Stahr had expected nothing like this when he stood at the head of the steps a few minutes earlier. The sneak preview had disappointe him and afterwards he had had a scene with Jaques La Borwits right in front of the theatre for which he was now sorry. He had started toward the Brady party when he saw Kathleen sitting in the middle of a long white table alone.
Immediately things changed. As he walked toward her the people shrank back against the walls till they were only murals; the white table lengthened and became an altar where the priestess sat alone. Vitality welled up in him and he could have stood a long time across the table from her, looking and smiling.
The incumbents of the table were crawling back—Stahr and Kathleen danced.
When she came close his several visions of her blurred; she was momentarily unreal. Usually a girl’s skull made her real but not this time—Stahr continued to be dazzled as they danced out along the floor—to the last edge, where they stepped through a mirror into another dance with new dancers whose faces were familiar but nothing more. In this new region he talked, fast and urgently.
“What’s your name?”
“Kathleen Moore.”
“Kathleen Moore,” he repeated.
“I have no telephone, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“When will you come to the studio?”
“It’s not possible. Truly.”
“Why isn’t it? Are you married?”
“No.”
“You’re not married?”
“No, nor never have been. But then I may be.”
“Someone there at the table.”
“No.” She laughed. “What curiosity!”
But she was deep in it with him, no matter what the words were. Her eyes invited him to a romantic communion of unbelievable intensity. As if she realized this she said, frightened:
“I must go back now. I promised this dance.”
“I don’t want to lose you. Couldn’t we have lunch or dinner?”
“It’s impossible.” But her expression helplessly amended the words to “It’s just possible. The door is still open by a chink if you could squeeze past. But quickly—so little time.”
“I must go back,” she repeated aloud. Then she dropped her arms, stopped dancing and looked at him, a laughing wanton.
“When I’m with you I don’t breathe quite right,” she said.
She turned, picked up her long dress, and stepped back through the mirror. Stahr followed until she stopped near her table.
“Thank you for the dance,” she said. “And now really, good night.”
Then she nearly ran.
Stahr went to the table where he was expected and sat down with the Cafe Society group—from Wall Street, Grand Street, Loudoun County Virginia, and Odessa Russia. They were all talking with enthusiasm about a horse that had run very fast and Mr. Marcus was the most enthusiastic of all. Stahr guessed that Jews had taken over the worship of horses as a super-symbol—for years it had been the Cossacks mounted and the Jews on foot. Now the Jews had horses and it gave them a sense of extraordinary well-being and power. Stahr sat pretending to listen and even nodding when something was referred to him, but all the time watching the table behind the pillars. If everything had not happened as it had, even to his connecting the silver belt with the wrong girl, he might have thought it was some elaborate frame-up. But the elusiveness was beyond suspicion. For there in a moment he saw that she was escaping again—the pantomime at the table indicated good bye. She was leaving, she was gone.
“There—” said Wylie White with malice, “—goes Cinderella. Simply bring the slipper to the Regal Shoe Co., 812 South Broadway.”
Stahr overtook her in the long upper lobby where middle-aged women sat behind a roped-off space, watching the ballroom entrance.
“Am I responsible for this?” he asked.
“I was going anyhow.” But she added almost resentfully, “They talked as if I’d been dancing with the Prince of Wales. They all stared at me. One of the men wanted to draw my picture and another one wanted to see me tomorrow.”
“That’s just what I want,” said Stahr gently. “But I want to see you much more than he does.”
“You insist so,” she said wearily. “One reason I left England was that men always wanted their own way. I thought it was different here. Isn’t it enough that I don’t want to see you?”
“Ordinarily,” agreed Stahr. “Please believe me, I’m way out of my depth already. I feel like a fool. But I must see you again and talk to you.”
She hesitated.
“There’s no reason for feeling like a fool,” she said. “You’re too good a man to feel like a fool. But you should see this for what it is.”
“What is it?”
“You’ve fallen for me—completely. You’ve got me in your dreams.”
“I’d forgotten you,” he declared, “—till the moment I walked in that door.”
“Forgotten me with your head perhaps. But I knew the first time I saw you that you were the kind that likes me—”
She stopped herself. Near them a man and woman from the party were saying good bye: “Tell her hello—tell her I love her dearly,” said the woman, “you both—all of you—the children.” Stahr could not talk like that, the way everyone talked now. He could think of nothing further to say as they walked toward the elevator except:
“I suppose you’re perfectly right.”
“Oh, you admit it?”
“No, I don’t,” he retracted. “It’s just the whole way you’re made. What you say—how you walk—the way you look right this minute—” He saw she had melted a little and his hopes rose. “Tomorrow is Sunday and usually I work on Sunday but if there’s anything you’re curious about in Hollywood, any person you want to meet or see, please let me arrange it.”
They were standing by the elevator. It opened but she let it go.
“You’re very modest,” she said. “You always talk about showing me the studio and taking me around. Don’t you ever stay alone?”
“Tomorrow I’ll feel very much alone.”
“Oh, the poor man—I could weep for him. He could have all the stars jumping around him and he chooses me.”
He smiled—he had laid himself open to that one.
The elevator came again. She signalled for it to wait.
“I’m a weak woman,” she said. “If I meet you tomorrow will you leave me in peace? No, you won’t. You’ll make it worse. It wouldn’t do any good but harm so I’ll say no and thank you.”
She got into the elevator. Stahr got in too and they smiled as they dropped two floors to the hall cross-sectioned with small shops. Down at the end, held back by police was the crowd, their heads and shoulders leaning forward to look down the alley. Kathleen shivered.
“They looked so strange when I came in,” she said, “—as if they were furious at me for not being someone famous.”
“I know another way out,” said Stahr.
They went through a drug store, down an alley and came out into the clear cool California night beside the car park. He felt detached from the dance now and she did too.
“A lot of picture people used to live down here,” he said. “John Barrymore and Pola Negri in those bungalows. And Connie Talmadge lived in that tall thin apartment house over the way.”
“Doesn’t anybody live here now?”
“The studios moved out into the country,” he said. “What used to be the country. I had some good times around here though.”
He did not mention that ten years ago Minna and her mother had lived in another apartment over the way.
“How old are you?” she asked suddenly.
“I’ve lost track—almost thirty-five I think.”
“They said at the table you were the boy wonder.”
“I’ll be that when I’m sixty,” he said grimly. “You will meet me tomorrow, won’t you?”
“I’ll meet you,” she said. “Where?”
Suddenly there was no place to meet. She would not go to a party at anyone’s house, nor to the country, nor swimming though she hesitated, nor to a well-known restaurant. She seemed hard to please but he knew there was some reason. He would find out in time. It occurred to him that she might be the sister or daughter of someone well-known, who was pledged to keep in the background. He suggested that he come for her and they could decide.
“That wouldn’t do,” she said. “What about right here—the same spot.”
He nodded—pointing up at the arch under which they stood. He put her into her car which would have brought eighty dollars from any kindly dealer, and watched it rasp away. Down by the entrance a cheer went up as a favorite emerged, and Stahr wondered whether to show himself and say good night.
This is Cecelia taking up the narrative in person. Stahr came back finally—it was about half past three—and asked me to dance.
“How are you?” he asked me, just as if he hadn’t seen me that morning. “I got involved in a long conversation with a man.”
It was secret too—he cared that much about it.
“I took him to ride,” he went on innocently. “I didn’t realize how much this part of Hollywood had changed.”
“Has it changed?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “Changed completely. Unrecognizable. I couldn’t tell you exactly but it’s all changed—everything. It’s like a new city.” After a moment he amplified, “I had no idea how much it had changed.”
“Who was the man?” I ventured.
“An old friend,” he said vaguely. “Someone I knew a long time ago.”
I had made Wylie try to find out quietly who she was. He had gone over and the ex-star had asked him excitedly to sit down. No—she didn’t know who the girl was—a friend of a friend of someone—even the man who had brought her didn’t know.
So Stahr and I danced to the beautiful
