Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/149

 She hadn't even the pitiful comfort of a secret sorrow. She had nothing; she was stripped bare.

The winter went on. Debutantes came out, flashed like meteors across the social sky and then settled quietly into the "among those present" lists in the society columns. New men came to town, were eligible or not eligible, the former greatly in demand, the second filling in at dinners and augmenting stag lines at balls. Some of them made their tentative overtures to Kay, sending in their small neatly engraved cards.

"Mr. Henderson calling, Miss Kay."

She would go down, talk and even laugh. She smoked a good bit, too—more than was good for her. Then, feeling that it made no difference to her if she ever saw them again, they made their polite bows, were let out of the house and went away, vaguely uncomfortable and relieved. And Kay would go upstairs again and sit in the dark until a housemaid came in to turn on the lights.

She did very little thinking, except sometimes about Herbert. There was something to be said for Herbert; he was always the same, upright and dependable. A girl would be safe with him. She would always know what he was going to do next. He would never humiliate or shame her. If he lacked imagination and humor—perhaps because he lacked them—he was as fixed as the stars.

But she was very clear about Herbert at that. He was rather like her father. He would have the same heavy figure some day. Even now he loathed exercise. She knew what life with Herbert would be; giving correct dinners and going to them; Herbert sleeping through problem plays' at the theater, and keeping unemotionally but interestedly awake at musical ones; his room adjoining hers, and his coming decorously to her with his occasional well-ordered demands; and then even that tie gradually relaxing, and the establishment of a formula between them.

"Good night, Kay."

"Good night, Herbert. Be sure to open your window."

When she reached that point she would shiver.