CHAPTER I

She had weary eyes—eyes with the weight of centuries of knowledge upon them—eyes that could no longer open wide with astonishment at anything life might hold. The lashes were so long, so dark and straight that they were like a veil of night shadowing the grayness beneath. Her gaze came through, inviting you to penetrate, urging you by its very weariness to try to read the story those eyes might tell.

A slow smile lifted the corners of her mouth, then let them droop before the smile was really born. Her walk as she trailed from the first line of show girls in her wide-spread bird of paradise costume was as measured as the muse of tragedy.

And yet she was only twenty-six.

That was Naomi Stokes, who counted numberless acquaintances but few friends; who knew many men better than they cared to be known but few as well as she might have cared to know them.

Broadway was a playground to Naomi but she had long since learned that in the game played there, none are winners. Time is the _croupier_ who rakes in the spoils and at Time Naomi had ceased to smile even wearily. He stood with his long arm suspended, ready, it seemed to her, to pounce upon each hour she might hold dear, jealous of all she had crowded into one short life. Man she knew too well to fear but the croupier with whom she had gambled so long, she dared not look in the face. And as one sings in the dark to silence fear, so she had developed a philosophy of life which she held close in those moments when she might be tempted to take measure of things. She could not afford to pause long nor to think much.

Of that glittering section which stretches like some bejeweled recumbent queen of the night from Forty-second to Fiftieth Streets, Naomi was such an integral part that if a night passed without her appearance at one or another of the tightly wedged restaurants, their habitués wondered. When she moved between rows of tables with her long-lashed smile sweeping with lazy insolence the whole room, those who did not know asked who she was. Her name—in the theater merely that of another show girl—had for so long swung from lip to lip in the after-theater life of the White Way that soon it would of necessity be relegated to that past which hangs so cruelly over the present.

Naomi knew this. And more than once, alone in her tiny two-room apartment and in spite of her philosophy, she wondered what would come after. A shrug avails little in the midday glare of reality.

It was on a night following such a day—when the dregs of life had tasted particularly bitter—that Naomi and four others went to supper with Marshall Kent.

Kent having more money than he could spend enjoyed spending it on Broadway. Having nothing better to do, he had never looked for anything better. He and Naomi were good pals in their way. He liked to stare through her lashes at the puzzle beneath. Most women were so revealing.

But to-night she resented his set gaze, the ironic twitch of his thin lip. After her nasty, self-disclosing day she wanted a friend. Some one to whom she could be something more than heavy eyes and auburn-tinted hair, some one with whom she could share thoughts—and fears. But Marshy Kent had never given her friendship. No man had.

All through supper she was silent, with a hard, shell-like silence her companions could not break. Finally she pushed her plate to one side and her glance sifted the smoke-thickened air.

Beyond the table, in a space so small that they might have been squirrels chasing their tails, the crowd jostled and elbowed and glared at one another in an effort to keep time to a stamping, hilarious jazz. In the doorway beyond, another crowd jostled and elbowed and glared at one another and fought for the privilege of slipping crisp greenbacks to supercilious head-waiters. Through the befogged atmosphere the lights with their shades of brilliant yellow and black glimmered faintly. At the tables and on the dance floor jaded New Yorkers and curious out-of-towners pretended to enjoy themselves.

Naomi swept it with a noxious sense of disgust. Suddenly it seemed a ton weight, as if the ceiling like some infernal machine were descending upon her. She lifted her shoulders and her head went back. Oh, for a breath of real fresh air!

“What’s the matter, my dear?” put in Kent. “Off your feed?”

“No.” She brought her eyes toward him, then they drifted back to the crowd at the door. “I was just thinking what a joke they are on themselves, fighting like that to get into a stuffy old hole where they’re going to be held up and fleeced.”

Kent laughed.

“Aren’t you worth the price of admission? You’re one of the exhibits, you know.”

She shrugged.

He looked down at the easy movement of the white shoulders under the narrow beaded straps that were the sole support of her black gown.

“Any one with the eyes and arms of Naomi will always count,” he consoled.

She pulled from his gaze.

“Oh, what’s the use! You know I don’t matter to them any more than to you. You play around with me here because you haven’t any better way to pass your time. And they, poor idiots—”

“By Jove, you _are_ off your feed!”

She turned her back on his low, impudent chuckle.

His tolerant eye traveled over the shoulder turned from him to the hot, wild mass clamoring at the doorway. Suddenly he became alert and a second later was on his feet, without apology pushing his way round the dance floor. Naomi saw him make for a man with a big frame and graying mustache who lingered impotently at the rear of the crowd. Kent reached out, grabbed his hand and with absolute disregard of intervening humanity, wrung it as if he never wanted to let it go. She wondered vaguely what it would be like to have some one as glad to see her. He passed a word to the head-waiter. The red velvet rope dropped as if by magic and, escorted by Kent, the party was led to a table a few paces from where she sat.

The man glanced about with the curiosity, half amused, half critical of the sight-seeing stranger. Back of him came a girl of twenty-one or so with eager gray eyes a thousand years younger than Naomi’s, white teeth showing through parted lips and hair the dense, dusky black of an Indian’s. At her side walked a young man. As he passed Naomi, their glances met. They locked with that odd, unintentional arresting which means that two out of a vast throng have momentarily become individuals. Naomi’s slow gaze followed as he went on and it seemed to her that in the allotting of places, he deliberately chose the one facing her.

Kent hovered over his friend with beaming enthusiasm. The ironic twitch of his thin lips was gone. The somewhat sagging shoulders of the man who keeps flesh down by massage rather than exercise had straightened. He scribbled his address. He took theirs. He admonished the waiter to treat them well, received that gentleman’s reassuring nod, and apologized finally for having to return to his own table.

Naomi watched the younger man’s face as Marshall Kent sat down beside her. No—she had not been mistaken. She who knew so well how to read men’s eyes saw in his dark ones a look of intense, concentrated interest. The girl next to him saw it, too—and following it, thought she had never seen a face more fascinating than the one so smoothly white with its heavy-fringed lids and wave of glinting hair across the forehead. It was artificial, of course, but then you got used to that in New York. Her clear gray eyes went swiftly back to the dark ones that were fastened on Naomi’s.

Kent pulled in his chair and settled back.

“Well, little Marshy’s all het up!” one of the girls prompted. “Who’s your friend?”

He was still beaming.

“Fellow I haven’t seen since college—Alec McConnell. I was chucked. He went through to the finish. Mining engineer—big man in Idaho to-day.”

“And the other two?” queried Naomi casually.

“The one staring at you, my dear, is the son of Bill Dixon of Dixonville, Oregon, big ranch owner, king of the apple country.”

“And the girl?”

“Little friend of his being chaperoned by McConnell and his wife. First visit to the big town. Is that all?”

Once more Naomi’s lazy gaze met the one which had not moved from her and a faint flush surged under her thick pallor. As the lids fell, they covered something of the look of the gamester. It was a calculating look that weighed possibilities, one she was quick to hide.

Kent detected it rather by instinct than otherwise.

“Oh, have a heart, Naomi!” he teased. “He’s so young and tender.”

Naomi turned slowly in his direction. She said nothing for the moment but waited until the others got up to dance.

“Well?” He was intrigued by her silence. “Well, Eve, do we tempt young Adam to eat the apple or do we let him go home in peace and grow them?”

“I think we marry him,” she said quietly.

Kent gave a start that brought him upright. Then he grinned, that drawling grin tinged with cynicism. The idea of any one marrying Naomi was amusing. She read his thought as plainly as if it had been put into words and her head went up suddenly. Though the lashes did not lift, a flash came through them. It was challenge.

“You think I couldn’t?”

“My dear Naomi—if you’ll pardon my brutality, I should say—not a chance in the world!”

“Why?”

“In the first place I have a hunch that little girl, Nan Crawford, has a pretty firm hold on young Bill. It’s plain to see they’re crazy about each other. Darn sweet kid, too. I suspect she’s here trousseauing. In the second, Bill is probably more sophisticated than you or I imagine. This isn’t his first visit to New York.”

“I’m going to marry him just the same.”

“And go out and live on an Oregon ranch, old dear?”

“Yes.”

He laughed aloud this time.

“You’d look sweet in a sunbonnet and gingham dress.”

“Just what do you mean by that?” she asked, not quite sure what emphasis to put on “sweet.”

“Just this! You belong here as surely as grease-paint belongs in the theater.”

“No woman belongs here,” she flung at him. “There isn’t a woman made who hasn’t the right to a home.”

“Then why does she start here?”

“Because she’s young and a fool—in nine cases out of ten. Because she thinks this is living.”

Her face went hard as nails; with contempt, with futility, with derisive defiance of herself. And then furtively she pulled a bit of lace from her bag and dabbed at her eyes.

Kent’s mouth opened. It was the first time he had seen Naomi cry, had witnessed a woman’s tears without suspicion. Usually they meant that she wanted something.

“Don’t mind me!” She met his astonishment with a swift effort to pull herself together. “I’ve had a rotten day.”

“How, my dear?”

“Oh, just the realization that to-night it’s this, and in two years it’ll be ham and eggs and a lunch counter—if I’m lucky.”

“Nonsense!”

“Oh, yes! I’ll just drop out and you’ll forget me—like the rest. What’s become of Emy Steward—and Cora Greene—and Ray Granville? You don’t even know and you used to give parties for them like this one.”

He was silent, knowing she spoke the truth. Like comets across a glittering sky those beautiful girls had gleamed and gone. Gone when their beauty had gone, vanished into the night that engulfed them, too proud or too forgotten to accept the humiliation of charity.

“We don’t last long, boy,” she added grimly. “And I’m one of those who can’t keep on fooling herself. I’ve had a beast of a day.”

“Hence the ranch idea in Oregon.”

“Yes.” A queer twist lifted her lips—then dropped them. “Inspiration, I call it. The Limited that will carry me away from the poorhouse!”

“You’ll never put it over.”

“Sporting enough to lay odds on it, Marshy old dear?”

In all justice to Marshall Kent, it must be admitted that under normal conditions he would not have taken her up. But the restaurant happened to be one of the many which prided itself that prohibition meant nothing in its life and the silver flask reposing on Marshy’s hip had been refilled on frequent visits to a side chamber just off the main room. He looked out of the corner of an eye at Naomi stepping in where angels might fear to tread and the flushed, grudging admiration of gamester for gamester darted in the glance.

“You’re on!” he said.

“And you’ll keep off!” she urged, a bit breathless.

“Yes—I’ll give you ground. What stakes?”

“If I lose—”

“Yes?”

“We’ll make it a hundred perfectos, best brand.”

“Nice and impersonal!” observed Marshy, head to one side, now well into the game. “And if you win?”

“The handsomest wedding present in town!”

“I call that odds in your favor.”

With a faint smile she leaned nearer, hand outstretched to clinch it.

“Hold on! What’s the time limit?”

“When he starts west I start with him.”

“It’s a go. Only don’t expect any help from me.”

“I won’t—except an introduction when he stops here on the way out.”

“What makes you think he’ll stop?”

“I know he will. He’ll find some excuse to.”

And he did, of course. Waveringly, as he drew nearer the magnet of her eyes, he paused and tapped Marshy’s shoulder. The latter sprang up.

“Mr. Kent, we’re such a bunch of rubes—I thought you might recommend the best show in town for to-morrow night.”

Naomi waited as Marshy considered.

“Why don’t you send your friend to ours?” she suggested in a low voice apparently to him alone.

“What one is that?” asked the friend, flashing eagerly into the breach.

Kent introduced him then to the upraised eyes round the table. But he saw only Naomi’s veiled ones. She gave him the name of the musical comedy and the theater—nothing more. And as he bowed and rejoined the older man and the girl with the dusky hair standing in the doorway, Marshall Kent dropped into his chair again.

“Quick work, Naomi,” he murmured, “and Machiavellian method! One more move from you and the apple wouldn’t have looked nearly so inviting.”