thought you were the best dancer in the company.”
“What about my singing?”
“You have a very agreeable and well trained voice.”
“I’m afraid you are incorrigible. You ought to have said that I sang better than I danced, and the fib would have pleased me immensely; we women like to hear ourselves praised for accomplishments we don’t possess. No, my dear, rule art out of the cast and substitute advertisement. Did you notice a dowdy creature who was lunching with two men on your right? She wore a brown Tussore silk and a turban – well, she writes the ‘Pars About People’ in ‘The Daily Journal.’ I’ll bet you a pair of gloves that you will see something like this in to-morrow’s paper: ‘Lord Archie Beaumanoir entertained a party of friends at the Embankment Hotel yesterday. At the next table Miss Millicent Jaques, of the Wellington Theater, was lunching with a pretty girl whom I did not know. Miss Jaques wore an exquisite,’ etc., etc. Fill in full details of my personal appearance, and you have the complete paragraph. The public, the stupid, addle-headed public, fatten on that sort of thing, and it keeps me going far more effectively than my feeble attempts to warble a couple of songs which you could sing far better if only you made up your mind to come on the stage. But there! After such unwonted candor I must have a smoke. You won’t try a cigarette? Well, don’t look so shocked. This isn’t a church, you know.”
Spencer, who had listened with interest to Miss Jaques’s outspoken views, suddenly awoke to the fact that he was playing the part of an eavesdropper. He had all an American’s chivalrous instincts where women were concerned, and his first impulse was to betake himself and his letters to his own room. Yet, when all was said and done, he was in a hotel; the girls were strangers, and likely to remain so; and it was their own affair if they chose to indulge in unguarded confidences. So he compromised with his scruples by pouring out a glass of water, replacing the decanter on its tray with some degree of noise. Then he struck an unnecessary match and applied it to his cigar before opening the first of the Denver letters.
As his glance was momentarily diverted, he did not grasp the essential fact that neither of the pair was disturbed by his well meant efforts. Millicent Jaques was lighting a cigarette, and this, to a woman, is an all absorbing achievement, while her friend was so new to her palatial surroundings that she had not the least notion of the existence of another open floor just above the level of her eyes.
“I don’t know how in the world you manage to exist,” went on the actress, tilting herself back in her chair to watch the smoke curling lazily upward. “What was it you said the other day when we met? You are some sort of secretary and amanuensis to a scientist? Does that mean typewriting? And what is the science?”
“Professor von Eulenberg is a well known man,” was the quiet reply. “I type his essays and reports, it is true; but I also assist in his classification work, and it is very interesting.”
“What does he classify?”
“Mostly beetles.”
“Oh, how horrid! Do you ever see any?”
“Thousands.”
“I should find one enough. If it is a fair question, what does your professor pay you?”
“Thirty shillings a week. In his own way he is as poor as I am.”
“And do you mean to tell me that you can live in those nice rooms you took me to, and dress decently on that sum?”
“I do, as a matter of fact; but I have a small pension, and I earn a little by writing titbits of scientific gossip for ‘The Firefly.’ Herr von Eulenberg helps. He translates interesting paragraphs from the foreign technical papers, and I jot them down, and by that means I pick up sufficient to buy an extra hat or wrap, and go to a theater or a concert. But I have to be careful, as my employer is absent each summer for two months. He goes abroad to hunt new specimens, and of course I am not paid then.”
“Is he away now?”
“Yes.”
“And how do you pass your time?”
“I write a good deal. Some day I hope to get a story accepted by one of the magazines; but it is so hard for a beginner to find an opening.”
“Yet when I offered to give you a start in the chorus of the best theater in London, – a thing, mind you, that thousands of girls are aching for, – you refused.”
“I’m sorry, Millie dear; but I am not cut out for the stage. It does not appeal to me.”
“Heigho! Tastes differ. Stick to your beetles, then, and marry your professor.”
Helen laughed, with a fresh joyousness that was good to hear. “Herr von Eulenberg is blessed with an exceedingly stout wife and five very healthy children already,” she cried.
“Then that settles it. You’re mad, quite mad! Let us talk of something else. Do you ever have a holiday? Where are you going this year? I’m off to Champèry when the theater closes.”
“Champèry, – in Switzerland, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, that is the dream of my life, – to see the everlasting snows; to climb those grand, solemn mountains; to cross the great passes that one reads of in the travel books. Now at last you have made me envious. Are you going alone? But of course that is a foolish question. You intend to join others from the theater, no doubt?”
“Well – er – something of the sort. I fear my enthusiasm will not carry me far on the lines that would appeal to you. I suppose you consider a short skirt, strong boots, a Tyrolese hat, and an alpenstock to be a sufficient rig-out, whereas my mountaineering costumes will fill five large trunks and three hat boxes. I’m afraid, Helen, we don’t run on the same rails, as our American cousins say.”
There was a little pause. Millicent’s words, apparently tossed lightly into the air after a smoke spiral, had in them a touch of bitterness, it might be of self analysis. Her guest seemed to take thought before she answered:
“Perhaps the divergence is mainly in environment. And I have always inclined to the more serious side of life. Even when we were together in Brussels – ”
“You? Serious? At Madam Bérard’s? I like that. Who was it that kicked the plaster off the dormitory wall higher than her head? Who put pepper in Signor Antonio’s snuff box?”
Spencer saw the outer waves of a flush on Helen’s cheeks. “This is exceedingly interesting,” he thought; “but I cannot even persuade myself that I ought to listen any longer. Yet, if I rise now and walk away they will know I heard every word.”
Nevertheless, he meant to go, at the risk of their embarrassment; but he waited for Helen’s reply. She laughed, and the ripple of her mirth was as musical as her voice, whereas many women dowered with pleasantly modulated notes for ordinary conversation should be careful never to indulge in laughter, which is less controllable and therefore natural.
“That is the worst of having a past,” she said. “Let me put it, then, that entomology as a pursuit sternly represses frivolousness.”
“Does entomology mean beetles?”
“My dear, if you asked Herr von Eulenberg that question he would sate your curiosity with page extracts from one of his books. He has written a whole volume to prove that the only true entoma, or insects, are Condylopoda and Hexapoda, which means – ”
“Cockroaches! Good gracious! To think of Helen Wynton, who once hit a Belgian boy very hard on the nose for being rude, wasting her life on such rubbish! And you actually seem to thrive on it. I do believe you are far happier than I.”
“At present I am envying you that trip to Champèry. Why cannot some fairy godmother call in at No. 5, Warburton Gardens, to-night and wave over my awed head a wand that shall scatter sleeping car tickets and banknotes galore, or at any rate sufficient thereof to take me to the Engadine and back?”
“Ah, the Engadine. I am not going there this year, I think.”
“Haven’t you planned your tour yet?”
“No