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
There were telephone conversations often after that, then occasional
lunches down-town, when Fancy, always modishly dressed, drew many an eye
to her well-rounded, well-filled Eton jacket, her smart red hat, her
fresh white gloves and her high-heeled shoes. Gay was proud of her, and
he showed her off to his friends without caution. Fancy was nothing
loath. Occasionally they went to the theater, dining previously in
style at some popular restaurant, where Gay hoped that he might be seen
with her. To such as discovered them, he would bow with proud
proprietorship; or perhaps saunter over, on some flimsy pretext, to hear
his friends say, with winks and smiles:
"By Jove, that girl’s all right, old man! She’s a stunner. Say,
introduce me, will you?"
To which Gay would answer:
"Not on your folding bed! This is a close corporation, old man. I’ve
got that claim staked out, see? So long!" and walk away pleased.
At the theater, he always made a point of going out between the acts, in
order that his reëntry might point more conspicuously at his conquest.
Afterward, at Zinkand’s, having engaged a table beside which all the
world must pass, he would pose, apparently oblivious to the crowd,
talking to her with absorbed interest.
Fancy suffered the exhibition without displeasure. She had no objection
to being looked at. To make a picture of herself, to play the arch and
coquettish before a room of well-dressed folk was one of the things she
did best.
She was recognized occasionally and pointed out by one or another of
Granthope’s patrons. "There she is; over behind you, in the white lace
hat, with a chatelaine watch—don’t look just yet, though," was the
almost audible formula which Gay P. Summer learned to wait for. At such
times his chest swelled with pride. To walk into a restaurant with her
late at night and leave a wake of excited whispers behind him, was all
he knew of fame.
It did not escape Gay’s notice, however, that Fancy’s eyes were not
always for him. In the middle of his longest and most elaborate story,
she would often throw a surreptitious glance about the room, letting it
rest for an instant—a butterfly’s caress—upon some admiring stalwart
stranger. Once or twice he detected the flicker of Fancy’s smile, a
smile not meant for him. He found that, although his attention was all
for Fancy, Fancy’s errant glances allowed nothing and nobody to escape
her observation. If he mentioned any one whom he had seen in the room,
Fancy had seen him, or more often her, first. Fancy always knew what
she wore, what it cost, what she was doing, how much she liked him and
what her little game was.
This sort of thing would have been an education for Gay, had he been
amenable to such teaching; but what women see and know without a tutor
he would and could never know. Wherefore, such dialogues as this were
common:
Fancy: "The brute! He’s actually made her cry, now. She’s a little
fool, though; it’s good enough for her!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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