Kitty laughed. "This is going to be fun!"
"Rather!"
They groped their way through the dim loft--for it was growing dark
outside--and made the stairhead. The door to the seventeenth floor
opened, and they stepped forth into the lighted hallway.
"Now what?" asked Kitty, bubbling.
"The floor below, and one of the other lifts, what?" Twenty minutes
later the two of them, arm in arm, turned into Broadway.
"This, sir," began Kitty with a gesture, "is Broadway--America's
backyard in the daytime and Ali Baba's cave at night. The way of the
gilded youth; the funnel for papa's money; the chorus lady; the starting
point of the high cost of living. We New Yorkers despise it because we
can't afford it."
"The lights!" gasped Hawksley.
"Wreckers' lights. Behold! Yonder is a highly nutritious whisky blinking
its bloomin' farewell. Do you chew gum? Even if you don't, in a few
minutes I'll give you a cud for thought. Chewing gum was invented by a
man with a talkative wife. He missed the physiological point, however,
that a body can chew and talk at the same time. Come on!"
They went on uptown, Hawksley highly amused, exhilarated, but frequently
puzzled. The pungent irony of her observations conveyed to him that
under this gayety was a current of extreme bitterness. "I say, are all
American girls like you?"
"Heavens, no! Why?"
"Because I never met one like you before. Rather stilted--on their good
behaviour, I fancy."
"And I interest you because I'm not on my good behaviour?" Kitty whipped
back.
"Because you are as God made you--without camouflage."
"The poor innocent young man! I'm nothing but camouflage to-night. Why
are you risking your life in the street? Why am I sharing that risk?
Because we both feel bound and are blindly trying to break through. What
do you know about me? Nothing. What do I know about you? Nothing. But
what do we care? Come on, come on!"
Tumpitum--tump! tumpitum--tump! drummed the Elevated. Kitty laughed. The
tocsin! Always something happened when she heard it.
"Pearls!" she cried, dragging him toward a jeweller's window.
"No!" he said, holding back. "I hate--jewels! How I hate them!" He broke
away from her and hurried on.
She had to run after him. Had she hesitated they might have become
separated. Hated jewels? No, no! There should be no questions, verbal or
mental, this night. She presently forced him to slow down. "Not so fast!
We must never become separated," she warned. "Our safety--such as it
is--lies in being together."