Athalie

"Dance?"

"I dance – whatever is being danced – rather easily."

"No stage experience?"

"No."

"Well – what do you say, Miss Greensleeve?"

Athalie coloured and laughed: "Thank you, but I had rather work at stenography."

Mrs. Bellmore said: "I certainly hate to admit it, and knock my own profession, but any good stenographer in a year makes more than many a star you read about… Unless there's men putting up for her."

Athalie nodded gravely.

"All the same you'd make a peach of a show-girl," added Mrs. Bellmore regretfully. And, after a rather intent interval of silent scrutiny: "You're a good girl, too… Say, you do get pretty lonely sometimes, don't you, dear?"

Athalie flushed and shook her head. Mrs. Bellmore lighted another cigarette from the smouldering remnant of the previous one, and flung the gilt-tipped remains through the window.

"Ten to one it hits a crook if it hits anybody," she remarked. "This is a fierce neighbourhood, – all sorts of joints, and then some. But I like my rooms. I don't guess you'll be bothered. A girl is more likely to get spoken to in the swell part of town. Well, – " she struggled to her fat feet – "I'll be going. If you're lonely, drop in during the evening. I'm at the office all day except Sundays and holidays."

They stood, confronted, looking at each other for a moment. Then, impulsively the fat woman offered her hand:

"Don't be afraid of me," she said. "I may look crooked, but I'm not. Your mother wouldn't mind my knowing you."

She held Athalie's narrow hand for a moment, and the girl looked into the faded eyes.

"Thank you for coming," she said. "I was lonely."

"Good girls usually are. It's a hell of an alternative, isn't it? I don't mean to be profane; hell is the word. It's hell either way for a girl alone."

Athalie nodded silently. Mrs. Bellmore looked at her, then glanced around the room, curiously.

"Hello," she said abruptly, "what's that?"

Athalie's eyes followed hers: "Do you mean the crystal?"

"Yes… Say – " she turned to Athalie, nodding profound emphasis on every word she uttered: – "Say, I thought there was something else to you – something I couldn't quite get next to. Now I know what's been bothering me about you. You're clairvoyant!"

Athalie's cheeks grew warm: "I am not a medium," she said. "That crystal is not my own."

"That may be. Maybe you don't think you are a medium. But you are, Miss Greensleeve. I know. I'm a little that way, too, – just a very little. Oh, I could go into the business and fake it of course, – like all the others – or most of them. But you are the real thing. Why," she exclaimed in vexation, "didn't I know it as soon as I laid eyes on you? I certainly was subconscious of something. Why you could do anything you pleased with the power you have if you'd care to learn the business. There's money in it – take it from me!"

Athalie said, after a few moments of silence: "I don't think I understand. Is there a way of – of developing clear vision?"

"Haven't you ever tried?"

"Never… Except when a little while ago I went over to the crystal and – and tried to find – somebody."

"Did you find – that person?"

"No."

Mrs. Bellmore shook her fat head: "You needn't tell me any more. You can't ever do yourself any good by crystal gazing – you poor child."

Athalie's head dropped.

"No, it's no use," said the other. "If you go into the business and play square you can sometimes help others. But I guess the crystal is mostly fake. Mrs. Del Garmo had one like yours. She admitted to me that she never saw anything in it until she hypnotised herself. And she could do that by looking steadily at a brass knob on a bed-post; and see as much in it as in her crystal."

The fat woman lighted another cigarette and blew a contemplative whiff toward the crystal: "No: at best the game is a crooked one, even for the few who have really any occult power."

"Why?" asked the girl, surprised.

"Because they are usually clever, nimble-witted, full of intuition. Deduction is an instinct with them. And it is very easy to elaborate from a basis of truth; – it's more than a temptation to intelligence to complete a story desired and already paid for by a client. Because almost invariably the client is as stupid as the medium is intelligent. And, take it from me, it's impossible not to use your intelligence when a partly finished business deal requires it."

Athalie was silent.

"I'd do it," laughed Mrs. Bellmore.

Athalie said nothing.

"Say, on the level," said the older woman, "do you see a lot that we others can't see, Miss Greensleeve?"

"I have seen – some things."

"Plenty, too, I'll bet! Oh, it's in your pretty face, in your eyes! – it's in you, all about you. I'm not much in that line but I can feel it in the air. Why I felt it as soon as I came into your room, but I was that stupid – thinking of Mrs. Del Garmo – and never associating it with you!.. Do you do any trance work?"

"No… I have never cultivated – anything of that sort."

"I know. The really gifted don't cultivate the power as a rule. Only one now and then, and here and there. The others are pure frauds – almost every one of them. But – " she looked searchingly at the girl, – "you're no fraud! Why you're full of it! – full – saturated – alive with – with vitality – psychical and physical! – You're a glorious thing – half spiritual, half human – a superb combination of vitality, sacred and profane!" – She checked herself and turned on the girl almost savagely: "Who was the fool of a man you were looking for in the crystal?.. Very well; don't tell then. I didn't suppose you would. Only – God help him for the fool he is – and forgive him for what he has done to you!.. And may I never enter this room again and find you with the tears freshly scrubbed out of the most honest eyes God ever gave a woman!.. Good night, Miss Greensleeve!"

"Good night," said Athalie.

After she had closed the door and locked it she turned back into the empty room, moving uncertainly as though scarcely knowing what she was about. And then, suddenly, the terror of utter desolation seized her, and for the first time she realised what Clive had been to her, and what he had not been– understood for the first time in her life the complex miracle called love, its synthesis, its every element, every molecule, every atom, and flung herself across the bed, half strangled, sobbing out her passion and her grief.

Dawn found her lying there; but the ravage of that night had stripped her of much that she had been, and never again would be. And what had been taken from her was slowly being replaced by what she had never yet been. Night stripped her; the red dawn clothed her.

She sat up, dry-eyed, unbound her hair, flung from her the crumpled negligée. Presently the first golden-pink ray of the rising sun fell across her snowy body, and she flung out her lovely arms to it as though to draw it into her empty heart.

Hafiz, blinking his jewelled eyes, watched her lazily from his pillow.

CHAPTER XVI

AS she came, pensively, from her morning bath into the sunny front room Athalie noticed the corner of an envelope projecting from beneath her door.

For one heavenly moment the old delight surprised her at sight of Clive's handwriting, – for one moment only, before an overwhelming reaction scoured her heart of tenderness and joy; and the terrible resurgence of pain and grief wrung a low cry from her: "Why couldn't he let me alone!" And she crumpled the letter fiercely in her clenched hand.

Minute after minute she stood there, her white hand tightening as though to strangle the speech written there on those crushed sheets – perhaps to throttle and silence the faint, persistent cry of her own heart pleading a hearing for the man who had written to her at last.