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What a small boy he was! Probably if she were to call his attention to these occasional lapses, his chagrin and repentance would be of the same dear brand he displayed when she occasionally ventured to tell him he had kept her needlessly waiting, hours on end, for a telephone message which had been agreed upon between them and which he had meanwhile forgotten. One did not take the chance, though, where money-matters were concerned. It was a subject sure to make him look harassed.

Hattie had suggested an explanation that was as peculiar as it was possible.

“He don’t care for the money. I know those Jewish boys. Look the way he throws it around every other way. Didn’t you tell me
yourself he keeps three carriages? He don’t care for the money, Ray. He wants to keep you little. I used to have one like that. Birds-of-paradise and diamond bowknots for some little chippie he didn’t care a tinker’s dam about. But ruching at the neck instead of diamonds and sapolio-perfume for me. He figures if he dikes you out too flashy, and other fellows begin throwing eyes your way, that will take away his feeling of security about having you here when he wants you. Don’t tell me! What I don’t know about the male profession you could write on a postage stamp.”

There might be something in that. Something subconsciously at work in Walter. He frequently praised her ability to look so stylish in homemade clothes. Hattie, who in her parlance had feathered her own nest, was forever warning Ray of the importance of putting by a few jewels, a few furs, a few expensive trinkets, for the proverbial rainy day. Walter’s gifts of jewels to her had been so inconsequential that they verged on the childish. A turquoise ring. A watch to pin to her waist with a garnet fleur-de-lis brooch. A pair of gold link bracelets for which she collected heart bangles. Occasionally a gold or silver spoon, for Emma’s collection.

It was not improbable, after all, that this might be Walter’s way of keeping their relationship on a plane far and safely away from the calculating one that was so horrible to her in the women with whom Ray realized she was now classed.

She might shop with them, lunch with them, attend races with them, as so often she did when tedium was upon her, but secretly she regarded her alliance as something special. Not in the class with the sometimes promiscuous, always mercenary basis of most of “the girls.”

That was why the idea of “taking up” something smote her pleasantly. It would not only help with the problem of idle hours, sitting around in one flat or another, with Hattie or one or two other friends whose chatter was not edifying, but it would enable her to earn “pin money” and at the same time improve herself.

The desire to improve herself was one that flashed intermittently over Ray; had done so since the days subsequent to Woodward High, when she had made sporadic attempts at elocution,
burnt wood, and Delsarte. Piano lessons had entered her head since her new inheritance of leisure, but Walter had laughed that off. A Professor Ederlee, advertising in the
Times
a course of ten lectures at Beethoven Hall on “How to Improve Your Mind,” at five dollars the series, had caught her fancy; and, paying in advance, she had attended three. But, poor Ray, the overheated lecture-hall, the reference to names, books, and places with which she was not familiar, and the atmosphere of upholstered middle-aged ladies with adenoids, had been too much for her concentration.

How could you improve your mind, she asked herself, in half-humorous disgust at her inability for sustained effort, if you haven’t any to improve? Old duck of a professor! Come right down to it, he didn’t seem to know any too much. He pronounced Cincinnati, “Cincinnatus,” the one and only time he had occasion to use it from the platform. Besides, she could have sworn his body nudged hers too closely one day while poring over a book list with her.

Music was another matter. The purchase of a small music box she felt to be a step in the right direction, morning after morning, moving along to its unrelenting repertoire, sweeping, dusting, mending, cooking, to “Listen to the Mocking Bird,” “ ’Tis the Last Rose of Summer,” “Turkish Patrol,” “Alice, Where Art Thou?”.

All about town, if you ventured near park or popular concerts, Sousa’s marches were raging—“The Washington Post,” “Liberty Bell,” “High-School Cadets,” “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Over in Hattie’s flat, where there was an upright piano strewn with every conceivable song of the moment, it was lazy fun to while away an afternoon picking them out with one finger, or singing in duets, trios, or foursomes. “Sunshine of Paradise Alley,” “She Was Bred in Old Kentucky,” “Just Tell Them That You Saw Me.”

Of course, the kind of music that really improved you was grand opera, or the concert hall, where you heard Calvé, Pachmann, Ysaye and Paderewski. Somehow, with the best intentions in the world, she never achieved the recital hall. How she did love, though, the lilting pathos of “Sweet Marie, Come to Me,” “You Made Me What I Am Today,” “The Pardon Came Too Late,” “Darling Sue, Dear”! Tears glittered along her gray eyes, and she lay back on the couch in
an orgy of sweet soul-sickness, while Hattie sang in a deep-voiced contralto, and a girl named Jessie Isman, who was later to figure in a notorious breach-of-promise case, splashed ringed fingers along the piano keys.

And yet it was consciousness of these long hours of flabby inertia, combined with a need to meet certain of the pressing demands that were coming from Youngstown, that prompted her determination to “take up” something.

What could a person do? It must be something that could be accomplished at home. Gone were the days when she even felt the urge to leave the house of a morning for a day among the moving marts of men. Gone, and strangely there was no desire for their return. The flat was so snug. It fitted like a warm cape. The ease of sleeping late was pleasant. The sweet delights of waiting, unquenched.

There had been a woman in Cincinnati, wife of the organist of First Lutheran Church, who had made quite a living in ceramics and had finally procured a position in the Rookwood Pottery because of her proficiency with glaze. China painting was fashionable, lucrative, and genteel.

There was a sign in one of the windows of a ground-floor apartment of the building in which Ray lived. “China Painting Taught. Fifty Cents a Lesson.” Even Walter was receptive to that idea when she broached it, lying one evening in his arms while this time he bent back her fingers one by one.

“You girls are always wanting to mess around in one thing or another,” he said. “Never saw the like with women nowadays. Restless, that’s what you are. But go ahead. China-paint to your heart’s content.”

The following day she began learning to outline pink and yellow rose petals on teacups, with a green leaf lying on the saucer.

“You would be surprised,” Ray was fond of remarking to “the girls” during their periods of more or less protracted visits to one another, “how much my work has done for my nerves. Quieted them down like anything.”

A vigorous, high-busted blonde, a Mrs. Saperlee, had recently moved into the building. Her flat was one of the elaborate, front ones. The life-size plaster-of-Paris Negro boy who stood at the entrance to receive visiting cards, but never drew more than cigar butts, was indicative of the interior. Mrs. Saperlee’s flat, which she had formerly conducted on the top floor of an old house in Fifteenth Street, was elaborate with everything, from an upright piano with plush flanks, to gold furniture and pale rugs that were splashed with full-blown pink roses. Men and women in evening-dress met there over card tables covered in green felt; and until four and five o’clock in the morning, the two Rastuses, Mrs. Saperlee’s pair of gray-headed Negro servants, both of whom answered to the same name, served bowl and weal.

During the day she was generous with her premises, passing around leftover sandwiches and half-emptied bottles of good vintage with a generosity that came to establish her flat as favorite headquarters for afternoon gatherings of girls with time on their hands. Euchre and poker games flourished there among them,
usually for indifferent stakes, Saperlee not being particularly receptive to that type of trade.

She was one of Ray’s best customers. “I know just how you feel, dearest, about the china painting quieting your nerves. It does for you what a bit of snuff in private does for me. Gets your mind off yourself. I think I could use another dozen of those sweet little ash-receivers with the forget-me-nots and pansies.”

The girls kept quite a flow of orders coming in. Dresser sets, consisting of comb-and-brush tray, hair-receiver, small stand on which to hang finger rings, hairpin tray, powder-box. Breakfast sets, tea sets, even luncheon and dinner sets were in demand too, and scarcely a day that Ray was not busy at turning out the souvenir cup and saucer, inscribed with the recipient’s name. Shaving-mugs too came to be a specialty, “Pet, to Fred.” “Love Me Little, Love Me Long.” “Tom’s Cup.” It was pleasant work, leaving no evidence in the flat, except a small table laid out with objects that had not yet gone to be baked.

It is doubtful if Walter, after the first little while, when the arrival of each new piece from the ovens was an event, was ever even conscious of the considerable traffic in china painting that occupied part of Ray’s days. That she executed pieces and small sets was known to him. There were his own porcelain cuff links monogrammed; and every once in a while she pointed out that a salad-dish done in yellow daisies was new, or the china globe on a lamp, elaborately designed in full-blown roses. What he did not realize was to what extent the sideline took care of such matters as little Emma, certain table delicacies that found their way to the fulsome meals, or the hassocks, sofa-pillows, slippers, and lounging robes that were constantly making appearance for the purpose of aiding and abetting his comfort.

It was easier to concentrate on the china painting than it had been on the lectures. Here, the mind had free play. Etching the outline of petals onto a china pickle dish was a different matter from trying to clutch on to abstractions of thought. Three volumes of the prescribed reading of the course stood quite showily on the
cellarette, giving an “effect.” “Highlights in English Prose.” “Highlights in American Prose.” “Highlights in English and American Poetry.” You still wanted terribly to improve yourself; but, while you read, somehow the mind skidded.

China painting, now, was another matter. You could think, for instance, and plan the evening meal in case Walter were coming, or ruminate among languid, pleasant thoughts of a general nature. Then too, unlike the lectures, which were held in a formal hall, going for a china-painting lesson was simply a matter of throwing on a cape over one’s wrapper and going downstairs, and the indoors was something from which by now you had become almost inseparable.

It was easy to learn to become a homebody. Strangely, except for occasional parties to the races, or marketing, or a stroll down the avenue, Hattie and Mrs. Saperlee and one or two other girls in the building were just as disposed toward the indoors. For a while, Ray, to combat this, determined upon a daily walk, but that petered out. After her chore of marketing, it was good to be home again. There was something big and exposed and unfriendly about the old street-scenes in which she had reveled for so many years of her life. The ogling of a male frightened her; the close voice of someone passing her. Traffic seemed somehow to have quickened in the years since she had been daily part of it.

There were many of these hateful automobiles by now, and electric cars with the habit of clanging right upon her, and something disconcerting even about the eye of the casual passerby. Eyes that stole her privacy—hard small eyes and probing eyes that roved and roved all over her until the flesh felt dessicated.

One day something happened that discomfited her so, that she trembled for hours after it had occurred. Whom should she encounter on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street, where she had gone to purchase tarragon vinegar from an importer’s shop for Walter’s salad-dressing, but a Cincinnati girl whose name had been Retta Spiegel before marriage. Retta and Ray had attended one year at High together, immediately after which Retta had married and moved away.

“Ray!”

“Retta!”

“Well, if this don’t beat anything. You living in New York, Ray?”

“I certainly am.”

“Well, if this don’t beat anything.”

Retta was a matron. She was the sort of woman you saw walking her small children to school in the morning, carrying their books and pausing every so often to twist her handkerchief against their noses. Retta, who had been slim, and, as Ray remembered so well, had worn ruffles on the inside of her shirtwaists to give her contour, was filled out now, wearing her corsetcovers tight, to produce an opposite effect. She was the kind of woman whose husband would call her “Mother.”

“I married a Toledo boy, Ray. We moved East three years ago, when he got transferred to the eastern headquarters. He’s a draftsman. We live in West Orange. Nice little home out there. My oldest boy is eleven.”

“My, my,” lied Ray, a victim of the silly trembling that had hold of her, “you certainly don’t look it, Retta.”

“And you—honestly! The same old tony Ray. Remember the time Will Cupples was so sweet on you that his mother took him out of Woodward High before Easter? You married, Ray?”

“No. I came East after my father died. I—I’m just going along about as usual.”

“I see,” said Retta, her eyes suddenly, to Ray at least, roving and roving until she could have screamed of their burn—“I see. Well, it’s mighty nice to have seen you. Give my love to old Cincinnati when you write out there. Good-by.”

Such a trifling incident to cause her to go scurrying fast as her feet would carry her back to the security, the overheated privacy, the snug, safe retreat of her flat.

That night, in one of her elaborate wrappers, and her hair down her back, and an air of general exhaustion about her, she told Walter the incident, plucking imaginary threads off his coat-lapel as she talked.

“I can’t begin to tell you, Walter, what I suffered. I thought—I thought I’d die.”