New York (State) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
He had stumbled into her trap, and she had driven him out. She ran to
the window and stared up and down the street, but there was no trace of
him. She had no idea where he could have gone. She wrung her hands and
denounced herself for a fool.
She went to the hall to pick up the photograph of Jim Dyckman. Both
halves of it were gone. Now she was frightened. Gilfoyle had departed
meekly, but he had taken the picture; therefore he must have been filled
with hate. He had revenge in his mind. And she trembled at her danger.
He might strike at any time.
She suspected his exact intention. She dreaded to have Jim Dyckman call
on her. She had a wild notion of asking him to take her away from New
York--down to Atlantic City or up to the Berkshires--anywhere to be rid
of Gilfoyle without being left alone. If she had done this she would
have done just what Gilfoyle wanted her to, and the Mann Act could have
been wielded again as a blackjack.
Meanwhile Anita was afraid to have Dyckman come to her apartment as
he constantly did. She telephoned to him that she would be busy at the
studio all day. She would meet him at dinner somewhere. But afterward
she would come home alone on one pretext or another.
She carried out this plan--and spent a day of confused terror and anger.
When Gilfoyle's letter arrived, saying that he was on his way to
Chicago, it gave her more delight than any other writing of his had
ever given her. She need not skulk any more. Her problem was as far from
solution as ever, but she wanted a respite from it, and she gave herself
up to a few days of rapture. She was free from her work at the studio,
and she was like a girl home from boarding-school on a vacation.
Dyckman found her charming in this mood. She made a child of him, and
his years of dissatisfaction were forgotten. He romped through the
festivals of New York like a cub.
There was no discussion of any date of marriage, and he was glad
enough to let the matter drift. He did not want to marry Kedzie. He was
satisfied to have her as a playmate. He was afraid to think of her as a
wife, not only from fear of the public sensation it would make, but from
fear of her in his home. Young men also know the timidities that are
considered maidenly. He did not dream of Kedzie's reason for postponing
always the matter of a wedding date.
Kedzie had come to depend on Jim for her entertainment. He took care of
her evenings, gave them vivacity and opulence. He took her to theaters,
to the opera, the music-halls, the midnight roofs, and other resorts for
the postponement of sleep. Occasionally he introduced her to friends of
his whom they encountered. It pained and angered him, and Kedzie,
too, to note that the men were inclined to eye Kedzie with tolerant
amusement. There was a twinkle of contempt in their smiling eyes that
seemed to say:
“Where did Dyckman pick you up, my pretty?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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