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Page 44
In that moment she saw with merciless clarity the bitter straits
that she was in.
"Oh, he is a devil!" her companion was reaffirming with an angry
little half-whisper sibilant with fury. "Look how he treat me--me,
Fritzi Baroff! You do not know me? You do not know that name? In
Vienna it is not so unknown--Oh, God, I was so happy in Vienna!" She
stopped, her breast heaving, with the flare of emotion, then went on
quickly, with suppressed vehemence, "I was a singer--in the light
opera. I dance, too, and I was arriving. Only this year I was to
have a fine r�le--and it all went, zut, it all went for that man! I
was one fool about him, and his dark eyes and his strange ways.... I
thought I had a prince. And he worship me then, too--he follow me,
he give me big diamonds.... So he take me here--it was to be the
vacation!"
She gave a strangling little laugh. Arlee was listening with a
painful intensity. She was living, she thought, in an Arabian
nights.
"I stay at the hotel first till he make this like a private
apartment for me," went on the little dancer, "and when I come here
he do everything for me. I have luxury, yes, jewels and dresses and
a fine new car. Then, by and by, I grow tired. It was always the
same and he was at the palace, much. And he would not let me make
acquaintance. We quarrel, but still I have a fancy for him, and
then, you understand, money is not always so easy to find. Life can
be hard. But I get more restless, I want to go back on the stage and
I, well, I write some letters that he finds out. _Bang_, goes the
door upon me! He laugh like a fiend. He say that I am to be a little
Turkish lady to the end of my life. Oh, God, he shut me up like a
prisoner in this place, and I can do nothing--nothing--nothing!"
She beat out angry emphasis on the palm of one hand with a clenched
little fist. "I go nearly mad. I lose my head. He laugh--he is like
that. He is a devil when he turns against you, and, you understand,
he had somethings new to play with now.... Sometimes he seem to love
me as before, and then I would grow soft and coax that he take me to
Europe some day, and then when I think he mean it--Oh, how he
laugh!" She drew in her breath sharply. "Sometimes I think he will
take me again--sometime--but I cannot tell. And the days never end.
They are terrible. My youth is going, going. And my youth is all I
have."
She looked at Arlee with eyes where her terror was visible, and all
the lines of her pretty, common little face were changed and
sharpened, and her babyish lips dragged down strangely at the
corners.
A surge of pity went through Arlee Beecher. "Oh, you will escape,"
she heard herself saying eagerly. "And I will escape--or--or----"
"Or?"
"Or I will kill myself," she whispered quiveringly.
The little Viennese stared hard at her, and a sudden crinkle of
amusement darted across the bright shallows of her eyes. "Come,
love is not so bad," she said, "and Hamdi can be charming." Then as
she saw a shudder run through the young girl before her, "Oh, if you
do not fancy him!" she cried airily, yet with a keen look.
But Arlee's two hands sought and covered up the scarlet shame in her
face. She did not cry; she felt that every tear in her was dried in
that bitter flame. Her whole body seemed on fire, burning with fury
and revulsion and that awful sense of humiliation.
The other stirred restively, "Come, do not cry--I hate people to
cry. It makes everything so worse. And do not talk of killing. It is
not so easy anyway, that killing. Do I not think I will die and end
all when my rage is hot--but how? How? I cannot beat my head out
against the wall like a Russian. I cannot stick a penknife in my
throat or eat glass. To do that one must be a monster of courage.
And I have no poison to eat, no gas to turn on.... Then the mood
goes and the day is bright and I look in the glass and say, 'Die?
Die for you? Kill all this beautiful young thing that has such joy
to dance and sing? Never! Some day I will be out of this and laugh
at the memory of such blackness.' And so I practice my voice and my
steps--and I wait my chance. When you came, yesterday, first I was
furious to be pushed out, then I think it is the chance, maybe. I
think you would be glad to help me to get out and not to stay to
make you jealous. But if you are also in the trap----" Her voice
fell dispiritedly. She drew a long, weary breath.
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