As they looked, she suddenly stirred and moved backward, as if occultly warned of their survey. They saw her close the window, and, drawing a chair close to it, sit down and stare out through the pane, still with that intent, impersonal expression. Bangs strolled back to the dressing-case and resumed his interrupted toilet. Laurie, fumbling vaguely with his brushes, kept his eyes on the girl in the mirror.
"Do you suppose we could see her if we went out on the street?" he asked, suddenly.
"Her? Oh, you mean that girl?" With difficulty Bangs recalled his thoughts from Haxon"s new play. "No, I don"t think so," he decided. "You see, we"re up on the tenth floor, so she must be fairly high up, too."
"She"s a wonder." Laurie was still gazing into the mirror. "Prettiest girl I"ve ever seen, I think," he reflected aloud.
Bangs snorted.
"She"s probably a peroxide," he said. "Even if she isn"t, she can"t hold a candle to your sister."
"Oh, Barbara--" Laurie considered the question of Barbara"s beauty as if it were new to him. "Babs is good-looking," he handsomely conceded. "But there"s something about this girl that"s unusual. Perhaps it"s her expression. She doesn"t look happy."
Bangs sighed with ostentation.
"If you want to study some one that isn"t happy, look at me," he invited warmly. "If that play of mine isn"t out of me pretty soon, I"ll have to have an operation!"
Laurie made no reply to this pathetic prediction, and Bangs sadly shook his head and concluded his toilet, meditating gloomily the while on the unpleasant idiosyncrasies of every one he knew. To see Devon turn suddenly into a loafer upset all his theories as well as all his plans.
Laurie, for some reason, dawdled more than usual that morning. It was after eleven before he went to breakfast. An hour earlier Bangs departed alone for their pet restaurant.
The girl in the mirror remained at her window for a long time, and Laurie watched her in growing fascination. It was not until she rose and disappeared that he felt moved to consider so sordid a question as that of food.
He joined Bangs just as that youth was finishing his after-breakfast cigar. Even under its soothing influence, he was in the mood of combined exasperation and depression with which his friends were becoming familiar.
"If we had begun work as soon as we got back to town after your sister"s wedding," he told Laurie, "we"d have had two acts ready by now, in the rough."
"No reason why you shouldn"t have four acts ready, so far as I can see,"
murmured Laurie, cheerfully attacking his grape-fruit. "All you"ve got to do is to write "em."
Bangs"s lips set.
"Not till I"ve talked "em over with you and got your ideas," he declared, positively. "If you"d just let me give you an outline--"
Laurie set down his cup.
"Do I get my breakfast in peace, or don"t I?" he demanded, coldly.
"You do, confound you!"
Bangs bit off the end of a fresh cigar and smoked it in stolid silence.
He was a person of one idea. If he couldn"t talk about the play, he couldn"t talk at all. He meditated, considering his characters, his situations, his partner"s and his own position, in a mental jumble that had lately become habitual and which was seriously affecting his nerves.
Laurie, as he ate, chatted cheerfully and at random, apparently avoiding with care any subject that might interest his partner. Bangs rose abruptly.
"Well, I"m off," he said. "See you at dinner time, I suppose."
But Laurie, it appeared, had engagements. He was taking a party of friends out to Gedney Farms that evening, in his new car, and they might decide to stay there for a day or two. Also, though he did not confide this fact to Bangs, he had an engagement for the afternoon, at a place where the card rooms were quiet and elegant and the stakes high.
He had been there half a dozen times, and had played each time. He had been able to keep himself in hand. In fact, a great part of the fascination of the game now lay in the study of its effect on himself and its test of his new-born will power. Thus far, he had played exactly as much as he had planned to play, and had secretly exulted in the fact.
What he intended, he told himself, was to learn to do things in moderation; neither to fear them nor to let them master him.
The attraction of these diversions filled his mind. He quite forgot the girl in the mirror, and it was no thought of her that drew him back to New York that night. The plans of his guests had changed, that was all.
The change brought him home at eleven o"clock. Bangs was in his own room, finding in sleep a wall of unconsciouness that separated him from his troubles. Laurie decided upon the novel pleasure of a long night of slumber for himself.
He fell asleep with surprising ease, and immediately, as it seemed, he saw the girl in the mirror. She was walking toward him, through what appeared to be a heavy fog. Her hands were outstretched to him, and he hurried to meet her; but even as he did so the fog closed down and he lost her, though he seemed to hear her voice, calling him from somewhere far away.
He awoke late in the morning with every detail of the dream vivid in his mind, so vivid, indeed, that when he approached the mirror after his morning plunge, it seemed almost a continuation of the dream to find the girl there.
He stopped short with a chuckle. The curtains of his French window were drawn apart, and in the mirror he saw the reflection of the girl as she stood in profile near her own uncurtained window and slowly dressed her hair.
It was wonderful hair, much more wonderful down than up. Laurie, who had a sophisticated notion that most of the hair on the heads of girls he knew had been purchased as removable curls and "transformations," stared with pleasure at the red-gold ma.s.s that fell down over the girl"s white garment. Then, with a little shock, he realized that the white garment was a nightdress. It was evident that, high in her lonely room, the girl thought herself safe from observation and was quietly making her toilet for the morning.
Well, she should be safe. With a quick jerk, Laurie drew together the heavy curtains that hung at the sides of the long window. Then, smiling a little, he slowly dressed. His thoughts dwelt on the girl. It was odd that she should be literally projected into his life in that unusual fashion. He had never had any such experience before, nor had he heard of one just like it. It was unique and pleasant. It was especially pleasant to have her so young and so charming to look at. She might have been a disheveled art student, given to weird color effects, or an austere schoolma"am, or some plump and matter-of-fact person who set milk bottles on the sill and spread wet handkerchiefs to dry on the window-panes. As it was, all that disturbed him was her expression. He wished he knew her name and something more about her. His thoughts were full of her.
Before he left the room he parted the curtains again to open the window wide, following his usual program. As he did so he glanced into his mirror. He saw her open window, but it was lifeless. Only his own disappointed face confronted him.
CHAPTER III
LAURIE MEETS MISS MAYO
Laurie thought much that day about the girl in the mirror, and he was again home at eleven that night, to the wonder of Mr. Bangs, who freely expressed his surprise.
"Something pleasant been coming your way?" he tactfully asked.
Laurie evaded the question, but he felt that something definitely pleasant had come his way. This something was a new interest, and he had needed a new interest very much. He hoped he would dream of the girl that night, but as he and Bangs unwisely consumed a Welsh rabbit before they went to bed, he dreamed instead of something highly unpleasant, and was glad to be awakened by the clear sunlight of a brilliant January day.
After breakfast he strolled across the square into the somber hall of the studio building on its southwest corner. The hall was empty, but he found and rang a bell at the entrance of a dingy elevator shaft. The elevator descended without haste. When it had reached the floor, the colored youth in charge of it inhospitably filled its doorway and regarded the visitor with indifference. This young man was easy to look at, but he was no one he knew.
Laurie handed him a dollar and the youth"s expression changed, first to one of surprise, then to the tolerance of a man who is wise and is willing to share his wisdom. The visitor went at once to the point of his visit.
"A young lady lives here," he began. "She is very pretty, and she has reddish hair and brown eyes. She has a studio in one of the upper floors, at the front of the house. What"s her name?"
The boy"s face showed that he had instantly recognized the description, but he pondered dramatically.
"Dat young lady?" he then said. "Dat young lady mus" be Miss Mayo, in Twenty-nine, on de top flo". She jes" moved in here las" Tuesday."
"Where does she come from, and what does she do?"
The boy hesitated. What did all this mean? And was he giving up too much for a dollar? Laurie grinned at him understandingly.
"I don"t know her," he admitted, "and I don"t expect to. I"d like to know something about her--that"s all."
The youth nodded. He had the air of accepting an apology.
"I reckon she come fum some fur"n place. But I dunno what she _do_," he reluctantly admitted. "Mebbe she ain"t doin" nothin" yit. She"s home mos" de time. She don" go out hardly "tall. Seems like she don" know many folks."