FullReads

Carter had struggled earnestly to find a job. But his inexperience and the season of the year were against him. No newspaper wanted a dramatic critic when the only shows in town had been running three months, and on roof gardens; nor did they want a “cub” reporter when veterans were being “laid off” by the dozens. Nor were his services desired as a private secretary, a taxicab driver, an agent to sell real estate or automobiles or stocks. As no one gave him a chance to prove his unfitness for any of these callings, the fact that he knew nothing of any of them did not greatly matter. At these rebuffs Dolly was distinctly pleased. She argued they proved he was intended to pursue his natural career as an author.

That their friends might know they were poor did not affect her, but she did not want them to think by his taking up any outside “job” that they were poor because as a literary genius he was a failure. She believed in his stories. She wanted every one else to believe in them. Meanwhile, she assisted him in so far as she could by pawning the contents of five of the seven trunks, by learning to cook on a ” Kitchenette,” and to laundry her handkerchiefs and iron them on the looking-glass.

They faced each other across the breakfast-table. It was only nine o’clock, but the sun beat into the flat with the breath of a furnace, and the air was foul and humid.

“I tell you,” Carter was saying fiercely, “you look ill. You are ill. You must go to the sea-shore. You must visit some of your proud, friends at East Hampton or Newport. Then I’ll know you’re happy and I won’t worry, and I’ll find a job. I don’t mind the heat-and I’ll write you love letters”–he was talking very fast and not looking at Dolly–“like those I used to write you, before—-“

Dolly raised her hand. “Listen!” she said. “Suppose I leave you. What will happen? I’ll wake up in a cool, beautiful brass bed, won’t I–with cretonne window-curtains, and salt air blowing them about, and a maid to bring me coffee. And instead of a bathroom like yours, next to an elevator shaft and a fire-escape, I’ll have one as big as a church, and the whole blue ocean to swim in. And I’ll sit on the rocks in the sunshine and watch the waves and the yachts–“

“And grow well again!” cried Carter. “But you’ll write to me,” he added wistfully, “every day, won’t you?”

In her wrath, Dolly rose, and from across the table confronted him.

“And what will I be doing on those rocks?” she cried. “You KNOW what I’ll be doing! I’ll be sobbing, and sobbing, and calling out to the waves: ‘Why did he send me away? Why doesn’t he want me? Because he doesn’t love me. That’s why! He doesn’t LOVE me!’ And you DON’T!” cried Dolly. “you DON’T!”

It took him all of three minutes to persuade her she was mistaken.

“Very well, then,” sobbed Dolly, “that’s settled. And there’ll be no more talk of sending me away!

“There will NOT!” said Champneys hastily. “We will now,” he announced, “go into committee of the whole and decide how we are to face financial failure. Our assets consist of two stories, accepted, but not paid for, and fifteen stories not accepted. In cash, he spread upon the table a meagre collection of soiled bills and coins. “We have twenty-seven dollars and fourteen cents. That is every penny we possess in the world.”

Dolly regarded him fixedly and shook her head.

“Is it wicked,” she asked, “to love you so?”

“Haven’t you been listening to me?” demanded Carter.

Again Dolly shook her head.

“I was watching the way you talk. When your lips move fast they do such charming things.”

“Do you know,” roared Carter, “that we haven’t a penny in the world, that we have nothing in this flat to eat?”