I did not look at Will when I told him of the visitor. He extricated himself gracefully. He said he thought my perspicacity would have made me tumble to the truth and when I didn't he concluded it was a shame to put me wise. And, after all, what did it matter? He had brought the flowers home to me when it was an easy matter to have turned them over to the extra girls....
Miss Gorr--that was her name--came to tea; in fact, she came several times. Will declared she was in a fair way of becoming a bore.
"For Heaven's sake, don't turn her loose on me," he expostulated. "I'm willing to give her photographs and advice but I don't want to be seen about with a freak like that!"
I caught myself wondering--and I was ashamed of the thought--whether Will would have been bored were Miss Gorr not so hopelessly plain. Alice was _smart_ and there had been others and would probably be more to come. I reached the point where I could shrug my shoulders indifferently. It was all a part of the game and I was learning to play it....
Following Boston, the company played Philadelphia, Baltimore and Pittsburgh. Each city has its distinguishing characteristics, but certain types are to be found all over the country. There is always the "fly" married woman hanging about hotel lobbies, lying in wait for the actor or any dapper visitor who, like herself, is seeking diversion. She drops in for a cock-tail or a high-ball and looks things over. She has a sign manual of her own. The headwaiters know her and wink significantly when she comes in with her friends. These women are not prostitutes in the general acceptance of the word. They are products of our leisure class. Their husbands are business or professional men in good standing. With comfortable, even luxurious homes, or a stagnant life in a modern hotel, time hangs heavily upon their hands. They have no intellectual pursuits other than bridge and the "best seller." They pander to their worst desires and wallow in their alcoholic-fed passions. These are the _stall-feds_; the drones; the wasters; the menace to the womanhood of America. These are they who are grist to the divorce mills; who clog the yellow press with prurient tales of passion; who stigmatize innocent children and handicap them even before birth; who breed and interbreed with such unconcern that it is indeed a wise child that knows its own father. And in the end, when the Nemesis of faded charms overtakes them, the army of harlots is swelled.