They might have rejected him for
his lack of background. They had done neither. He was so genuinely a
man that he had won his way instantly. In this City of Bluff, as O.
Henry dubs New York, his simplicity had rung true as steel. Still, she
had taken a chance and felt she deserved some recognition of it on his
part. This he had never given. He had based their friendship on
equality simply. She liked it in him, though her vanity had resented
it a little. But this was different. She was still young enough,
still so little a woman of the world, that she set a rigid standard
which she expected her friends to meet. She had believed in Clay, and
now he was failing her.
Pacing up and down her room, little fists clenched, her soul in
passionate turmoil, Beatrice went over it all again as she had done
through a sleepless night. She had given him so much, and he had
seemed to give her even more. Hours filled with a keen-edged delight
jumped to her memory, hours that had carried her away from the
falseness of social fribble to clean, wind-swept, open spaces of the
mind. And after this--after he had tacitly recognized her claim on
him--he had insulted her before her friends by deserting his guests to
go off with this hussy he had been spending weeks to search for.
Now his little henchman had the imbecility to ask her help while this
girl was living at Clay Lindsay's apartment, passing herself off as his
sister, and proposing to stay there ostensibly as the housekeeper.
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