In February she had an experience of quite a different
sort. Tudor Baird, an ancient flame, a young
man whom at one time she had fully intended to marry,
came to New York by way of the Aviation Corps, and
called upon her. They went several times to the
theatre, and within a week, to her great enjoyment,
he was as much in love with her as ever. Quite
deliberately she brought it about, realizing too late
that she had done a mischief. He reached the
point of sitting with her in miserable silence whenever
they went out together.
A Scroll and Keys man at Yale, he possessed the correct
reticences of a “good egg,” the correct
notions of chivalry and noblesse oblige—and,
of course but unfortunately, the correct biases and
the correct lack of ideas—all those traits
which Anthony had taught her to despise, but which,
nevertheless, she rather admired. Unlike the majority
of his type, she found that he was not a bore.
He was handsome, witty in a light way, and when she
was with him she felt that because of some quality
he possessed—call it stupidity, loyalty,
sentimentality, or something not quite as definite
as any of the three—he would have done
anything in his power to please her.
He told her this among other things, very correctly
and with a ponderous manliness that masked a real
suffering. Loving him not at all she grew sorry
for him and kissed him sentimentally one night because
he was so charming, a relic of a vanishing generation
which lived a priggish and graceful illusion and was
being replaced by less gallant fools. Afterward
she was glad she had kissed him, for next day when
his plane fell fifteen hundred feet at Mineola a piece
of a gasolene engine smashed through his heart.
GLORIA ALONE
When Mr. Haight told her that the trial would not
take place until autumn she decided that without telling
Anthony she would go into the movies. When he
saw her successful, both histrionically and financially,
when he saw that she could have her will of Joseph
Bloeckman, yielding nothing in return, he would lose
his silly prejudices. She lay awake half one
night planning her career and enjoying her successes
in anticipation, and the next morning she called up
“Films Par Excellence.” Mr. Bloeckman
was in Europe.
But the idea had gripped her so strongly this time
that she decided to go the rounds of the moving picture
employment agencies. As so often had been the
case, her sense of smell worked against her good intentions.
The employment agency smelt as though it had been dead
a very long time. She waited five minutes inspecting
her unprepossessing competitors—then she
walked briskly out into the farthest recesses of Central
Park and remained so long that she caught a cold.
She was trying to air the employment agency out of
her walking suit.
