"If he loitered it is not his fault; I kept him. If he missed a call I am to blame. Good-bye, Leighton; shake hands. When I come back to New York I hope to hear you sing again at St. Hyacinth's; and if I miss you here, I shall buy elsewhere."
His hot fingers quivered in her clasp, and, pressing a folded bill into his hand, she joined her foster-mother and left the store.
"What a frail, beautiful boy, and what genuine golden hair! Looks as if it had been dipped in a pot of gilt. Dearie, don't you think it a shame these young children are chained up in stores when they ought to be romping and playing ball?"
As their carriage turned from Twenty-third Street toward Broadway, that always crowded angle was even more than usually thronged, and during the brief pause Mr. Herriott came out of Maillard's with a box of bon-bons.
"I am just going to the ferry to wait for you. Are you not too early, or has my watch gone astray?"
"Come with us, Mr. Noel, we have ample room. Yes, it is early; but of course at the last minute I must needs shop on the way."
As he seated himself in the carriage he handed a package to Eglah.
"The latest Paris 'Revue,' and your favorite marron glacé and chocolate."
"Thank you heartily, for both. I wonder if I ever shall cease to be a spoiled child – in your eyes?"
"Whatever you may be in my eyes, you certainly will always remain."
"How discouraging, that you should feel quite hopeless of any improvement in me. Driver, I wish to stop in West Fourteenth Street, at – . Gloves, Mr. Noel, always gloves."
"Will you bet a pair of best driving gauntlets that I cannot tell you exactly why you go there to-day?"
"Certainly; silk-lined, fur-tipped gauntlets. I told you my errand was gloves; pray what other reason?"
"You are going to get a glimpse of 'Juno.'"
"Juno? Nearly everything comes to New York sooner or later, but really I never imagined she could step out from the books of mythology. I hunt no goddess. When you pay your wager, be sure to select delicate fawn color, that will match my spring jacket."
"The debt is yours. Confess, Eglah – honor bright – you are curious about the woman who sells gloves in Fourteenth Street."
"I will present to you a witch's skirt, cap, and broomstick. But why 'Juno'?"
"The matter was thrashed out at the club last week, where Vandiver told us some artist had compared her to a print of the Ludovisi Juno hanging in Goupil's window. Hence her elevation to Olympus."
"Then you know all about her?"
"On the contrary, I never saw her; but she seems to be the magnet drawing people to – just now."
The carriage stopped, and Eglah walked into the department store.
"Come in, Mr. Noel, and pick out your gauntlets."
"Not to-day. Juno indulged in tricks that made even Jupiter keep one eye on her wiles, and I shall merely admire at a safe distance."
In front of the glove counter half a dozen women clustered, and on the outside of the group three men lounged – one evidently a foreigner, with bushy beard, coarse, hairy hands, and furtive eyes, small even behind very large spectacles. Among several busy saleswomen it was easy to discover the centre of attraction – a finely developed form, tall and graceful in every movement, and a face of surpassing beauty, lighted by dark violet eyes, flushed with the glow of perfect health, and crowned by a braided mass of glittering yellow hair heaped high on a shapely head, that held it as an empress wears her tiara. In its vivid coloring the face suggested a tropical flower, but, looking closer, one thought of a frozen tulip under a sheet of ice, so hard was the cold gleam of the defiant eyes and the proud compression of red lips that had forgotten how to smile, that seemed never to have known curves of tenderness. While Eglah waited, the foreigner leaned across the counter.
"Some black silk gloves. Number eight and a half."
"In the next room. Men's department."
"You got the papers for the league?"
"Yes, that is all arranged. Meeting will be at ten o'clock to-night. You can't talk here."
He touched the rim of his hat and walked away, and she looked toward Eglah.
"Grey kid gloves, stitched with white silk."
"What size?"
"Five and a quarter."
The voice had a sharp metallic ring, with an impatient inflection, and as she turned, lifting her arms to a box on an upper shelf, all the lovely outlines of her figure were shown most advantageously, and Eglah glanced over her shoulder at Mr. Herriott. He was watching the woman behind the counter with an intensely curious expression, as though disagreeably perplexed. She found the desired number.
"Shall I stretch them?"
"No, it is not necessary."
"Do you wish them fitted on your hands?"
"I will not give you that trouble. What is the price?"
"It is part of my business to fit them. Two dollars and a quarter. Here, cash!"
Eglah's desire to mention the chorister of St. Hyacinth's was quickly extinguished by the pronouncedly repellent bearing that plainly proclaimed all intercourse must be restricted to the business of the counter, and as she returned to the carriage, Mr. Herriott said:
"Well, you college girls are nothing if not severely classical, so I presume you will offer a ewe lamb, all garlanded with willow and dittany, and prinked out in pomegranate blossoms, on the Junonian altar."
"I am glad Jove tied her hands and hung her up above the earth and below the heavens, with anvils on her ankles, where she could do no more mischief. That goddess of yours has the most cruelly cold, hard face I ever looked at, and yet – in a way – so beautiful. Evidently she has not even the shadow of a soul – must have given it all to that angelic boy? What is her history? Of course she has one."
"It has been said happy women have none, and in this case adversity must have curdled very early the stream of her youthful joys. Vandiver investigated her – from a distance he says, as she froze him when he attempted acquaintanceship. He has a protégé in the constabulary who learned through police channels all that she will allow to be known of her life. Some years ago she drifted here from the far West – part of the human flotsam annually stranded in this city, and she found work in a cloak manufactory. Later she incited a strike among the cloak cutters, which resulted disastrously for the workers, and when all the strikers submitted, she alone was refused re-employment, and doors were closed against her. She secured a position in a large bric-à-brac establishment, but when a valuable antique vase disappeared, she was suspected and arrested. While in prison a day and night awaiting trial, the vase was found in a pawnbroker's shop, and the colored porter of the bric-à-brac dealer acknowledged the theft. The firm very honorably made ample public retraction of the unjust charge, and endeavored to compensate and appease the injured woman, but she shook the dust of the house from her feet and betook herself to Brooklyn. Recently she accepted her present place."
"Do you mean to imply that she is – is – Bohemian?"
"That depends upon your interpretation of a very flexible term. I am told she conducts herself with strict propriety, reports Mr. Dane dead, and receives attentions from no one; but she is avowedly a socialist of the extreme type: belongs to labor organizations, attends their meetings, makes impassioned addresses, and, in fine, is a female Ishmael whose hands are much too pretty for such savage work. Did you notice an odd-looking, shambling man with preposterous spectacles who spoke to her? He is an agent of a band of Russian Nihilists seeking aid from sympathizers here. She is reported as possessing some education, advocates 'single-tax' and all the communistic vagaries that appeal to the great mass of toiling poor, the discontented and morose, as colored balloons captivate the fancy of children at a circus door. She frequents a hall down on the East Side, where at night the clans of the disgruntled assemble, and long-haired men and short-haired women – who absolutely