Skyscraper by Faith Baldwin Page B

Dwight drew no mental pencil marks through his own and Lynn Harding’s name, murmuring interrogatively, Friendship, hate, indifference, love, kiss, court, marry . Merely he went to bed thinking that he had spent a delightful evening; thinking that even though his extravagances had been notable during the past year or so, he was bound to win the Carson case when it came up on the calendar in the fall, and thus retrieve his slightly dejected fortunes; thinking too that he had never felt better in his life and that tomorrow was another day.
    Girls should always have gray eyes, a little inquiring, a little mischievous, tremendously trusting and eager and shining; they should always wear a sleek blackbird’s cap of hair with a dark arrow pointing the way upon a smooth white forehead. They should have a fugitive, elusive dimple, always in the left cheek, and a black beauty mark to tempt the beholder at the corner of a very young, very red mouth. They should be small and slenderly rounded, and they should always wear dusky pink, the colour of afterglow in summer—
    Such girls were always kind, of course, gentle but not docile,spirited but not shrewish. Such girls should be protected and befriended—
    He believed it. So much so that a few days later, blessing the legal business which still brought him to the Seacoast Building, he waited at noontide, impatient as a boy, just outside the doors of her office, in the crowded corridor. And when she came out, brave in a spring suit as gray as her eyes, but with a small scarlet hat for gaiety, as bright as her lips, he said, feeling tremendously young and highhearted and excited, “Well, how about lunch?”
    She was glad to see him; said so. Said, also, with a delicious small of scowl of indecision, “I haven’t much time. I have to be out of the office this afternoon. I’ve made an appointment”—she looked at her watch—“in just an hour.”
    â€œWe’ll go downstairs to the Gavarin then,” he suggested. “That will give us more time, won’t it? She hesitated, nodded. Tom came by, seeing no one but herself, taking her arm in his firm, unconsciously hurting grasp.
    â€œLunch, honey?”
    She said, a little embarrassed, “I’m sorry, Tom, I didn’t know you were going to be free.”
    Then he recognized David Dwight, standing there beside her, so sure of himself, so infernally well dressed—smells of money, said Tom to himself with considerable heat—damned fop!
    â€œThat’s all right.” He spoke to Dwight; he said, “Good morning, sir,” in accents that endowed Mr. Dwight with a long gray beard, a limp, and a rheumy eye. Then he was off, ahead of them, saying over his shoulder, “See you tonight, Lynn,” and swinging that shoulder and its mate with some self-consciousness.
    Dwight looked after him. “Good-looking boy,” he commented. “I’ve seen him before, haven’t I? I don’t exactly place him.”
    Lynn explained, as they moved toward the elevators. “Tom Shepard, he’s Mr. Norton’s private secretary.”
    â€œOh, yes,” recalled Dwight in a tone of complete dismissal.
    She was annoyed. She was annoyed at herself for beingannoyed. What right had David Dwight, no matter who he was, or any other man for that matter, to take that tone toward Tom—her Tom? On the other hand, why shouldn’t he? Tom was, of course, nothing to him. She was somewhat bewildered by her small, sparkling flare of anger, like a little rocket; and by the bleak, blank commonsensical stick it immediately displayed, burned out, falling to the ground.
    They lunched well if not elaborately; and talked a great deal about nothing in particular.
    They had reached the salad course, and Dwight was lighting a cigarette, when Lynn took her eyes from his vivid face for a moment and looked up to see a girl whom she knew through Jennie, slipping between the