Linda Condon

n spent an increasingly large part of the day before the mirror of her dressing-table, but without any proportionate pleasure; or, if there was a proportion kept, it exhibited the negative resu

ugh to begin to

ch horrid things about yourself. Why, you're perfectly love

reception-room of their small suite at the Hotel Gontram. It was a somber chamber furnished in red plush, with a complication of shades and gray-white net curtains at long windows and a deep green carpet. There was a firepl

the city. Sherry's filled a corner with its massive stone bulk and glimpses of dining-rooms with glittering chandeliers and solemn gaiety, then impressive clubs and w

e had breakfast, while the dining-room, discreetly lighted, was at the left. It was more interesting here than, for example, at the Boscombe; people were always coming in or going, and there were quantities of men. She

face dryly pink like a woman's from make-up; they were familiar and pinched her cheeks, calling her endearing names in conscious echoing voices as if they were quite hollow within. Then there were simply business men, who never appeared to take off their derby hats, and spoke to her of the

sed her, too, in the dining-room, where her mother, a cocktail in her hand, would engage in long cheerful discussions with the captains or waiters. Other women, Linda observed, spoke with complete indifference and their attention on the carte de jour. Of course it was much mor

nate heap of silver. "You are a regular little Jew," she would reply lightly to Linda's protests. This, the latter thought, was unfair; for the only Jew she kne

favorably regarded personage. Her father, probably. More and more Linda wondered about him. He was dead, she knew, but that, she began to see, was no reason for the p

whole the women agreed that they were remarkably stupid and transparent, they protested that they understood and guided every move husbands made; and this surely gave her father no opport

iness. The old difficulties with giggling or sympathetic chambermaid;-Linda couldn't decide which was worse-then confronted her with the necessity for rigid lies, misery, and the procuring of s

vely dark; the bedroom looked into a deep exterior well and the windows of the other chamber opened on an uncompromising blank wall. Yet Linda, now widely learned in such settings, r

reat deal; she was, perhaps, more graceful-her movements had become less sudden-more assured,

t frankly-her face. Her figure, she repeatedly asserted, could be reasoned with; she had always been reconciled to a certain jolly stoutness, but her face, the lines that appeared about

baked. To-day the toilet table would be loaded with milkweed, cerates and vanishing cream; tomorrow they would all be swept away,

latter saw that nothing could be done. Her mother was growing-well, a little tired in appearance. Swift tears gathered in Linda's eyes. She hadn't been quite truthful in that reassuring speech of h

rties; and the ones who sat together and gossiped in sharp lowered voices. She hoped passionately that her mother would not become one of the latter for a long long while. But eventually it see

ns and in countless ways; but more by her actions, her present wretchedness, than by speech. It was perfectly clear to Linda that nothing else mattered. She was even beginning, in a vague

t on the table, the elder had eaten more than half. Afterwards she had sworn ruefully at her lack of character, begging Linda-in a momentary return of former happy companionship-never to let her make such a s

amor of New York. Formerly it had frightened Linda; but her dread had become a wordless excitement at the thought of so muc