Athalie

The darkly stained floor of hardwood was, of course, modern. So were

the new and very hideous oriental rugs made in Hoboken, and the

aniline pink wall-paper, and the brand new furniture still smelling of

department store varnish. Hideous, too, were the electric fixtures,

the gas-log in the old-time fireplace, and the bargain counter

bric-a-brac geometrically spaced upon the handsome old mantel.

But there were possibilities in the big, square room facing south and

in the two smaller bed chambers fronting the north. A modern bathroom

connected these.

To find an entire top floor in New York at such a price was as

amazing as it was comfortable to the girl who had not expected to be

able to afford more than a small bedroom.

* * * * *

She had a little money left, enough to purchase food and a few pots

and pans to cook it over the gas range in one of the smaller rooms.

And here she and Hafiz had their first meal on the long world-trail

stretching away before her. After which she sat for a while by the

window in a stiff arm-chair, thinking of Clive and of his silence, and

of the young girl he was one day to marry.

Southward, the lights of the city began to break out and sparkle

through the autumn haze; tall towers, hitherto invisible, suddenly

glimmered against the sky-line. A double vista of lighted street lamps

stretched east and west below her.

The dusty-violet light of evening softened the shabby street below,

veiling ugliness and squalor and subtly transmuting meanness and

poverty to picturesqueness--as artists, using only the flattering

simplicity of essentials, show us in etching and aquarelle the romance

of the commonplace. And so the rusty iron balconies of a chop suey

across the street became quaint and curious: dragon and swinging

gilded sign, banner and garish fretwork grew mellow and mysterious

under the ruddy Hunter's Moon sailing aloft out of the city's haze

like a great Chinese lantern.

From an unseen steeple or two chimes sounded the hour. Farther away in

the city a bell answered. It is not a city of belfries and chimes;

only locally and by hazard are bell notes distinguishable above the

interminable rolling monotone of the streets.

And now, the haze thickening, distant reverberations, deep, mellow,

melancholy, grew in the night air: fog horns from the two rivers and

the bay.

Leaning both elbows on the sill of the opened window Athalie gazed

wearily into the street where noisy children shrilled at one another

and dodged vehicles like those quick tiny creatures whirling on ponds.

Here and there, the flare of petroleum torches lighted push-carts

piled with fruit or laden with bowls of lemonade and hokey-pokey.

Sidewalks were crowded with shabby people gossiping in groups or

passing east and west--about what squalid business only they could

know.