before he could even register astonishment she faced about quickly and joined Scott.
“Who was that?” he asked, frowning.
“Isn’t he darling-looking?”
“If you like that sort of looks.”
Scott’s tone implied that the gentleman referred to was effete and overdressed. Yanci laughed, impersonally admiring the skillfulness of her ruse.
It was in preparation for that all-important Saturday night that on Thursday she went into a shop on 42nd Street to buy some long gloves. She made her purchase and handed the clerk a fifty-dollar bill so that her lightened pocketbook would feel heavier with the change she could put in. To her surprise the clerk tendered her the package and a twenty-five-cent piece.
“Is there anything else?”
“The rest of my change.”
“You’ve got it. You gave me five dollars. Four-seventy-five for the gloves leaves twenty-five cents.”
“I gave you fifty dollars.”
“You must be mistaken.”
Yanci searched her purse.
“I gave you fifty!” she repeated frantically.
“No, ma’am, I saw it myself.”
They glared at each other in hot irritation. A cash girl was called to testify, then the floor-manager; a small crowd gathered.
“Why, I’m perfectly sure!” cried Yanci, two angry tears trembling in her eyes. “I’m positive!”
The floor-manager was sorry, but the lady really must have left it at home. There was no fifty-dollar bill in the cash drawer. The bottom was creaking out of Yanci’s rickety world.
“If you’ll leave your address,” said the floor manager, “I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”
“Oh, you damn fools!” cried Yanci, losing control. “I’ll get the police!”
And weeping like a child she left the shop. Outside, helplessness overpowered her. How could she prove anything? It was after six and the store was closing even as she left it. Whichever employee had the fifty-dollar bill would be on her way home now before the police could arrive, and why should the New York police believe her, or even give her fair play?
In despair she returned to the Ritz, where she searched through her trunk for the bill with hopeless and mechanical gestures. It was not there. She had known it would not be there. She gathered every penny together and found that she had fifty-one dollars and thirty cents. Telephoning the office, she asked that her bill be made out up to the following noon—she was too dispirited to think of leaving before then.
She waited in her room, not daring even to send for ice water. Then the phone rang and she heard the room clerk’s voice, cheerful and metallic.
“Miss Bowman?”
“Yes.”
“Your bill, including tonight, is ex-act-ly fifty-one twenty.”
“Fifty-one twenty?” Her voice was trembling.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thank you very much.”
Breathless, she sat there beside the telephone, too frightened now to cry. She had ten cents left in the world!
XI
Friday. She had scarcely slept. There were dark rings under her eyes, and even a hot bath followed by a cold one failed to arouse her from a despairing lethargy. She had never fully realized what it would mean to be without money in New York; her determination and vitality seemed to have vanished at last with her fifty-dollar bill. There was no help for it now—she must attain her desire today or never.
She was to meet Scott at the Plaza for tea. She wondered—was it her imagination, or had his manner been consciously cool the afternoon before? For the first time in several days she had needed to make no effort to keep the conversation from growing sentimental. Suppose he had decided that it must come to nothing—that she was too extravagant, too frivolous. A hundred eventualities presented themselves to her during the morning—a dreary morning, broken only by her purchase of a ten-cent bun at a grocery store.
It was her first food in twenty hours, but she self-consciously pretended to the grocer to be having an amusing and facetious time in buying one bun. She even asked to see his grapes, but told him, after looking at them appraisingly—and hungrily—that she didn’t think she’d buy any. They didn’t look ripe to her, she said. The store was full of prosperous women who, with thumb and first finger joined and held high in front of them, were inspecting food. Yanci would have liked to ask one of them for a bunch of grapes. Instead she went up to her room in the hotel and ate her bun.
When four o’clock came she found that she was thinking more about the sandwiches she would have for tea than of what else must occur there, and as she walked slowly up Fifth Avenue toward the Plaza she felt a sudden faintness which she took several deep breaths of air to overcome. She wondered vaguely where the bread line was. That was where people in her condition should go—but where was it? How did one find out? She imagined fantastically that it was in the phone book under B , or perhaps under N , for New York Bread Line.
She reached the Plaza. Scott’s figure, as he stood waiting for her in the crowded lobby, was a personification of solidity and hope.
“Let’s hurry!” she cried with a tortured smile. “I feel rather punk and I want some tea.”
She ate a club sandwich, some chocolate ice cream and six tea biscuits. She could have eaten much more, but she dared not. The eventuality of her hunger having been disposed of, she must turn at bay now and face this business of life, represented by the handsome young man who sat opposite watching her with some emotion whose import she could not determine just behind his level eyes.
But the words, the glance, subtle, pervasive and sweet, that she had planned, failed somehow to come.
“Oh, Scott,” she said in a low voice, “I’m so tired.”
“Tired of what?” he asked coolly.
“Of—everything.”
There was a silence.
“I’m afraid,” she said uncertainly—“I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep that date with you tomorrow.”
There was no pretense in her voice now. The emotion was apparent in the waver of each word, without intention or control.
“I’m going away.”
“Are you? Where?”
His tone showed a strong interest, but she winced as she saw that that was all.
“My aunt’s come back. She wants me to join her in Florida right away.”
“Isn’t this rather unexpected?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll be coming back soon?” he said after a moment.
“I don’t think so. I think we’ll go to Europe from—from New Orleans.”
“Oh!”
Again there was a pause. It lengthened. In the shadow of a moment it would become awkward, she knew. She had lost—well? Yet, she would go on to the end.
“Will you miss me?”
“Yes.”
One word. She caught his eyes, wondered for a moment if she saw more there than that kindly interest; then she dropped her own again.
“I like it—here at the Plaza,” she heard herself saying.
They spoke of things like that. Afterwards she could never remember what they said. They spoke—even of the tea, of the thaw that was ended and the cold