What with unpacking and chatting and telephoning and lunching, the day
soon passed. Carley went to dinner with friends and later to a
roof garden. The color and light, the gayety and music, the news
of acquaintances, the humor of the actors--all, in fact, except the
unaccustomed heat and noise, were most welcome and diverting. That night
she slept the sleep of weariness.
Awakening early, she inaugurated a habit of getting up at once, instead
of lolling in bed, and breakfasting there, and reading her mail, as had
been her wont before going West. Then she went over business matters
with her aunt, called on her lawyer and banker, took lunch with Rose
Maynard, and spent the afternoon shopping. Strong as she was, the
unaccustomed heat and the hard pavements and the jostle of shoppers and
the continual rush of sensations wore her out so completely that she did
not want any dinner. She talked to her aunt a while, then went to bed.
Next day Carley motored through Central Park, and out of town into
Westchester County, finding some relief from the seemed to look at
the dusty trees and the worn greens without really seeing them. In the
afternoon she called on friends, and had dinner at home with her aunt,
and then went to a theatre. The musical comedy was good, but the almost
unbearable heat and the vitiated air spoiled her enjoyment. That
night upon arriving home at midnight she stepped out of the taxi, and
involuntarily, without thought, looked up to see the stars. But there
were no stars. A murky yellow-tinged blackness hung low over the city.
Carley recollected that stars, and sunrises and sunsets, and
untainted air, and silence were not for city dwellers. She checked any
continuation of the thought.
A few days sufficed to swing her into the old life. Many of Carley's
friends had neither the leisure nor the means to go away from the city
during the summer. Some there were who might have afforded that if they
had seen fit to live in less showy apartments, or to dispense with
cars. Other of her best friends were on their summer outings in the
Adirondacks. Carley decided to go with her aunt to Lake Placid about the
first of August. Meanwhile she would keep going and doing.
She had been a week in town before Morrison telephoned her and added
his welcome. Despite the gay gladness of his voice, it irritated her.
Really, she scarcely wanted to see him. But a meeting was inevitable,
and besides, going out with him was in accordance with the plan she had
adopted. So she made an engagement to meet him at the Plaza for dinner.
When with slow and pondering action she hung up the receiver it occurred
to her that she resented the idea of going to the Plaza. She did not
dwell on the reason why.