"Larry, I fear gain and loss are mere words," she said. "The thing that
counts with me is what you are."
He stared in well-bred surprise, and presently talked of a new dance
which had lately come into vogue. And from that he passed on to gossip
of the theatres. Once between courses of the dinner he asked Carley to
dance, and she complied. The music would have stimulated an Egyptian
mummy, Carley thought, and the subdued rose lights, the murmur of gay
voices, the glide and grace and distortion of the dancers, were
exciting and pleasurable. Morrison had the suppleness and skill of a
dancing-master. But he held Carley too tightly, and so she told him, and
added, "I imbibed some fresh pure air while I was out West--something
you haven't here--and I don't want it all squeezed out of me."
The latter days of July Carley made busy--so busy that she lost her tan
and appetite, and something of her splendid resistance to the dragging
heat and late hours. Seldom was she without some of her friends. She
accepted almost any kind of an invitation, and went even to Coney
Island, to baseball games, to the motion pictures, which were three
forms of amusement not customary with her. At Coney Island, which she
visited with two of her younger girl friends, she had the best time
since her arrival home. What had put her in accord with ordinary people?
The baseball games, likewise pleased her. The running of the players and
the screaming of the spectators amused and excited her. But she hated
the motion pictures with their salacious and absurd misrepresentations
of life, in some cases capably acted by skillful actors, and in others a
silly series of scenes featuring some doll-faced girl.
But she refused to go horseback riding in Central Park. She refused
to go to the Plaza. And these refusals she made deliberately, without
asking herself why.
On August 1st she accompanied her aunt and several friends to Lake
Placid, where they established themselves at a hotel. How welcome to
Carley's strained eyes were the green of mountains, the soft gleam of
amber water! How sweet and refreshing a breath of cool pure air! The
change from New York's glare and heat and dirt, and iron-red insulating
walls, and thronging millions of people, and ceaseless roar and rush,
was tremendously relieving to Carley. She had burned the candle at both
ends. But the beauty of the hills and vales, the quiet of the forest,
the sight of the stars, made it harder to forget. She had to rest. And
when she rested she could not always converse, or read, or write.