CHAPTER V

Through the window Naomi had lifted that morning, the shaft of sunlight receded slowly until it slipped away. Naomi had been sitting in the same position ever since her door had shut on a girl stumbling into the dark hallway. She sat there without moving and with a queer little twist of wonder at the problems we bring upon ourselves. All her life she had drifted with the least resistant current and without thinking much. Now, of a sudden, thought had come smashing upon her with the devastating violence of a hurricane.

As daylight grayed she rose a bit stiffly and lighted the few lamps that sent a glow through the room.

She went into her bedroom and started to dress. Bill was coming at five to take her to dinner. All afternoon she had waited for his usual phone call, for the big box of variegated flowers so different from those other men sent her. Neither came. But a peculiar lethargy held her, made her conscious only of the numbness of futility.

She dressed without haste in a plain dark cloth suit, feeling with a curious finality that Bill was not coming. He had never kept her waiting like this. Yet as the thought swept over her, a loud, long ring came from downstairs. She went to the door, stood with eyes fastened on the dusk. A figure loomed out of it, head bent, feet taking the steps two at a time.

He did not look up until they were in the room. Then his head went back and the look of desperation he wore made her go to him swiftly and push him into a chair. He sank down without resistance and covered his face with hands he made no attempt to steady. She lifted hers from his shoulders.

“What is it, Bill? What’s happened?”

“I—I’m late,” were his first shaky words. “Sorry.”

“But what’s happened? Tell me!”

“Naomi—I—” he broke off. “I don’t know how to put it. I feel that just telling you is an insult—”

Ah, she knew now! She knew what was coming.

“That man, Kent!” he stumbled on. “They had me all afternoon, he and Alec McConnell. I had to listen to things he said about you. If I’d been a _man_, I wouldn’t have given him the chance to say them.”

Eyes clinging to hers, he waited for some question, some denial. He was giving her the chance to strike Marshy’s prosecution off the record without one word of cross-examination. He was urging her with his eyes to give Marshy the lie without even hearing what the man had told him.

All her anguish of the night before had been, like so much feminine anguish, unnecessary. It was in her hands now. She had only to concoct a story of jealousy or an ancient grudge of Kent’s and this boy who had come to mean everything to her would accept it with the gladness of one who doesn’t want to question. Yet she turned her face from him and said nothing.

“I listened until I couldn’t stand it. They made me! Then I knocked him down. Swine like that ought to be killed!”

“He’s not swine,” she found herself saying in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. “He was probably telling you the truth for what he thought was your own good.”

“Naomi!”

“Oh yes, it was probably all true. You don’t know what I am, boy. You don’t know what I’ve been.”

He was on his feet, grasping her arm, straining down to read her veiled eyes.

“Naomi, do you know what you’re saying? He accused you of—” he halted.

She took him up without waiting.

“Of things he can prove to you, boy dear. I’ve known Marshy Kent years and years and he wouldn’t tell you anything about me he didn’t know he could back up.”

In her submission to the inevitable, in her complete lack of defense, she was so helpless, so almost child-like that the boy’s fury against Kent flamed back to his eyes, burning out the horror of her dumb confession. His hands were knotted into the hard fists that had sent his informer spinning to the floor. His chin was fighting forward. His eyes fastened on the exotic beauty that was Naomi’s intensified by the fact that she was woman, helpless under the lash of another man. That was all he saw—a beautiful woman who needed his protection! And to every other vision his youth determined to blind itself.

“I don’t care what he’s told me! I don’t care what you’ve been. I only know I love you. You’re the most glorious, fascinating woman in the world—and I want you, do you hear! I want you more than anything—more than anyone! I love you! Naomi—will you marry me—now—to-night?”

Her eyes closed. All she had planned—all she had longed for! Marshy’s move had only succeeded in thrusting it more swiftly into her grasp. And yet she did not stop to think of that. All that registered were those three words: “I love you.” Their sweetness ran like some warm fluid through her veins.

“We’ll get away from here!” he plunged on. “I’ll take you west—home. No Kents there to tell ugly stories. We’ll forget them ourselves. Nobody need ever know. We’ll be happy—and I’ll have you all to myself. Those lips and eyes—they’ll be all mine. Naomi—dearest—let me kiss them now!”

Her arms had gone up instinctively but they dropped again without touching him. She held away, not looking at him.

“No, Bill,—it can’t be.”

“Naomi!”

“No.”

“You think that what he said makes any difference? I tell you, it doesn’t. I don’t care! I’d marry you—”

“It’s not that. It’s just—I couldn’t make you happy, boy.”

“Yes, you could. You’re the only woman—”

“No—I couldn’t. Why, you don’t love me. You love the thing I represent—the thing that represents me—Broadway. Take me away from it and what would I be? A faded woman, Bill, a woman who would only make you hate her because she’s so different from what you thought. And I’d rather never have you than to see you in a short time—oh, it wouldn’t take long!—disgusted with me.”

“You don’t love me—that’s it!” he flamed.

“If I didn’t love you I’d marry you. Sounds queer, that, doesn’t it?”

“Then we both care! What else matters?”

“Only that I want to give you happiness—and I can’t.”

“You’re the only woman who can.”

“No I’m not, dear. You think so now. But it’s the grease-paint stuff you love! Out on the ranch—with my hair its own color you’d wonder why you did it.”

He paid no attention to her last whispered words.

“I’m willing to risk it! I’ll risk anything for you.”

“You’d find me out, Bill—you’d be bound to. Why, I never go out in the sun without wearing a veil to keep the secret of my complexion to myself. And there, where you belong, I’d be in the sun all day.” She tried to smile. “How would I look going round a ranch like the queen of a harem? No, you’d have to see me as I am. And in a week you’d hate me.”

He went close, hearing only the sob in her voice.

“Dearest—you think I’m young—that I don’t know my own mind. You think I don’t know my woman when I meet her!”

She smiled now, with a little shake of the head.

“You don’t. You only think you do. You love the way people look at me in a restaurant. You love the way I wear my clothes. You love my coloring. It’s put on, boy. And so is the sheen of my hair you rave about and the blackness of my lashes. It’s all fake—like me.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because—because you mean more to me than anything in the world. Because I’d rather have your happiness than my own.”

Even as the words came, they amazed her. All afternoon they had been struggling deep down in her consciousness. A girl with stark young eyes had opened wide those veiled ones.

“Then that’s the only thing that counts,” he retaliated, eyes alight, and his arms went out. “If you love me, I don’t care about anything else.”

She pulled back. Once his lips touched hers, she knew she could not go through with what she had to do. Recklessly—while the mood held her—as if she were another person playing a trick on Naomi Stokes, she moved round the room, turning off the soft lamplight. A second later the central chandelier flashed its glare and Naomi was at his side again.

“Wait, Bill—I want to show you something.”

She disappeared into the bedroom. When she came back, there was a white rag clenched in her hand.

“I’m not really beautiful the way you see me.” And even as she spoke the words her eyes were frightened. “I’m a faker—but for once I’m going to be honest with you—with myself. I’m going to let you see the woman you don’t know, the woman you’d see—out there.”

Without pausing to give herself breath she dragged the cloth, weighted with some thick lotion, across her face. It came away covered with color. She threw it aside. The face it left lifted to his was like tragedy, unmasked.

“Look—I can scrape it off—the beauty you love so! This is the way I’ll be in broad daylight, Bill. These lines—they’re the years I’ve stolen from you. They’re the real me—the me you don’t know. Do you want me now?”

He looked down on the face that in ten seconds had aged ten years. Dazedly he took in the circles under the eyes, the pinched lines from nostrils to mouth, the pallor of the lips. The luminous cream of her skin had given way to a whiteness that looked dead. All the exotic color of her—the color that fascinated him—was gone. It was almost as if some magic had wafted away the Naomi he knew, as if this were another woman.

He stood there gazing down on her, confused, silent before the revelation he could not quite compass. Only the eyes of his Naomi remained, infinitely sad, infinitely lovely, even with the heavy black gone from their straight lashes.

“You don’t want me now. You don’t want the woman I really am. Don’t stop to think! Don’t hesitate! Just answer me,” she whispered.

But he did stop to think. Without quite meeting the eyes raised to his, holding his own away from the face that seemed suddenly a strange one, he lifted her two trembling hands, put them against his lips.

“I’ve asked you to marry me, Naomi,” he said huskily. “I’m asking you again.”

“Thank you for that, boy dear. You—you’re just everything I thought you were. But I’m not going to take you up. Not now! If you want me six months from now, come back for me. I’ll know then—that you need me. Only, dear—you won’t come.”

He looked straight at her then, letting himself see only the eyes which had not changed. And she knew before he spoke that he was bowing, without argument, to her verdict.

“I’ll come back for you,” he told her. “I won’t wait six months. You’ll see!”

She simply shook her head and no smile of hope touched her pale lips.

A few minutes later she stood looking for a long time at the door that had closed after him. Then she put on hat and coat and went down the steps and over to the theater.