Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/298



HEA," said Fred Ottenburg one drizzly afternoon in April, while they sat waiting for their tea at a restaurant in the Pullman Building, overlooking the lake, "what are you going to do this summer?"

"I don't know. Work, I suppose."

"With Bowers, you mean? Even Bowers goes fishing for a month. Chicago 's no place to work, in the summer. Have n't you made any plans?"

Thea shrugged her shoulders. "No use having any plans when you have n't any money. They are unbecoming."

"Are n't you going home?"

She shook her head. "No. It won't be comfortable there till I 've got something to show for myself. I 'm not getting on at all, you know. This year has been mostly wasted."

"You 're stale; that 's what 's the matter with you. And just now you 're dead tired. You 'll talk more rationally after you 've had some tea. Rest your throat until it comes." They were sitting by a window. As Ottenburg looked at her in the gray light, he remembered what Mrs. Nathanmeyer had said about the Swedish face "breaking early." Thea was as gray as the weather. Her skin looked sick. Her hair, too, though on a damp day it curled charmingly about her face, looked pale.

Fred beckoned the waiter and increased his order for food. Thea did not hear him. She was staring out of the window, down at the roof of the Art Institute and the green lions, dripping in the rain. The lake was all rolling mist, with a soft shimmer of robin's-egg blue in the gray. A lumber boat, with two very tall masts, was emerging gaunt and black out of the fog. When the tea came Thea ate hungrily, and Fred watched her. He thought her eyes became a little