She began to be more afraid of being alone than of any other fear. She grew resentful toward the conventions that held her. She was like a tigress in a wicker cage, growing hungrier, lither, more gracefully fierce.

People who do not use their beauty lose it, and Charity had lost much of hers in her vigils and labors in the hospitals, and it had waned in her humiliations of Cheever's preference for another woman. Her jealous shame at being disprized and notoriously neglected had given her wanness and bitterness, instead of warmth and sweetness.

But now the wish to be loved brought back loveliness. She did not know how beautiful she was again. She thought that she wanted to see Jim Dyckman merely because she wanted to be flattered and because--as women say in such moods--men are so much more sensible than women. Often they mean more sensitive. Charity did not know that it was love, not friendship, that she required when at last she wrote to Jim Dyckman and begged him to call on her.

The note struck him hard. It puzzled him by its tone. And he, remembering how vainly he had pursued her, forgot her disdain and recalled only how worthy of pursuit she was. He hated himself for his disloyalty to Anita in comparing his fiancee with Charity, and he cursed himself for finding Charity infinitely Anita's superior in every way.

But he hated and cursed in vain.

Kedzie, or "Anita," as he called her, was an outsider, a pretty thing like a geisha, fascinating by her oddity and her foreignness, but, after all, an alien who could interest one only temporarily. There was something transient about Kedzie in his heart, and he had felt it vaguely the moment he found himself pledged to her forever. But Charity--he had loved her from perambulator days. She was his tradition.

His thoughts and desires had always come home to Charity.

Yet he was astonished at the sudden upheaval of his old pa.s.sion. It shook off the new affair as a volcano burns away the weeds that have grown about its crater. He supposed that Charity wanted to take up the moving-picture scheme in earnest, and he repented the fact that he had gone to the studio for information and had come away with a flirtation.

One thing was certain: he must not fail to answer Charity's summons.

He had an engagement with Kedzie, but he called her up and told her the politest lie he could concoct. Then he made himself ready and put on his festival attire.

Charity had grown sick of having people say, "How pale you are!" "You've lost flesh, haven't you?" "Have you been ill, dear?"--those tactless observations that so many people feel it necessary to make, as if there were no mirrors or scales or symptoms for one's information and distress.

Annoyed by these conversational harrowers, Charity had finally gone to her dressmaker, Dutilh, and asked him to save her from vegetation! He saw that she was a young woman in sore need of a compliment, and he flattered her lavishly. He did more for her improvement in five minutes than six doctors, seventeen clergymen, and thirty financiers could have done. A compliment in time is a heart-stimulant with no acetanilid reaction. Also he told her how wonderful she had been in the past, recalling by its name and by the name of its French author many a gown she had worn, as one would tell a great actress what roles he had seen her in.

He clothed her with praise and encouragement, threw a mantle of crimson velvet about her. And she crimsoned with pride, and her hard, thin lips velveted with beauty.

She responded so heartily that he was enabled to sell her a gown of very sumptuous mode, its colors laid on as with the long sweeps of a Sargent's brush. A good deal of flesh was not left to the imagination; as in a Sargent painting, the throat, shoulders, and arms were part of the color scheme. It was a gown to stride in, to stand still in, in an att.i.tude of heroic repose, or to recline in with a Parthenonian grandeur.

This gown did not fit her perfectly, just as it came from Paris, but it revealed its possibilities and restored her shaken self-confidence immeasurably. If women--or their husbands--could afford it, they would find perhaps more consolation, restoration, and exaltation at the dressmakers' than at--it would be sacrilege to say where.

By the time Charity's new gown was ready for the last fitting Charity had lost her start, and when Dutilh went into the room where she had dressed he was aghast at the difference. On the first day the gown had thrilled her to a collaboration with it. Now she hardly stood up in it.

She drooped with exaggerated awkwardness, shrugged her shoulders with sarcasm, and made a face of disgust.

Dutilh tried to mask his disappointment with anger. When Charity groaned, "Aren't we awful--this dress and I?" he retorted: "You are, but don't blame the gown. For G.o.d's sake, do something for the dress. It would do wonders for you if you would help it!" He believed in a golden rule for his wares: do for your clothes what you would have them do for you.

He threatened not to let Charity have the gown at all at any price. He ordered her to take it off. She refused. In the excitement of the battle she grew more animated. Then he whirled her to a mirror and said:

"Look like that, and you're a made woman."

She was startled by the vivacity, the authority she saw in her features so long dispirited. She caught the trick of the expression. And actors know that one's expression can control one's moods almost as much as one's moods control one's expressions.

So she persuaded Dutilh to sell her the dress. When she got it she did not know just when to wear it, for she was going out but rarely, and then she did not want to be conspicuous. She decided to make Jim Dyckman's call the occasion for the launching of the gown. His name came up long before she had put it on to be locked in for the evening.

When she thrust her arms forward like a diver and entered the gown by way of the fourth dimension her maid cried out with pride, and, standing with her fingertips scattered over her face, wept tears down to her knuckles. She welcomed the prodigal back to beauty.

"Oh, ma'am, but it's good to see you lookin' lovely again!"

While she bent to the engagement of the hooks Charity feasted on her reflection in the cheval-gla.s.s. She was afraid that she was a little too much dressed up and a little too much undressed. There in Dutilh's shop, with the models and the a.s.sistants about, she was but a lay figure, a clothes-horse. At the opera she would have been one of a thousand shoulder-showing women. For a descent upon one poor caller, and a former lover at that, the costume frightened her.

But it was too late to change, and she caught up a scarf of gossamer and twined it round her neck to serve as a mitigation.

Hearing her footsteps on the stairs at last, Dyckman hurried to meet her. As she swept into the room she collided with him, softly, fragrantly. They both laughed nervously, they were both a little influenced.

She found the drawing-room too formal and led him into the library.

She pointed him to a great chair and seated herself on the corner of a leather divan nearly as big as a touring-car. In the dark, hard frame she looked richer than ever. He could not help seeing how much more important she was than his Anita.

Anita was pretty and peachy, delicious, kissable, huggable, a pleasant armful, a lapload of girlish mischief. Charity was beautiful, n.o.ble, perilous, a woman to live for, fight for, die for. Kedzie was to Charity as Rosalind to Isolde.

It was time for Jim to play Tristan, but he had no more blank verse in him than a polo score-card. Yet the simple marks on such a form stand for tremendous energy and the utmost thrill.

"Well, how are you, anyway, Charity? How goes it with you?" he said.

"Gee! but you look great to-night. What's the matter with you? You're stunning!"

Charity laughed uncannily. "You're the only one that thinks so, Jim."

"I always did admire you more than anybody else could; but, good Lord!

everybody must have eyes."

"I'm afraid so," said Charity. "But you're the only one that has imagination about me."

"Bosh!"

"My husband can't see me at all."

"Oh, him!" Jim growled. "What's he up to now?"

"I don't know," said Charity. "I hardly ever see him. He's chucked me for good."

Jim studied her with idolatry and with the intolerant ferocity of a priest for the indifferent or the skeptical. The idol made her plaint to her solitary worshiper.

"I'm horribly lonely, Jim. I don't go anywhere, meet anybody, do anything but mope. n.o.body comes to see me or take me out. Even you kept away from me till I had to send for you."

"You ordered me off the premises in Newport, if you remember."

"Yes, I did, but I didn't realize that I was mistreating the only admirer I had."

This was rather startling in its possible implications. It scared Dyckman. He gazed at her until her eyes met his. There was something in them that made him look away. Then he heard the gasp of a little sob, and she began to cry.

"Why, Charity!" he said. "Why, Charity Coe!"

She smiled at the pet name and the tenderness in his voice, and her tears stopped.

"Jim," she said, "I told Doctor Mosely all about my affairs, and I simply spoiled his day for him and he dropped me. So I think I'll tell you."

"Go to the other extreme, eh?" said Jim.

"Yes, I'm between the devil and the high-Church. I've no doubt I'm to blame, but I can't seem to stand the punishment with no change in sight.

I've tried to, but I've got to the end of my string and--well--whether you can help me or not--I've got to talk or die. Do you mind if I run on?"

"G.o.d bless you, I'd be tickled to death."