Her sore heart eased somewhat at sight of the streams of people passing to and fro.How they rushed! Where were they going? What was their story? And all the while her aunt held her hand, and Beatrice and Eleanor talked as fast as their tongues could wag.Then the taxi clattered on up the Avenue, to turn down a side street and presently stop at Carley's home.It was a modest three-story brown-stone house.Carley had been so benumbed by sensations that she did not imagine she could experience a new one.But peering out of the taxi, she gazed dubiously at the brownish-red stone steps and front of her home.
"I'm going to have it painted," she muttered, as if to herself.
Her aunt and her friends laughed, glad and relieved to hear such a practical remark from Carley.How were they to divine that this brownish-red stone was the color of desert rocks and canyon walls?
In a few more moments Carley was inside the house, feeling a sense of protection in the familiar rooms that had been her home for seventeen years.Once in the sanctity of her room, which was exactly as she had left it, her first action was to look n the mirror at her weary, dusty, heated face.Neither the brownness of it nor the shadow appeared to harmonize with the image of her that haunted the mirror.
"Now!" she whispered low."It's done.I'm home.The old life--or a new life? How to meet either.Now!"Thus she challenged her spirit.And her intelligence rang at her the imperative necessity for action, for excitement, for effort that left no time for rest or memory or wakefulness.She accepted the issue.She was glad of the stern fight ahead of her.She set her will and steeled her heart with all the pride and vanity and fury of a woman who had been defeated but Who scorned defeat.She was what birth and breeding and circumstance had made her.She would seek what the old life held.
What with unpacking and chatting and telephoning and lunching, the day soon passed.Carley went to dinner with friends and later to a roof garden.The color and light, the gayety and music, the news of acquaintances, the humor of the actors--all, in fact, except the unaccustomed heat and noise, were most welcome and diverting.That night she slept the sleep of weariness.
Awakening early, she inaugurated a habit of getting up at once, instead of lolling in bed, and breakfasting there, and reading her mail, as had been her wont before going West.Then she went over business matters with her aunt, called on her lawyer and banker, took lunch with Rose Maynard, and spent the afternoon shopping.Strong as she was, the unaccustomed heat and the hard pavements and the jostle of shoppers and the continual rush of sensations wore her out so completely that she did not want any dinner.She talked to her aunt a while, then went to bed.
Next day Carley motored through Central Park, and out of town into Westchester County, finding some relief from the seemed to look at the dusty trees and the worn greens without really seeing them.In the afternoon she called on friends, and had dinner at home with her aunt, and then went to a theatre.The musical comedy was good, but the almost unbearable heat and the vitiated air spoiled her enjoyment.That night upon arriving home at midnight she stepped out of the taxi, and involuntarily, without thought, looked up to see the stars.But there were no stars.Amurky yellow-tinged blackness hung low over the city.Carley recollected that stars, and sunrises and sunsets, and untainted air, and silence were not for city dwellers.She checked any continuation of the thought.
A few days sufficed to swing her into the old life.Many of Carley's friends had neither the leisure nor the means to go away from the city during the summer.Some there were who might have afforded that if they had seen fit to live in less showy apartments, or to dispense with cars.Other of her best friends were on their summer outings in the Adirondacks.Carley decided to go with her aunt to Lake Placid about the first of August.
Meanwhile she would keep going and doing.
She had been a week in town before Morrison telephoned her and added his welcome.Despite the gay gladness of his voice, it irritated her.Really, she scarcely wanted to see him.But a meeting was inevitable, and besides, going out with him was in accordance with the plan she had adopted.So she made an engagement to meet him at the Plaza for dinner.When with slow and pondering action she hung up the receiver it occurred to her that she resented the idea of going to the Plaza.She did not dwell on the reason why.
When Carley went into the reception room of the Plaza that night Morrison was waiting for her--the same slim, fastidious, elegant, sallow-faced Morrison whose image she had in mind, yet somehow different.He had what Carley called the New York masculine face, blase and lined, with eyes that gleamed, yet had no fire.But at sight of her his face lighted up.
"By Jove I but you've come back a peach!" he exclaimed, clasping her extended hand."Eleanor told me you looked great.It's worth missing you to see you like this.""Thanks, Larry," she replied."I must look pretty well to win that compliment from you.And how are you feeling? You don't seem robust for a golfer and horseman.But then I'm used to husky Westerners.""Oh, I'm fagged with the daily grind," he said."I'll be glad to get up in the mountains next month.Let's go down to dinner."They descended the spiral stairway to the grillroom, where an orchestra was playing jazz, and dancers gyrated on a polished floor, and diners in evening dress looked on over their cigarettes.
"Well, Carley, are you still finicky about the eats?" he queried, consulting the menu.
"No.But I prefer plain food," she replied.
