ends of cigarettes all over New York on little china trays marked “Midnight Frolic” and “Coconut Grove” and “Palais Royal.” She was twenty-one now, and Cleveland people said that her mother ought to take her back home—that New York was spoiling her.
You will have to do your best with that. The story should have started long ago.
It was an afternoon in September when she broke a theater date in order to have tea with young Mrs. Arthur Elkins, once her roommate at school.
“I wish,” began Myra as they sat down exquisitely, “that I’d been a senorita or a mademoiselle or something. Good grief! What is there to do over here once you’re out, except marry and retire!”
Lilah Elkins had seen this form of ennui before.
“Nothing,” she replied coolly; “do it.”
“I can’t seem to get interested, Lilah,” said Myra, bending forward earnestly. “I’ve played round so much that even while I’m kissing the man I just wonder how soon I’ll get tired of him. I never get carried away like I used to.”
“How old are you, Myra?”
“Twenty-one last spring.”
“Well,” said Lilah complacently, “take it from me, don’t get married unless you’re absolutely through playing round. It means giving up an awful lot, you know.”
“Through! I’m sick and tired of my whole pointless existence. Funny, Lilah, but I do feel ancient. Up at New Haven last spring men danced with me that seemed like little boys—and once I overheard a girl say in the dressing room, ‘There’s Myra Harper! She’s been coming up here for eight years.’ Of course she was about three years off, but it did give me the calendar blues.”
“You and I went to our first prom when we were sixteen—five years ago.”
“Heavens!” sighed Myra. “And now some men are afraid of me. Isn’t that odd? Some of the nicest boys. One man dropped me like a hotcake after coming down from Morristown for three straight weekends. Some kind friend told him I was husband hunting this year, and he was afraid of getting in too deep.”
“Well, you are husband hunting, aren’t you?”
“I suppose so—after a fashion.” Myra paused and looked about her rather cautiously. “Have you ever met Knowleton Whitney? You know what a wiz he is on looks, and his father’s worth a fortune, they say. Well, I noticed that the first time he met me he started when he heard my name and fought shy—and, Lilah darling, I’m not so ancient and homely as all that, am I?”
“You certainly are not!” laughed Lilah. “And here’s my advice: Pick out the best thing in sight—the man who has all the mental, physical, social and financial qualities you want, and then go after him hammer and tongs—the way we used to. After you’ve got him don’t say to yourself ‘Well, he can’t sing like Billy,’ or ‘I wish.he played better golf.’ You can’t have everything. Shut your eyes and turn off your sense of humor, and then after you’re married it’ll be very different and you’ll be mighty glad.”
“Yes,” said Myra absently; “I’ve had that advice before.”
“Drifting into romance is easy when you’re eighteen,” continued Lilah emphatically; “but after five years of it your capacity for it simply burns out.”
“I’ve had such nice times,” sighed Myra, “and such sweet men. To tell you the truth I have decided to go after someone.”
“Who?”
“Knowleton Whitney. Believe me, I may be a bit blase, but I can still get any man I want.”
“You really want him?”
“Yes—as much as I’ll ever want anyone. He’s smart as a whip, and shy—rather sweetly shy—and they say his family have the best-looking place in Westchester County.”
Lilah sipped the last of her tea and glanced at her wrist watch.
“I’ve got to tear, dear.”
They rose together and, sauntering out on Park Avenue, hailed taxicabs.
“I’m awfully glad, Myra; and I know you’ll be glad too.”
Myra skipped a little pool of water and, reaching her taxi, balanced on the running board like a ballet dancer.
“‘By, Lilah. See you soon.”
“Good-by, Myra. Good luck!”
And knowing Myra as she did, Lilah felt that her last remark was distinctly superfluous.
II.
That was essentially the reason that one Friday night six weeks later Knowleton Whitney paid a taxi bill of seven dollars and ten cents and with a mixture of emotions paused beside Myra on the Biltmore steps.
The outer surface of his mind was deliriously happy, but just below that was a slowly hardening fright at what he had done. He, protected since his freshman year at Harvard from the snares of fascinating fortune hunters, dragged away from several sweet young things by the acquiescent nape of his neck, had taken advantage of his family’s absence in the West to become so enmeshed in the toils that it was hard to say which was toils and which was he.
The afternoon had been like a dream: November twilight along Fifth Avenue after the matinee, and he and Myra looking out at the swarming crowds from the romantic privacy of a hansom cab—quaint device—then tea at the Ritz and her white hand gleaming on the arm of a chair beside him; and suddenly quick broken words. After that had come the trip to the jeweler’s and a mad dinner in some little Italian restaurant where he had written “Do you?” on the back of the bill of fare and pushed it over for her to add the ever-miraculous “You know I do!” And now at the day’s end they paused on the Biltmore steps.
“Say it,” breathed Myra close to his ear.
He said it. Ah, Myra, how many ghosts must have flitted across your memory then!
“You’ve made me so happy, dear,” she said softly.
“No—you’ve made me happy. Don’t you know—Myra——”
“I know.”
“For good?”
“For good. I’ve got this, you see.” And she raised the diamond solitaire to her lips. She knew how to do things, did Myra.
“Good night.”
“Good night. Good night.”
Like a gossamer fairy in shimmering rose she ran up the wide stairs and her cheeks were glowing wildly as she rang the elevator bell.
At the end of a fortnight she got a telegraph from him saying that his family had returned from the West and expected her up in Westchester County for a week’s visit. Myra wired her train time, bought three new evening dresses and packed her trunk.
It
