Her comings and goings, whether by maneuver or
not, were seldom alone. She and this Mrs. Blair, a sparse, umbrella of a
woman with a very bitter kind of widowhood, had formed the noonday habit
of taking a dairy lunch of milk and cereal at a near-by White Kitchen
and of departing evenings for there, too, since it spelled strong, hot,
simple foods and a very superior kind of cleanliness.
It was with a distinct sinkage, well laid over with office
imperturbability, that she showed Mrs. Blair the note, saw her stab into
her greenish-black bird's nest of a hat and depart alone. Then the
office boy; the publicity man, whistling; a clerk or two, and finally a
sixteen-year-old girl who pasted clippings into scrap books.
The pleasantly cool summer day had thickened up rather suddenly into the
beginnings of dusk, the electric sign down over the theater throwing up
a sudden glow through the windows. She sat before her machine, shorthand
book in lap, her attitude quiet enough except that her hands, as they
clasped each other, showed whitish at the nails, and she would not
swerve her gaze by the fraction of an inch, even with the consciousness
of a presence behind her.
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