Chapter III

For several moments Janice stood very still upon the spot where he had left her, watching his tall, slim form stride off down the street. Then she went on up into the building to her tiny, hot room, at the end of the hall, on the third floor. She undressed thoughtfully.

“_‘Is it love?’_” The question kept stabbing at her consciousness. It was as though some one had taken hold of her and roughly shaken her. “Is it love?” The question repeated itself over and over again in her mind.

She glanced at the pale, wistful-eyed girl in the mirror. The girl stared back questioningly, with wide, round, startled eyes.

The question pursued her even under the covers, though she pulled them over her head, hot as the room was.

The following evening Janice, as she had half expected that she would, saw the young man enter the shop again, at about the same time that the attempted holdup had occurred the night before.

“Good evening!” he called out confidently, as though he were a friend of years standing.

“Good evening,” she greeted.

“You say that to every one,” he charged. “Name’s Rickey; say ‘Good evening, Rickey,’” he ordered, with polite insistence. Janice returned, banteringly:

“Service is the policy here. We strive to please the most exacting—Good evening, _Mr._ Rickey.”

“No, not ‘_Mr._ Rickey,’” he mimicked in a ludicrous falsetto exaggeration of her own voice, “just _Rickey_.”

“All right, Just Rickey; what are you going to have this evening?”

“You.”

“Now you’re being silly again,” her tone became a trifle sharp.

“Please forgive me; but, really, what I came in for is to know whether you won’t come out with me and have a bite to eat somewhere else? Not that this isn’t the finest lunch room on the north side—only, it occurred to me that maybe you were tired of always eating here, and would like a change.”

He must be a mind reader, Janice decided. He was so clever and thoughtful. She _was_ tired of eating the food that she served all day. Still, was it fair to Bob?

She decided that it was, since she would not hesitate to tell Bob all about it, just as freely as she would have told him all about a friendly companionship with some girl—if there had been any chance for such—if all of the girls in the district hadn’t been so impossibly frivolous and man-mad. Her decision made, Janice said:

“All right; tell you what I’ll do: if you’ll make it a ‘Dutch Treat,’ I’ll go with you.”

“But I’m not Dutch,” he protested. “I’m French.”

Janice laughed.

“I’m not Dutch either, but that’s the only way I’ll go.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m engaged, and I don’t think—”

“Goodness, what hair-splitting! If it’s wrong for you to let me treat you, it’s wrong for you to go out with me at all. And surely even your corn-fed friend wouldn’t be so narrow as to deny you a platonic friend, just because the friend happened to be of the same sex he is?”

Janice frowned, she hoped, severely, and he hastened to make amends:

“Please forgive me; I didn’t mean to speak lightly of your _fiancé_. I probably did so just because I’m jealous of him. I humbly apologize.

“Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll match you to see who pays for _both_ dinners.” He was so good-natured about it all that Janice found herself forgiving him completely and championing the “head” side of a dime.

He threw the coin into the air, caught it in his hand, slapped it down upon the back of his other hand and announced: “Tails! You lose!”

Half an hour later they sat down at a beautifully white table, in the largest hotel of the neighborhood.

It was the first time in her life that Janice had ever been inside such a hostelry. She was enchanted with the glistening white tablecloth of heavy linen, the dainty silver vase containing flowers in the center of the table. She noticed that they were _real_ flowers, and wondered how the management could afford to change them every day.

The pretty dosser over the back of her chair seemed to burn her back, and she hardly dared lean against it, for fear of harming it.

The bewildering menu, with its foreign names, and its almost incredible “teal” and “capon” left her speechless. She knew what they got for capons and teals down home—what they charged for them here was amazing; they got as much for half a capon as her father received from the buyers representing out-of-town hotels for a dozen whole ones.

She wondered how the management dared trust the heavy silver service to their diners in a city like Chicago, not knowing that the theft of this same silverware by some of the diners was paid for by every one who ate a meal there.

She was thinking of her humble little “card” at the lunchroom—which she had previously considered quite fancy—when she noticed that people at surrounding tables were staring at her. At once she felt uncomfortable and self-conscious. She thought of her cheap dress, which she had made herself.

Rickey noticed her obvious discomfiture and instantly guessed its cause.

“My dear, you’re superb; don’t worry about your clothes. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I hadn’t seen that you looked up to it.

“You’re dressed more prettily than any one else present. That little frock you’ve got on is so simple and neat that it looks positively Parisy.”

“Then why _are_ people looking at me?”

“‘People’? Isn’t it mainly _the men_ who are looking at you? Do you not see that they are frankly admiring you?”

The waiter came to take their order, and Rickey thoughtfully ordered for both, not permitting her to be embarrassed by her ignorance of the foreign items upon the menu.

When the waiter had gone he resumed softly:

“You’re soothing upon the male optic nerve; that’s why they are looking at you. Such clear, soft skin, natural healthy color and bright eyes and lovely, naturally golden hair is not often seen in this high-tone hashery. You’re like—” he searched for a minute, “like Aphrodite, after reducing. No wonder they look at you!

“I’ll match you another dime to see whether or not I eat you.” He saw her look of dismay at his flippant words and suggested quickly:

“Dance?”

They had finished their _hors d’oeuvres_ and the orchestra had started a fox trot.

“Oh, no—I’m sorry,” she said. “It isn’t that I don’t want to; I simply don’t know how.” She blushed and wondered how it would be at all possible to tell such a sophisticated young man that where she came from dancing was still thought to be a device of the devil.

“Impossible,” he denied. “Any one as graceful and fairylike as you are has it born in them—and this fox-trot thing—it’s a cinch. Anyway, the floor’s so packed no one will see, even if you do make a few mistakes at the start. Let me show you what you can do if you half-try.”

Much against her better judgment, she rose and he escorted her out of the loge at the side of the dancing floor, in which they had been sitting. Out upon the polished floor space reserved for dancers, Janice felt as though she had dived into ice water over her head.

The jazz band was beating out a melody that seemed to throb through her like a fever. A potent evocation for some latent sense of rhythm within her, it caused her feet to glide about the floor with surprising ease.

Rickey controlled her lithe young body with just the suggestion of a push or pull, so that she seemed to be dancing expertly, with an almost magical facility:

“Used to be a dancing instructor,” he explained. “Quit it because there wasn’t one customer in a thousand as graceful and as easy to teach as you are.”

“You _will_ persist in flattering me, won’t you?” she reproved.

“_Because I love you!_” he sang with the song that was at the moment being played, the words happening to fit in perfectly at the time.

The dance over, they went back to the table for the rest of their dinner.

“Tell you what let’s do,” said Rickey as they finished up with two pink frozen sorbets; “it’s a little late, but the moon will be delightful. Let me go around to the ‘Drive Your Own’ garage and pick up a car. We’ll go for a drive out along the north shore.”

The rhythm of the dance was still in Janice’s head. Like a spell of enchantment, the consciousness of excitement and strange beauty was upon her, seeming to make her unfold to new delights of which she had never dreamed before.

She was intoxicated with the sight of wonderfully gowned women, men in sleek evening wear—brightness, music, flowers, laughter—like some strange new and delightful world.

Surely Bob would not object to this interlude of hectic pleasure. When they were married they should have to work very hard; there wouldn’t be much time for fun. Not that she’d object!