CHAPTER IV

Naomi made no pretense of trying to sleep. She did not even resort to the bromide she was in the habit of taking when rest refused to come. She merely lay, with blinds drawn to shut out the early morning, trying to see light where she knew there was none. At ten she sprang up, hand to the throat that was full, lids covering the eyes that pained. Ever since Marshy Kent’s visit, those eyes had been straining toward the future, the result, inevitable almost, of his revelation to Bill Dixon. In the endless, wakeful hours of the night she had rehearsed, as women do, everything that had probably transpired.

Yet even in her misery she did not overlook the careful mask of make-up, as mechanical a part of her daily toilet as the brushing of her hair, or polishing of her glistening nails. She had grown to avoid facing her mirror without it.

She flung on a negligée of orchid chiffon that clung round her with the afterglow of sunset. But like the orchid, she sought the damp darkness of her living-room and sat with head resting against her locked hands for a long time before she made a move to raise the blinds and let in a shaft of sunlight.

She had just lifted one of them when the sharp summons of the bell came from downstairs. She pushed the electric button and waited without curiosity for the apartment bell to ring. Then she opened the door and peered into the shadowy hall.

A girl stood there. The girl with her hair like a black cloud and eyes young and gray and tense.

They traveled hungrily over the other woman as if to get in that moment the viewpoint of another pair of eyes that no longer sought hers.

“May I come in, Miss Stokes? You don’t know me but my name is Nan Crawford,” she explained as Naomi said nothing.

Naomi nodded. “I know.”

The girl looked up quickly.

“Has he—has he talked to you—about me?”

“I’ve seen you with him,” was the non-committal answer.

“It—it’s about Bill I want to see you,” she brought out the words with the same halting pause which had marked her hesitation in the doorway.

Naomi motioned her to a chair. The girl’s pale face went a tinge whiter. Her lips quivered. She looked down.

“I’ve been wanting to come to see you and hadn’t the courage. Yesterday I followed you here in a cab from the theater. But you were with Mr. Kent. I didn’t come up.” She fidgeted with the slightly frayed silk of her chair.

“Miss Stokes, I—I’ve known Bill Dixon all my life. I’ve loved him all my life—and I thought he loved me. He used to tell me so. We—we’ve always loved the same things and done the same things—together—in the same way. We’ve ridden hours on horseback up into the mountains and gone shooting in the woods—and tramped to places other people didn’t know about. When I went away to school and he to college, we used to write each other about our woods and the longing to get back to them—together. We never planned anything—separately. We sort of always—belonged to each other.”

She halted once more. It was because she couldn’t go on. The eyes lifted to meet Naomi’s were filmed. It was only too clear that she was putting herself through the ordeal of tearing open new wounds for some purpose. Naomi looked away. To play on her own sympathy, of course! She wouldn’t listen. It would do no good anyway.

“I’m trying to tell you, Miss Stokes, how I love Bill Dixon—how much I want his happiness. And now he loves you. Oh, I don’t blame him! You’re very beautiful—more beautiful than I could ever dream of being. You’re like some gorgeous flower in a conservatory. I’ve never seen any one like you. At first I thought I could—perhaps—win him back—but I couldn’t. Not from you. I—I wouldn’t know how. I’ve thought about it a lot. And I—at first I thought I couldn’t live through it. But I’ve got to now. Bill can’t help loving you. I don’t blame him for that.” She got up suddenly and brushed a hand across her eyes. In the poise of her body, head thrown back, lip caught between her teeth, was life’s first big endurance test and her brave attempt to meet it.

“But you’ve got to love him, Miss Stokes! You’ve got to make him happy. I’d give my life for him. That’s the way you’ve got to love him, too. If you don’t—if you fail him—ever—I’ll kill you!”

Waves of astonishment swept over Naomi. Those eyes that burned behind the film of tears! Surely this was not their message! To demand happiness for the man of whom she was being robbed—surely that was not what the girl had come for.

“My dear child—” Naomi began, instinctively speaking as if to one years younger.

“I mean it! You think I wouldn’t but I’m not afraid. I have nothing to lose any more.”

She stumbled toward the door, one hand reached out gropingly. There she turned and once more her eyes traveled over the other woman. Naomi felt that from their clear gray gaze she could not shield herself. A girl so near her own age—the girl she might have been! And in that moment she knew that Nan Crawford’s words had not been bravado, not foolish threat. She was battling in her own way for the thing she loved.

She opened the door as if, now that her message was given, she could not make her escape quickly enough.

“Make him happy,” came strangled. “You must! That’s what I came to tell you.”