That isn't square of you!"
"That isn't the question. Is Genevieve on the square? That's what worries me, Kit!"
"What a perfectly rotten thing to say!" insisted Catharine resentfully. "You know she's on the level!"
"Well then, where does she get it? You know what her salary is?"
Athalie said, coolly: "Every girl ought to believe every other girl on the square until the contrary is proven. It's shameful not to."
"Come over to the Egyptian Garden and try it!" laughed Doris. "If you can believe that bunch of pet cats is on the square you can believe anything, Athalie."
Catharine, still very deeply offended, rose and went into the bedroom which she shared with Doris. Presently she called for somebody to assist her in dressing.
Doris, being due at the theatre by seven o'clock, put on her rusty coat and hat, and, nodding to Athalie, walked out; and the latter went away to aid Catharine.
"You do look pretty," she insisted after Catharine had powdered her face and neck and had wiped off her silky skin with the chamois rag.
The girl gazed at her comely, regular features in the mirror, patted her hair, moistened her red lips, then turned her profile and gazed at it with the aid of a hand-glass.
"Who else is going?" inquired Athalie.
"Some friends of Genevieve's."
"Men?"
"I believe so."
"Two, I suppose."
Catharine nodded.
"Don't you know their names?"
"No. Genevieve says that one of them is crazy to meet me."
"Where did he see you?"
"At Winton's. I put on some evening gowns for his sister."
Athalie watched her pin on her hat, then held her coat for her. "They'll all bear watching," she remarked quietly. "If it's merely society they want you know as well as I that they seek it in their own circles, not in ours."
Catharine made no audible response. She began to re-pin her hat, then, pettishly: "I wish I had a taxi to call for me so I needn't wear a hat!"
"Why not wish for an automobile?" suggested Athalie, laughing. "Women who have them don't wear hats to the theatre."
"It is tough to be poor!" insisted Catharine fiercely. "It drives me almost frantic to see what I see in all those limousines,—and then walk home, or take a car if I'm flush."
"How are you going to help it, dear?" inquired Athalie in that gently humorous voice which usually subdued and shamed her sisters.
But Catharine only mumbled something rebellious, turned, stared at herself in the glass, and walked quickly toward the door.
"As for me," she muttered. "I don't blame any girl—"
"What?"
But Catharine marched out with a twitch of her narrow skirts, still muttering incoherencies.
Athalie, thoughtful, but not really disturbed, went into the empty sitting-room, picked up the evening paper, glanced absently at the head-lines, dropped it, and stood motionless in the centre of the room, one narrow hand bracketed on her hip, the other pinching her under lip.
For a few minutes she mused, then sighing, she walked into the kitchenette, unhooked a blue-checked apron, rolled up her sleeves as far as her white, rounded arms permitted, and started in on the dishes.
Occasionally she whistled at her task—the clear, soft, melodious whistle of a bullfinch—carolling some light, ephemeral air from the "Review" at the Egyptian Garden.
When the crockery was done, dried and replaced, she retired to her bedroom and turned her attention to her hands and nails, minutely solicitous, always in dread of the effects of housework.
There was an array of bottles, vials, jars, lotions, creams, scents on her bureau. She seated herself there and started her nightly grooming, interrupting it only to exchange her street gown and shoes for a dainty negligée and slippers.
Her face, now, as she bent over her slender, white fingers, took on a seriousness and gravity more mature; and there was in its pure, fresh beauty something almost austere.
The care of her hands took her a long time; and they were not finished then, for she had yet her bath to take and her hair to do before the cream-of-something-or-other was applied to hands and feet so that they should remain snowy and satin smooth.
Bathed, and once more in negligée, she let down the dull gold mass of hair which fell heavily curling to her shoulders. Then she started to comb it out as earnestly, seriously, and thoroughly as a beautiful, silky Persian cat applies itself to its toilet.
But there was now an absent expression in her dark blue eyes as she sat plaiting the shining gold into two thick and lustrous braids.
Perhaps she wondered, vaguely, why the spring-tide and freshness of a girl's youth should exhale amid the sere and sordid circumstances which made up, for her, the sum-total of existence; why it happened that whatever was bright and gay and attractive in the world should be so utterly outside the circle in which her life was passing.
Yet in her sober young face there was no hint of discontent, nothing of meanness or envy to narrow the blue eyes, nothing of bitterness to touch the sensitive lips, nothing, even, of sadness; only a gravity—like the seriousness of a youthful goddess musing alone on mysteries unexplained even on Olympus.
Seven years' experience in earning her own living had made her wiser but had not really disenchanted her. And for seven years now, she had held the first position she secured in New York—stenographer and typist for Wahlbaum, Grossman & Co.
It had been perplexing and difficult at first; so many men connected with the great department store had evinced a desire to take her to luncheon and elsewhere. But when at length by chance she took personal dictation from Wahlbaum himself in his private office—his own stenographer having triumphantly secured a supporting husband, and a general alarm having been sent out for another to replace her—Athalie suddenly found herself in a permanent position. And, automatically, all annoyances ceased.
Wahlbaum was a Jew, big, hearty, honest, and keen as a razor. Never was he in a hurry, never flustered or impatient, never irritable. And she had never seen him angry, or rude to anybody. He laughed a great deal in a tremendously resonant voice, smoked innumerable big, fat, light-coloured cigars, never neglected to joke with Athalie when she came in the morning and when she left at night, and never as much as by the flutter of an eyelid conveyed to her anything that any girl might not hear without offence.
Grossman's reputation was different, but except for a smirk or two he had never bothered her. Nor did anybody else connected with the firm. They all were too much afraid of Wahlbaum.
So, except for the petty, contemptible annoyances to which all young girls are more or less subjected in any cosmopolitan metropolis, Athalie had found business agreeable
