To understand Kitty at this moment one must be able to understand the
Irish; and nobody does or can or will. Consider her twenty-four
years, her corpuscular inheritance, the love of drama and the love of
adventure. Imagine possessing sound ideas of life and the ability
to apply them, and spiritually always galloping off on some broad
highway--more often than not furnished by some engaging scoundrel of
a novelist--and you will be able to construct a half tone of Kitty
Conover.
That civilization might be actually on its deathbed, that positively
half of the world was starving and dying and going mad through the
reaction of the German blight touched her in a detached way. She felt
sorry, dreadfully sorry, for the poor things; but as she could not help
them she dismissed them from her thoughts every morning after she had
read the paper, the way most of us do here in these United States. You
cannot grapple with the misery of an unknown person several thousand
miles away.
That which had taken place during the past twenty-four hours was to her
a lark, a blindman's buff for grown-ups. It was not in her to tremble,
to shudder, to hesitate, to weigh this and to balance that. Irish
curiosity. Perhaps in the original that immortal line read: "The
Irish rush in where angels fear to tread," and some proofreader had a
particular grudge against the race.
When the elevator reached the seventeenth floor, the passengers surged
forth. All except Kitty, who tarried.
"We don't carry to the eighteenth, miss.
"I am Miss Conover," she replied. "I dared not tell you until we were
alone."
"I see." The boy nodded, swept her with an appraising glance, and sent
the elevator up to the loft.
"You understand? If any one inquires about me, you don't remember."
"Yes, miss. The boss's orders."
"And if any one does inquire you are to report at once."
"That, too."
The boy rolled back the door and Kitty stepped out upon a Laristan
runner of rose hues and cobalt blue. She wondered what it cost Cutty
to keep up an establishment like this. There were fourteen rooms, seven
facing the north and seven facing the west, with glorious vistas of
steam-wreathed roofs and brick Matterhorns and the dim horizon touching
the sea. Fine rugs and tapestries and furniture gathered from the four
ends of the world; but wholly livable and in no sense atmospheric of the
museum. Cutty had excellent taste.
She had visited the apartment but twice before, once in her childhood
and again when she was eighteen. Cutty had given a dinner in honour of
her mother's birthday. She smiled as she recalled the incident. Cutty
had placed a box of candles at the side of her mother's plate and told
her to stick as many into the cake as she thought best.