The Heart Line: A Drama of San FranciscoBurgess, Gelett
General
The Heart Line: A Drama of San Francisco
Burgess, Gelett
Bohemianism -- Fiction; Fortune-tellers -- Fiction; San Francisco (Calif.) -- Fiction
"Payson?" he repeated. "Oliver Payson? No, I don’t think so, have we?"
"I don’t remember the name, but I’ll run over the cards. Talk about
method! I wish Madam Spoll had some! P., Packard, Page—no; no Payson
here." She returned to the telephone. "No, we have nothing at all.
Good-by." Then she hung up the receiver.
Granthope, meanwhile, had been walking up and down the room, frowning.
"It’s queer—that name is somehow familiar; I’ve heard of it somewhere.
Oliver Payson—Oliver Payson."
"Funny how you never can think of a thing when you want to," said Fancy,
sharpening her pencil.
"I know something about Oliver Payson," Granthope insisted. "But it’s
no use, I can’t get it. Perhaps it will come to me."
"You never know what you can do till you stop trying," Fancy offered
sagely.
Granthope spoke abstractedly, gazing at the ceiling. "It’s something
about a picture, it seems to me."
He walked into his studio, still puzzling with blurred memories. Fancy
took up _The Second Wife_.
At ten o’clock the door opened, and Fancy’s hand flew to her back hair.
A girl of perhaps twenty years with intense eyes entered timidly. Her
hair was distracted by the wind and her color was high, increasing the
charm of her pretty, earnest, finely freckled face. She wore a jacket a
little too small for her, with frayed cuffs. Her shoes were badly worn;
her hat was cheap, but effective.
"I called to see Mr. Granthope; I think I have an appointment at ten,"
she said.
"Miss Heller?" Fancy asked. The girl nodded. Fancy took inventory of
the girl’s points, looking her up and down before she replied, "All
right; just be seated for a moment, please."
She walked to the studio and met Granthope coming out. They spoke in
whispers.
"Let her down easy," Fancy suggested. "It’s a love affair. She has a
letter in her coat pocket, all folded up; you can see the wrinkles where
it bulges out. Hat pin made of an army button, and she doesn’t know
enough to paint. Make her take off her coat and see if her right sleeve
isn’t soiled above where she usually wears a paper cuff to protect it.
She is half frightened to death and she has been crying."
"All right," said Granthope. "I’ll give her five dollars’ worth of
optimism."
Fancy put her hand in his softly. "Say, Frank, just charge this to me
and be good to her, will you?"
"All right. If you like her, I’ll do my best. She’ll be smiling when
she comes out, you see if she isn’t."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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