her injured flounces.

"You're so thin, and there are funny lilac shadows under your eyes.

You can't live on nerve energy forever. And I know your delicatessen suppers or else the rich orgies to which you are invited--not enough sleep--and always that eternal upstage pose!"

"Gay wears on me; he is growing strong, with never an ache or pain. I never used to have them but I'm all unnerved and weak. He hates me, Mary. Yes, he does." She began a detailed recital of woes.

"Why not leave him?" Mary asked as there came a pause.

"Without any one else to marry?" Trudy's eyes were wide open in surprise.

"Must you have someone waiting to pay your board bill?"

"I couldn't go to work again."

"I thought you worked rather hard right now."

"That's different. I'm working to have a good time. And I'm a wonder; everyone says so. The clubmen are so nice to me. Beatrice has done a great deal, even if Steve hates us and acts as if we were poison....

He isn't happy."

Mary knew she was flushing. "Tell me some more about yourself."

But Trudy was not to be swerved from the other topic. "Beatrice makes fun of him and she flirts shamefully. She has half a dozen flames all the time. One was a common cabaret singer; she had him for tea when Steve wasn't there. Now she is tired of him. You see, she had to have someone to take Gay's place! I don't think Steve flirts with any one; he isn't that sort. He's so intense he will break his heart in the old-fashioned way and then go and be a socialist or something dreadful. They scarcely see each other, and of course Beatrice's father thinks everything is lovely and they are both perfection. He just can't see the truth. Steve is a cave man and Beatrice is a b.u.t.terfly--I'm a fraud--and you're just an old dear!

"Yes, I am a fraud," she said, with sudden honesty. "I wouldn't come to see you unless I wanted something. I want to talk to you with all barriers down. I wish you had ever done some terrible thing or were unhappy. I don't know why, Mary dear; it's not as horrid as it sounds.

I think it's because I want to know the real soul of you, and if you showed me how you met troubles and trials, you being so good, I'd be the better woman for it in meeting my problems."

It was truly a tired, oldish Trudy speaking. In the last sentence Trudy had touched the greatest depths of which she was capable--causing Mary to hint of her one deep secret.

"You're growing up, that's all. And I'm not good--not a bit good. Why, Trudy, do you know I have had to fight hard--terribly hard about something? I've never told any one before. I can't really tell what it is!"

"Over what? You saint in white blouses and crisp ties, always smiling and working and helping people! How have you battled? Tell me, tell me!"

Mary came over to the sofa and sat beside Trudy, holding the white, cold hands laden with foolish rings. "I loved and do love someone very much who never did and never will love me. I must be near that person daily, be useful to him, earn my own living by so doing--and I've made myself be content of heart in spite of it and not live on starved hopes and jealous dreams.... You see, I'm quite human."