FullReads

Sadie and Julia watched them from the corner nook. Opposite the desk Two-eighteen stopped and turned to Julia.

“Just run into my room and pick things up and hang them away, will you?” she said. “I didn’t have time–and I hate things all about when I come in dead tired.”

The little formula of service rose automatically to Julia’s lips.

“Very well, madam,” she said.

Her eyes and Sadie’s followed the two figures until they had stepped into the cream-and-gold elevator and had vanished. Sadie, peppermint bottle at nose, spoke first:

“She makes one of those sandwich men with a bell, on Sixth Avenue, look like a shrinking violet!”

Julia’s lower lip was caught between her teeth. The scent that had enveloped Two-eighteen as she passed was still in the air. Julia’s nostrils dilated as she sniffed it. Her breath came a little quickly. Sadie Corn sat very still, watching her.

“Look at her!” said Julia, her voice vibrant. “Look at her! Old and homely, and all made up! I powdered her neck. Her skin’s like tripe.

“Now Julia–” remonstrated Sadie Corn soothingly.

“I don’t care,” went on Julia with a rush. “I’m young. And I’m pretty too. And I like pretty things. It ain’t fair! That was one reason why I broke with Jo. It wasn’t only his mother. I told him he couldn’t ever give me the things I want anyway. You can’t help wanting ’em–seeing them all round every day on women that aren’t half as good-looking as you are! I want low-cut dresses too. My neck’s like milk. I want silk underneath, and fur coming up on my coat collar to make my cheeks look pink. I’m sick of hooking other women up. I want to stand in front of a mirror, looking at myself, polishing my pink nails with a silver thing and having somebody else hook me up!”

In Sadie Corn’s eyes there was a mist that could not be traced to neuralgia or peppermint.

“Julia, girl,” said Sadie Corn, “ever since the world began there’s been hookers and hooked. And there always will be. I was born a hooker. So were you. Time was when I used to cry out against it too. But shucks! I know better now. I wouldn’t change places. Being a hooker gives you such an all-round experience like of mankind. The hooked only get a front view. They only see faces and arms and chests. But the hookers–they see the necks and shoulderblades of this world, as well as faces. It’s mighty broadening–being a hooker. It’s the hookers that keep this world together, Julia, and fastened up right. It wouldn’t amount to much if it had to depend on such as that!” She nodded her head in the direction the cerise figure had taken. “The height of her ambition is to get the cuticle of her nails trained back so perfectly that it won’t have to be cut; and she don’t feel decently dressed to be seen in public unless she’s wearing one of those breastplates of orchids. Envy her! Why, Julia, don’t you know that as you were standing here in your black dress as she passed she was envying you!”

“Envying me!” said Julia, and laughed a short laugh that had little of mirth in it. “You don’t understand, Sadie!”

Sadie Corn smiled a rather sad little smile.

“Oh, yes, I do understand. Don’t think because a woman’s homely, and always has been, that she doesn’t have the same heartaches that a pretty woman has. She’s built just the same inside.”

Julia turned her head to stare at her wide-eyed. It was a long and trying stare, as though she now saw Sadie Corn for the first time.

Sadie, smiling up at the girl, stood it bravely. Then, with a sudden little gesture, Julia patted the wrinkled, sallow cheek and was off down the hall and round the corner to two-eighteen.

The lights still blazed in the bedroom. Julia closed the door and stood with her back to it, looking about the disordered chamber. In that marvellous way a room has of reflecting the very personality of its absent owner, room two-eighteen bore silent testimony to the manner of woman who had just left it. The air was close and overpoweringly sweet with perfume–sachet, powder–the scent of a bedroom after a vain and selfish woman has left it. The litter of toilet articles lay scattered about on the dresser. Chairs and bed held garments of lace and silk. A bewildering negligee hung limply over a couch; and next it stood a patent-leather slipper, its mate on the floor.