New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Women white collar workers -- Fiction
To Una Golden, of Panama, the waltz and the two-step were solemn
affairs. She could make her feet go in a one-two-three triangle with
approximate accuracy, if she didn't take any liberties with them. She
was relieved to find that Todd danced with a heavy accuracy which kept
her from stumbling.... But their performance was solemn and joyless,
while by her skipped Sam Weintraub, in evening clothes with black velvet
collar and cuffs, swinging and making fantastic dips with the lovely
Miss Moore, who cuddled into his arms and swayed to his swing.
"Let's cut out the next," said Todd, and she consented, though Sanford
Hunt came boyishly, blushingly up to ask her for a dance.... She was
intensely aware that she was a wall-flower, in a row with the anxious
Miss Ingalls and the elderly frump, Miss Fisle. Sam Weintraub seemed to
avoid her, and, though she tried to persuade herself that his greasy,
curly, red hair and his pride of evening clothes and sharp face were
blatantly Jewish, she knew that she admired his atmosphere of
gorgeousness and was in despair at being shut out of it. She even feared
that Sanford Hunt hadn't really wanted to dance with her, and she
wilfully ignored his frequent glances of friendliness and his efforts to
introduce her and his "lady friend." She was silent and hard, while poor
Todd, trying not to be a radical and lecture on single-tax or municipal
ownership, attempted to be airy about the theater, which meant the one
show he had seen since he had come to New York.
From vague dissatisfaction she drifted into an active resentment at
being shut out of the world of pretty things, of clinging gowns and
graceful movement and fragrant rooms. While Todd was taking her home she
was saying to herself over and over, "Nope; it's just as bad as parties
at Panama. Never really enjoyed 'em. I'm out of it. I'll stick to my
work. Oh, drat it!"
§ 4
Blindly, in a daily growing faith in her commercial future, she shut out
the awkward gaieties of the school, ignored Todd and Sanford Hunt and
Sam Weintraub, made no effort to cultivate the adorable Miss Moore's
rather flattering friendliness for her. She was like a girl grind in a
coeducational college who determines to head the class and to that
devotes all of a sexless energy.
Only Una was not sexless. Though she hadn't the dancing-girl's oblivious
delight in pleasure, though her energetic common sense and willingness
to serve had turned into a durable plodding, Una was alive, normal,
desirous of love, as the flower-faced girl grind of the college so often
is not, to the vast confusion of numerous ardent young gentlemen.
She could not long forbid herself an interest in Sanford Hunt and Sam
Weintraub; she even idealized Todd as a humble hero, a self-made and
honest man, which he was, though Una considered herself highly
charitable to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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