Sick at heart Lynn went on her way, trying carefully each place that
had been suggested but finding no trace of him. She met with only
deference for her uniform wherever she went, and without the slightest
fear she travelled through streets at night that she would scarcely
have liked to pass alone in the daytime in her ordinary garb. But all
the time her heart was praying that she might find Mark before it was
too late. She tried every little clue that was given her, hoping
against hope that she would not have to search for her old friend in a
cabaret such as she knew that place around the corner must be. But it
was almost ten o'clock and she had not found Mark. She went back to the
first address once more, but he had not come, and so she finally turned
her steps toward the cabaret.
Sadly, with her heart beating wildly, hoping, yet fearing to find him,
she paused just inside the doors and looked around, trying to get used
to the glare and blare, the jazz and the smoke, and the strange lax
garb, and to differentiate the individuals from the crowd.
Food and drink, smoke and song, wine and dance, flesh and odd perfumes!
Her soul sank within her, and she turned bewildered to a servitor at
the door.
"I wonder, is there any way to find a special person here? I have a
very important message."
The man bent his head deferentially as though to one from another
world, "Who did you want, Miss?"
"Mr. Mark Carter," said Marilyn, feeling the color rise in her cheeks
at letting even this waiter see that she expected to find Mark Carter
here.
The man looked up puzzled. He was rather new at the place. He summoned
another passing one of his kind: "Carter, Carter?" the man said thoughtfully, "Oh, yes, he's the guy
that never drinks! He's over there at the table in the far corner with
the little dancer lady--" The waiter pointed and Lynn looked, "Would
you like me to call him, Miss?" Lynn reflected quickly. Perhaps he
might try to evade her. She must run no risks.
"Thank you, I will go to him," she said, and straight through the maze
of candle lighted tables, and whirling dancers, in her quiet holy garb,
she threaded her way hastily, as one might have walked over quicksands,
with her eye fixed upon Mark.
She came and stood beside him before he looked up and saw her, and then
he lifted his eyes from the face of the girl with whom he was talking,
and rose suddenly to his feet, his face gone white as death, his eyes
dark with disapproval and humiliation.