Paradise Garden Part 29

"Yes. I'd like a cup of tea," she said after a moment of deliberation.

He didn't very well know this part of the city, but he remembered a restaurant he had once gone to with Flynn, the very one, it seems, where I had taken refuge. And there they were, looking at each other across the table, the girl, as Jerry expressed it, a little demure, a little quizzical, possibly a little upon the defensive, but friendly enough. If she hadn't been friendly, he argued, most properly, she wouldn't have come with him.

"I can't seem to think it's really you," Jerry began after he had given his order. "You're different somehow--soberer and a little pale."

"Am I?"

"Yes, I can't think just how I expected you to look in New York. Of course, you wouldn't wear leather gaiters, or carry a b.u.t.terfly net.

There aren't any b.u.t.terflies in the Bowery, are there?"

"No--no b.u.t.terflies." She paused a moment. "Only moths with singed wings."

She examined him furtively, but he was frankly puzzled.

"Moths--! I don't think I understand."

"Yes--moths--I--I spend a good deal of my time at the Blank Street Mission."

"And what is that?"

She gazed for a moment at him wide-eyed.

"A home--a refuge," she went on haltingly, "for--for women in trouble.

They're the moths--bewildered by the lights of the town--they--they singe their wings and then we try to help them."

"It's great of you, Una."

"And what do you do with _your_ time?" she broke in quickly. "Whom have you met? Is the riddle of existence easier for you in New York than at Horsham Manor?"

"No," he blurted out. "I don't understand it at all. I'm always making the most absurd mistakes. I'm fearfully stupid. Do you ever use rouge, Una?"

The suddenness of the question took her aback, but in a second she was smiling in spite of herself.

"No, I don't, Jerry. But lots of girls do. It's the fashion."

"I know, but do you approve of it?"

"It's very effective if not overdone," she evaded.

"But do you approve of it?" he insisted.

"There's no harm in it, is there? I'd wear it if I wanted to."

"But you don't want to."

"No. Why do you want to know?"

But he didn't seem to hear her question.

"Do you drink c.o.c.ktails? Or smoke cigarettes?"

"No. I don't like c.o.c.ktails. Besides they're not served at the Mission. We think they might create false notions of the purposes of the organization."

He didn't laugh.

"But surely you smoke cigarettes!"

"No, I don't smoke. I don't like cigarettes."

"But if you liked them, _would_ you smoke?" he questioned eagerly.

"What a funny boy you are! What difference does it make what I do or don't do?"

"Would you smoke, if you liked to?" he still insisted.

She was very much amused.

"How can I tell what I'd do if I liked to when I don't like to?"

"Do you approve of them then--for women, I mean?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Just because I'd like to know what you think of such things--because you seem to me to be so calm, so sane in your point of view. You always impressed me that way--from the very first, even when you were making fun of me."

"Why do you think I'm sane?" she asked amusedly.

"Because there's no nonsense about you. There are a lot of things I'd like to talk to you about--things I don't quite understand--if you'd only let me see you."

"You're seeing me now, aren't you?"

"Yes. But I can't talk about them all--at once."

"You've made a pretty good start, I should say."

Jerry laughed. "I have, haven't I? That's the way I always do when I'm with you."

"Always?" she inquired, raising her brows with a show of dignity. "Do you realize that I have only met you once--twice before in my life--and then _most_ informally?"

"I feel as if I'd known you always."

"But you haven't. And I'm beginning to think I don't know you at all."

"But you do, better than anybody almost. It was awfully good of you to come here with me today--after my meeting you the way I did. I ought to apologize. Girls don't like to go with fellows when they come out of saloons, but I wasn't drinking, you know."

"Oh, weren't you?"

"No," he said hastily. And then to cover a possible misconception of his meaning, "But of course I _would_ drink, if I wanted to. I don't see any difference between having a drink at Finnegan's and having it in a club uptown."