"Hello, Laurie," it twittered. "Is that you? This is Billie. Listen. I gotta plan. A bunch of us is goin' out to Gedney to supper to-night. We're goin' to leave right after the show. Are you on?"
Laurie got rid of the fair Billie. He did it courteously but very firmly. A rather unusual degree of firmness was necessary, for Miss Billie was not used to having her invitations refused. She accepted the phenomenon with acute unwillingness and very lingeringly.
Bangs was not at home, to divert his chum's mind with his robust conversation. As he dressed for his call on Doris, the sharp contrasts of life struck Laurie with the peculiar force with which they hit the young and the inexperienced.
But were they really contrasts? On the one side were Louise, dying, and Doris, seemingly eager to die. On the other were Billie and her friends--foolish little butterflies, enjoying their brief hour in the secret garden of life, eternally chattering about "good times," playing they were happy, perhaps even thinking they were happy, but infinitely more tragic figures than Louise and Doris. Yet a week ago he had thought they amused him!
Pondering on these and other large problems, he absently removed the bloom from three fresh white ties.
At eight o'clock Laurie found Doris sitting under the shade of a reading-lamp in her studio, deep in the pages of a sophisticated French novel and radiating an almost oppressive atmosphere of well-being.
Subconsciously, he resented this. His mood was keyed to tragedy. But he returned her half-serious, half-mocking smile with one as enigmatic, shook hands with grave formality, and surveyed with mild interest a modest heap of bank-notes of small denominations that lay on the table, catching the room's high lights. Following his glance, Doris nodded complacently.
"I left them there for you to see," she remarked.
"Did the kind gentleman under the three balls give you all that?"
"Don't be so arrogant about your wealth. It's fleeting. Any copy-book will tell you so."
She opened a small drawer in the table, swept the bills into it, and casually closed it. Laurie stared.
"Are you going to leave it there? Just like that?"
"I begin to understand why you are sometimes financially cramped."