So she sat in the choir room and awaited her turn.
"Altos a little stronger, please."
"Of the majesty, of the majesty, of the majesty, of Thy gl-o-o-ry," sang
Elizabeth. And was at once a nun and a principal in a sentimental dream
of two.
What appeared to the eye was a small and rather ethereal figure with
sleek brown hair and wistful eyes; nice eyes, of no particular color.
Pretty with the beauty of youth, sensitive and thoughtful, infinitely
loyal and capable of suffering and not otherwise extraordinary was
Elizabeth Wheeler in her plain wooden chair. A figure suggestive of no
drama and certainly of no tragedy, its attitude expectant and waiting,
with that alternate hope and fear which is youth at twenty, when all of
life lies ahead and every to-morrow may hold some great adventure.
Clare Rossiter walked home that night with Elizabeth. She was a tall
blonde girl, lithe and graceful, and with a calculated coquetry in her
clothes.
"Do you mind going around the block?" she asked. "By Station Street?"
There was something furtive and yet candid in her voice, and Elizabeth
glanced at her.
"All right. But it's out of your way, isn't it?"
"Yes. I--You're so funny, Elizabeth. It's hard to talk to you. But I've
got to talk to somebody. I go around by Station Street every chance I
get."
"By Station Street? Why?"
"I should think you could guess why."
She saw that Clare desired to be questioned, and at the same time
she felt a great distaste for the threatened confidence. She loathed
arm-in-arm confidences, the indecency of dragging up and exposing, in
whispers, things that should have been buried deep in reticence. She
hesitated, and Clare slipped an arm through hers.
"You don't know, then, do you? Sometimes I think every one must know.
And I don't care. I've reached that point."
Her confession, naive and shameless, and yet somehow not without a
certain dignity, flowed on. She was mad about Doctor Dick Livingstone.
Goodness knew why, for he never looked at her. She might be the dirt
under his feet for all he knew. She trembled when she met him in the
street, and sometimes he looked past her and never saw her. She didn't
sleep well any more.
Elizabeth listened in great discomfort. She did not see in Clare's
hopeless passion the joy of the flagellant, or the self-dramatization
of a neurotic girl. She saw herself unwillingly forced to peer into
the sentimental windows of Clare's soul, and there to see Doctor Dick
Livingstone, an unconscious occupant. But she had a certain fugitive
sense of guilt, also. Formless as her dreams had been, vague and shy,
they had nevertheless centered about some one who should be tall, like
Dick Livingstone, and alternately grave, which was his professional
manner, and gay, which was his manner when it turned out to be only a
cold, and he could take a few minutes to be himself. Generally speaking,
they centered about some one who resembled Dick Livingstone, but who
did not, as did Doctor Livingstone, assume at times an air of frightful
maturity and pretend that in years gone by he had dandled her on his
knee.