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Page 26
For a quarter of a minute Barbara looked at Nevada with a strange
steadfastness; and then a smile so small that it widened her mouth
only the sixteenth part of an inch, and narrowed her eyes no more than
a twentieth, flashed like an inspired thought across her face.
Since the beginning no woman has been a mystery to another woman
Swift as light travels, each penetrates the heart and mind of another,
sifts her sister's words of their cunningest disguises, reads her most
hidden desires, and plucks the sophistry from her wiliest talk like
hairs from a comb, twiddling them sardonically between her thumb and
fingers before letting them float away on the breezes of fundamental
doubt. Long ago Eve's son rang the door-bell of the family residence
in Paradise Park, bearing a strange lady on his arm, whom he
introduced. Eve took her daughter-in-law aside and lifted a classic
eyebrow.
"The Land of Nod," said the bride, languidly flirting the leaf of a
palm. ''I suppose you've been there, of course?"
"Not lately," said Eve, absolutely unstaggered. "Don't you think the
apple-sauce they serve over there is execrable? I rather like that
mulberry-leaf tunic effect, dear; but, of course, the real fig goods
are not to be had over there. Come over behind this lilac-bush while
the gentlemen split a celery tonic. I think the caterpillar-holes
have made your dress open a little in the back."
So, then and there--according to the records--was the alliance formed
by the only two who's-who ladies in the world. Then it was agreed
that woman should forever remain as clear as a pane of glass-though
glass was yet to be discovered-to other women, and that she should
palm herself off on man as a mystery.
Barbara seemed to hesitate.
"Really, Nevada," she said, with a little show of embarrassment, "you
shouldn't have insisted on my opening this. I-I'm sure it wasn't
meant for any one else to know."
Nevada forgot her gloves for a moment.
"Then read it aloud," she said. "Since you've already read it, what's
the difference? If Mr. Warren has written to me something that any
one else oughtn't to know, that is all the more reason why everybody
should know it."
"Well," said Barbara, "this is what it says:
'Dearest Nevada--Come to my studio at twelve o'clock to-night. Do not
fail.'" Barbara rose and dropped the note in Nevada's lap. "I'm
awfully sorry," she said, "that I knew. It isn't like Gilbert. There
must be some mistake. Just consider that I am ignorant of it, will
you, dear? I must go up-stairs now, I have such a headache. I'm sure
I don't understand the note. Perhaps Gilbert has been dining too
well, and will explain. Good night!"
IV
Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara's door close upstairs.
The bronze clock in the study told the hour of twelve was fifteen
minutes away. She ran swiftly to the front door, and let herself out
into the snow-storm. Gilbert Warren's studio was six squares away.
By aerial ferry the white, silent forces of the storm attacked the
city from beyond the sullen East River. Already the snow lay a foot
deep on the pavements, the drifts heaping themselves like scaling-
ladders against the walls of the besieged town. The Avenue was as
quiet as a street in Pompeii. Cabs now and then skimmed past like
white-winged gulls over a moonlit ocean; and less frequent motor-cars-
-sustaining the comparison--hissed through the foaming waves like
submarine boats on their jocund, perilous journeys.
Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on her way. She looked
up at the ragged sierras of cloud-capped buildings that rose above the
streets, shaded by the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray,
drab, ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so like the
wintry mountains of her Western home that she felt a satisfaction such
as the hundred-thousand-dollar house had seldom brought her.
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