The Foolish Virgin. Jr. Thomas Dixon
stop his work and send you home. You'd be as safe in his studio as in your mother's nursery. I've known him for ten years. He's the gentlest, truest man I've ever met. He's doing a canvas on which he has set his whole heart.”
“He can get professional models.”
“For his usual work, yes—but this is the head of the Madonna. He saw you walking with me in the Park last week and has been to my studio a half-dozen times begging me to take you to see him. Please, Mary dear, do this for my sake. I owe Gordon a debt I can never pay. He gave me the cue to the work that set me on my feet. He was big and generous and helpful when I needed a friend. He asked nothing in return but the privilege of helping me again if I ever needed it. You can do me an enormous favor—please.”
Mary Adams rose with a gesture of impatience, walked to her window and gazed on the torrent of humanity pouring through Twenty-third Street from the beehives of industry that have changed this quarter of New York so rapidly in the last five years. She turned suddenly and confronted her friend.
“How could you think that I would stoop to such a thing?”
“Stoop!”
“Yes,” she snapped, “—pose for an artist! I'd as soon think of rushing stark naked through Twenty-third Street at noon!”
The older woman looked at her flushed face, suppressed a sharp answer, broke into a fit of laughter and threw her arms around Mary's neck.
“Honey, you're such a hopeless little fool, you're delicious! You know that I love you—don't you?”
The pretty lips quivered.
“Yes.”
“Could I possibly ask you to do a thing that would harm a single brown hair of your head?”
The firm hand of the older girl touched a rebellious lock with tenderness.
“Of course not, from your point of view, Jane dear,” the stubborn lips persisted. “But you see it's not my point of view. You're older than I——”
Jane smiled.
“Hoity toity, Miss! I'm just twenty-eight and you're twenty-four. Age is not measured by calendars these days.”
“I didn't mean that,” the girl apologized. “But you're an artist. You're established and distinguished. You belong to a different world.”
Jane Anderson laid her hand softly on her friend's.
“That's just it, dear. I do belong to a different world—a big new world of whose existence you are not quite conscious. You are living in the old, old world in which women have groped for thousands of years. I don't mind confessing that I undertook this job of getting you to pose for Gordon for a double purpose. I wished to do something to repay the debt I owe him—but I wished far more to be of help to you. You're living in the Dark Ages, and it's a dangerous thing for a pretty girl to live in the Dark Ages and date her letters from New York to-day——”
“I don't understand you in the least.”
“And I'm afraid you never will.”
She paused suddenly and changed her tone.
“Tell me now, are you happy in your work?”
“I'm earning sixty dollars a month—my position is secure——”
“But are you happy in it?”
“I don't expect to teach school all my life,” was the vague answer.
“Exactly. You loathe the sight of a school-room. You do the task they set you because your father's a clergyman and can't support his big family. You're waiting and longing for the day of your deliverance—isn't it so?”
“Perhaps.”
“And that day of deliverance?”
“Will come when I meet my Fate!”
“You'll meet him, too!”
“I will——”
Jane Anderson shook her fine head.
“And may the Lord have mercy on your poor little soul when you do!”
“And why, pray?”
“Because you're the most helpless and defenseless of all the things He created.”
Mary smiled.
“I've managed to take pretty good care of myself so far.”
“And you will—until the thunderbolt falls.”
“The thunderbolt?”
“Until you meet your Fate.”
“I'll have someone to look after me then.”
“We'll hope so anyhow,” was the quick retort.
“But can't you see, Jane dear, that we look at life from such utterly different angles. You glory in your work. It's your inspiration—the breath you breathe. I don't believe in women working for money. I don't believe God ever meant us to work when He made us women. He made us women for something more wonderful. I don't see anything good or glorious in the fact that half the torrent of humanity you see down there pouring through the street from those factories and offices is made up of women. They are wage-earners—so much the worse. They are forcing the scale of wages for men lower and lower. They are paying for it in weakened bodies and sickly, hopeless children. We should not shout for joy; we should cry. God never meant for woman to be a wage-earner!”
A sob caught her voice and she paused.
The artist watched her emotion with keen interest.
“Neither do I believe that God means to force woman at last to do the tasks of man. But she's doing them, dear—and it must be so until a brighter day dawns for humanity. The new world that opens before us will never abolish marriage, but it has opened our eyes to know what it means. You refuse to open yours. You refuse to see this new world about you. I've begged you to join one of my clubs. You refuse. I beg you to meet and know such men of genius as Gordon——”
“As an artist's model!”
“It's the only way on earth you can meet him. You stick to your narrow, hide-bound conventional life and dream of the Knight who will suddenly appear some day out of the mists and clouds. You dream of the Fate God has prepared for you in His mysterious Providence. It's funny how that idea persists even today in novels. As a matter of fact we know that the old-fashioned girl met her Fate because her shrewd mother planned the meeting—planned it with cunning and stratagem. You're alone in a great modern city, with all the conditions of the life of the old regime reversed or blotted out. Your mother is not here. And if she were, her schemes to bring about the mysterious meeting of the Fates would be impossible. You outgrew the limits of your village life. Your highly trained mind landed you in New York. You've fought your way to a competent living in five years and kept yourself clean and unspotted from the world. Granted. But how many men have you met who are your equals in culture and character?”
Jane paused and held Mary's gaze with steady persistence.
“How many—honest?”
“None as yet,” she confessed.
“But you live in the one fond, imperishable hope! It's the only thing that keeps you alive and going—this idea of your Fate. It's an obsession—this mysterious Knight somewhere in the future riding to meet you——”
“I'll find him, never fear,” the girl laughed.
“Of course you will. You'll make him out of whole cloth if it's necessary. Our ideals are really the same when you come to analyze my wider outlook.”
The artist paused and laughed softly.
“The same?” the girl asked incredulously.
“Certainly.