Her face, now, as she bent over her slender, white fingers, took on a
seriousness and gravity more mature; and there was in its pure, fresh
beauty something almost austere.
The care of her hands took her a long time; and they were not finished
then, for she had yet her bath to take and her hair to do before the
cream-of-something-or-other was applied to hands and feet so that they
should remain snowy and satin smooth.
Bathed, and once more in negligee, she let down the dull gold mass of
hair which fell heavily curling to her shoulders. Then she started to
comb it out as earnestly, seriously, and thoroughly as a beautiful,
silky Persian cat applies itself to its toilet.
But there was now an absent expression in her dark blue eyes as she
sat plaiting the shining gold into two thick and lustrous braids.
Perhaps she wondered, vaguely, why the spring-tide and freshness of a
girl's youth should exhale amid the sere and sordid circumstances
which made up, for her, the sum-total of existence; why it happened
that whatever was bright and gay and attractive in the world should be
so utterly outside the circle in which her life was passing.
Yet in her sober young face there was no hint of discontent, nothing
of meanness or envy to narrow the blue eyes, nothing of bitterness to
touch the sensitive lips, nothing, even, of sadness; only a
gravity--like the seriousness of a youthful goddess musing alone on
mysteries unexplained even on Olympus.
Seven years' experience in earning her own living had made her wiser
but had not really disenchanted her. And for seven years now, she had
held the first position she secured in New York--stenographer and
typist for Wahlbaum, Grossman & Co.
It had been perplexing and difficult at first; so many men connected
with the great department store had evinced a desire to take her to
luncheon and elsewhere. But when at length by chance she took personal
dictation from Wahlbaum himself in his private office--his own
stenographer having triumphantly secured a supporting husband, and a
general alarm having been sent out for another to replace her--Athalie
suddenly found herself in a permanent position. And, automatically,
all annoyances ceased.
Wahlbaum was a Jew, big, hearty, honest, and keen as a razor. Never
was he in a hurry, never flustered or impatient, never irritable. And
she had never seen him angry, or rude to anybody. He laughed a great
deal in a tremendously resonant voice, smoked innumerable big, fat,
light-coloured cigars, never neglected to joke with Athalie when she
came in the morning and when she left at night, and never as much as
by the flutter of an eyelid conveyed to her anything that any girl
might not hear without offence.