"It's a comfort that my collar fits so well," she reassured herself.
"After all, there is nothing more important than a collar. I don't look
in the least 'common'."
Among the hats stood a photograph of a popular actress, pert and pretty.
The sight of it sent Lena's thoughts afield into new wastes of
bitterness.
The idea of the stage had once come to her like an inspiration. Nothing
could be more easy and natural to her than to act; nothing more
delectable than the tribute paid to the star. Money, flowing gowns,
footlights, tumults of applause had seemed inevitable. Lena shivered
now, with something else than cold inside her flimsy jacket, as she
remembered the crumbling of her dream. She saw again the fat man with
the sensual mouth who had given her a job; and felt again her tingling
resentment when she found how small the part was, and how poorly paid.
She remembered how she had held herself aloof from the other girls, who,
like herself, had trivial parts, and how they had snubbed her in return;
how even the little that she did was made ridiculous through the trick
of a hook-nosed, gum-chewing rival, and how the first audience that she
faced had tittered at her stumble. A wave of heat succeeded the shiver
at this point in her remembrance. Then she recalled her impertinent
answer to the vituperation of the manager, and how he had sworn at her
for a damned minx, who thought herself a professional beauty.
"Vulgar! Vulgar! Vulgar!" she said to herself in impotent anger. She
wished they could all know how she despised them. For she could act! She
was still sure that she could play any part--except that of patient
endurance. Yet, so far, hardship was all that life had offered her. A
chance! That was it. So far, she had never had a ghost of a chance.
Would fate--or luck--or Providence--or whatever it is that rules, never
give her a turn of the wheel?
Next to the art of the milliner was displayed the art, less interesting
to Lena, of the brush. Before the picture store a span of horses shook
their jingling harness, and a brightly-buttoned coachman waited, with
impassive face turned steadily to the front. There came from the doorway
a girl who was lifted above the pharisaism of clothes into the purer
ether. She was calm-eyed and well-poised, and Lena hated her for the
rest of her life for her obliviousness of the sordid. Behind her walked
a young man who now opened the carriage door and lingered a moment and
laughed as he talked with the girl who had taken her seat. Lena
involuntarily drew her feet closer beneath her skirts that no careless
glance of that girl should fall upon their shabbiness. She looked at the
man as she looked at the Russian sables. He was a type of that
delectable world from which she was shut out.