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Page 57
Constance glanced up quickly as Floretta mentioned the name of the
popular young actress. Stella Larue was a pretty girl on whom the
wild dissipation of the night life of New York was just beginning to
show its effects. The name of Warrington, too, recalled to Constance
instantly some gossip she had heard in Wall Street about the
disagreement in the board of directors of the new Rubber Syndicate
and the effort to oust the president whose escapades were something
more than mere whispers of scandal.
This was the woman in the case. Constance looked at Stella now with
added interest as she rose languidly, drew her bathrobe about her
superb figure carelessly in such a way as to show it at best
advantage.
"I've had more or less to do with Wall Street myself," observed
Constance.
"Oh, have you? Isn't that interesting," cried Stella.
"I hope you're not putting money in Rubber?" queried Constance.
"On the contrary," rippled Stella, then added, "You're going to
stay? Let me tell you something. Have Floretta do your hair. She's
the best here. Then come around to see me in the dormitory if I'm
here when you are through, won't you?"
Constance promised and Stella fluttered away like the pretty
butterfly that she was, leaving Constance to wonder at the natural
gravitation of plungers in the money market toward plungers in the
white lights.
Charmant's Beauty Parlor was indeed all its name implied, a temple
of the cult of adornment, the last cry in the effort to satisfy what
is more than health, wealth, and happiness to some women--the
fundamental feminine instinct for beauty.
Constance had visited the beauty specialist to have an incipient
wrinkle smoothed out. Frankly, it was not vanity. But she had come
to realize that her greatest asset was her personal appearance. Once
that had a chance to work, her native wit and keen ability would
carry her to success.
Madame Charmant herself was a tall, dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-
eyed, well-groomed woman who looked as if she had been stamped from
a die for a fashion plate--and then the die had been thrown away.
All others like her were spurious copies, counterfeits. More than
that, she affected the name of Vera, which in itself had the ring of
truth.
And so Charmant had prevailed on Constance to take a full course in
beautification and withhold the wrinkle at the source.
"Besides, you know, my dear," she purred, "there's nothing
discovered by the greatest minds of the age that we don't apply at
once."
Constance was not impervious to feminine reason, and here she was.
"Has Miss Larue gone?" she asked when at last she was seated in a
comfortable chair again sipping a little aromatic cup of coffee.
"No, she's resting in one of the little dressing rooms."
She followed Floretta down the corridor. Each little compartment had
its neat, plain white enameled bed, a dresser and a chair.
Stella smiled as Constance entered. "Yes," she murmured in response
to the greeting, "I feel quite myself now."
"Mr. Warrington on the wire," announced Floretta a moment later,
coming down the corridor again with a telephone on a long unwinding
wire.
"Hello, Alfred--oh, rocky this morning," Constance overheard. "I
said to myself, 'Never again--until the nest time. Vera? Oh, she was
as fresh as a lark. Can I lunch with you downtown? Of course.'" Then
as she hung up the receiver she called, "Floretta, get me a taxi."
"Yes, Miss Larue."
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