That had been the Josie Drew of eighteen.

At thirty she penciled the droop to her eyebrows a bit and had a not always successful trick of powdering out the lurking caves under her eyes.  There was even a scar, a peculiar pocking of little shotted spots as if glass had ground in, souvenir of one out of dozens of such nights of orgies, this particular one the result of some unmentionable jealousy she must have coaxed to the surface.

She wore it plastered over with curls.  It was said that in rage it turned green.  But who knows?  It was also said that Josie Drew’s correct name was Josie Rosalsky.  But again who knows?  Her past was vivid with the heat lightning of the sharp storms of men’s lives.  At nineteen she had worn in public restaurants a star-sapphire necklace, originally designed by a soap magnate for his wife, of these her birthstones.

At twenty her fourteen-room apartment faced the Park, but was on the ground floor because a vice-president of a bank, a black-broadcloth little pelican of a man, who stumped on a cane and had a pink tin roof to his mouth, disliked elevators.

At twenty-three and unmentionably enough, a son of a Brazilian coffee king, inflamed with the deviltry of debauch, had ground a wine tumbler against her forehead, inducing the pock marks.  At twenty-seven it was the fourth vice-president of a Harlem bank.  At twenty-nine an interim.  Startling to Josie Drew.  Terrifying.  Lean.  For the first time in eight years her gasoline expenditures amounted to ninety cents a month instead of from forty to ninety dollars.  And then not at the garage, but at the corner drug store.  Cleaning fluid for kicked-out glove and slipper tips.

The little jangle of chatelaine absurdities which she invariably affected—­mesh bag, lip stick, memorandum (for the traffic in telephone numbers), vanity, and cigarette case were gold—­filled.  There remained a sapphire necklace, but this one faithfully copied to the wink of the stars and the pearl clasp by the Chemic Jewel Company.  Much of the indoor appeal of Miss Drew was still the pink silkiness of her, a little stiffened from washing and ironing, it is true, but there was a flesh-colored arrangement of intricate drape that was rosily kind to her.  Also a vivid yellow one of a later and less expensive period, all heavily slashed in Valenciennes lace.  This brought out a bit of virago through her induced blondness, but all the same it italicized her, just as the crescent of black court plaster exclaimed at the whiteness of her back.

She could spend an entire morning fluffing at these things, pressing out, with a baby electric iron and a sleeve board, a crumple of chiffon to new sheerness, getting at spots with cleaning fluid.  Under alcoholic duress Josie dropped things.  There was a furious stain down the yellow, from a home brew of canned lobster a la Newburg.  The stain she eliminated entirely by cutting out the front panel and wearing it skimpier.