The Restless Sex

"Seventeen."

"How long are you on the job?"

"Two years."

"Whose are you?"

"I'm for myself – "

"Come on! Don't lie!"

She straightened her thin finger in defiance:

"What are you? A bull?"

"You know I'm not. Who are you working for? Wait! Never mind! You're working for somebody, aren't you?"

"Y-yes."

"Do your folks know it?"

"No."

"What was it – cloaks, feathers, department store?"

She nodded.

"You can go back?"

She remained silent, and he repeated the question. Then the girl turned white under her paint.

"Damn you!" she said, "what are you trying to do to me?"

"Send you home, Anne, with a couple of thousand real money. Will you go?"

"Show it to me!" she said, but her voice had become childish and tremulous and her painted mouth was quivering.

"I'm going to show it to you," he said pleasantly. "I'll get it at Square Jack's for you. If I do will you fly the coop? I mean now, to-night! Will you?"

"W-with you?"

"Dear child, I've got to cross that dirty Jersey river. I told you. You live up state, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Hudson."

"All right. Will you go now, just as you are? You'd stand a fat chance if you went back and tried to pack up. That thing would batter you to a pulp, wouldn't he?"

She nodded.

"All right," he said. "Take off your hat and wash your face, Anne. They'd be on to you at home. I've got to pack a few things for my journey and write a couple of letters. Get all the paint off while I'm busy. There's soap, towels, and a basin behind that screen."

She came slowly to him and stood looking at him out of her disenchanted young eyes.

"Is this on the square?" she asked.

"Won't you take a chance that it is?" he asked, taking her slim hands and looking her in the eyes.

"Yes… I'll take a chance with you – if you ask me to."

"I do." He patted her hands and smiled, then released them. "Hustle!" he said. "I'll be ready very soon."

He wrote first to Cleland:

DEAR CLELAND:

I think I'll go up tonight, stay at Pittsfield, and either drive across the mountain in the morning of take an early train through the tunnel for North Adams. Either way ought to land me at Runner's Rest station about eight in the morning.

I can't tell you what your kindness has done for me. I think it was about all I really wanted in the world – your friendship. It seems to clean off my slate, square me with life.

I shall start in a few minutes. Until we meet, then, your friend, OSWALD GRISMER.

He directed the envelope to Cleland's studio in town.

The other letter he directed to Stephanie at Runner's Rest and stamped it.

He wrote to her:

I'm happier than I have been in years because I can do this thing for you.

And now I'm going to admit something which will ease your mind immensely: the situation was so impossible that I also began to weary of it a little. You are entitled to the truth.

And now life looks very inviting to me. Liberty is the most wonderful thing in the world. And I am restless for it, restless to begin again.

So if I come to you as a comrade, don't think for a moment that any sympathy is due me. Alas, man belongs to a restless sex, Stephanie, and the four winds are less irresponsible and inconstant!

As a comrade, I should delight in you. You are a very wonderful girl – but you belong to Cleland and not to me. Don't worry. I'm absolutely satisfied. Until we meet, then,

    Your grateful friend,
    OSWALD.

"I'll get a special for this letter on our way uptown," he said, voicing his thoughts aloud to the girl who was scrubbing her painted lips and cheeks behind the screen.

When she emerged, pinning on her hat, he had packed a suitcase and was ready.