Catholics -- Fiction; Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Divorce -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction
She had the charm of perfect health. About her dark irises the whites
of her eyes were very white, touched with the faintest bluish tinge
from the arterial blood beneath. There was a natural lustre in her
hair, uncommon among indoor people. Her steps took her straight to
where she wanted to go. She made no false motions. When she looked
for something in her desk, she opened the drawer where it was, not the
one above or below. Her muscles, nerves and proportions were so
balanced that it was difficult for her to fall into an ungraceful
posture.
Considering these manifold excellent qualities, the most remarkable
thing about her, he thought, was that she had not long before been
invited to embellish the mansion and the motors of a millionaire. He
wrote enthusiastically to his mother suggesting that it would be nice
to invite her to Rogersville for a portion at least of her coming
summer vacation, which brought a most unhappy smile to his mother's
lips. But since he did not repeat his request, the invitation was not
extended.
The first time that he knew he regarded her as a woman rather than as a
workwoman was one afternoon when the declining sun threw its light
higher and higher into the big office. A ray shone on and from her
patent leather belt and into his eyes. He looked up annoyed from his
work. She was sitting a few desks ahead by the window, her back toward
him. Before very long the thing had fascinated him and he found
himself immensely concerned with the climb of the sun up her shirt
waist.
It reached her collar in a manner entirely marvelous and then precisely
at the moment when he was finally to know its effect upon her hair, she
lowered the shade. What luck!
The next day was cloudy. The next was Saturday and she quit at twelve,
before the sun got around to her window. Monday she lowered the shade
before the light got even to her shoulder. Little did she know of the
repressed anguish she was so bringing to the gloomy young hustler
behind her. But on Tuesday the sunlight reached her hair momentarily
as she leaned back in her chair and gleamed and glittered there, a
coruscation of glory for fully thirty seconds--long enough to overturn
in catastrophe his thirty years and their slowly built purposes.
He resolved hereafter to deal primarily not in life insurance, but in
life, which meant Georgia.
VII
A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
During the ensuing days Mason was hopeless for work.
From the office books he found out where she lived, slyly as he
supposed, but not so slyly that the information clerk didn't tell
someone, who told someone who teased Georgia at the luncheon club, not
thereby displeasing her. For he was a good-looking fellow and capable;
furthermore, he had always kept himself to himself, so putting several
noses out of joint, it was said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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