THE MODERN ART GALLERY was inclosed in a penthouse on Central Park South. The architect prided himself on being “functional,” but he had forgotten that the principal function of a modern building is resistance to air raids. He had made the north wall of the gallery one great sheet of sheer plate glass. After Pearl Harbor, the management had supplemented the glass with two-inch bands of adhesive tape, criss-crossed in a series of tall X’s and sealed flat and taut with an electric iron.
Outside, winter lingered in the Park like an insensitive guest who has long outstayed his welcome. The turf was bald and dry and brown. The skeleton trees made a black mesh against a sultry streak of saffron at the western edge of the white sky. Nurses and children, hurrying east to home and supper, bent their heads forward, unconsciously streamlining themselves in order to cleave the April wind. There was not a hint of green in the landscape, but there was a new freshness in the air that hinted of all the green things to come in a few weeks.
Inside, a crowd of invited guests—largely feminine, furred, perfumed, and voluble—pretended there were no such things as wars and east winds. Soundproof walls shut out traffic noises. A thermostat maintained a temperature as mild and even as that of an embryo. Brilliant, artificial light from concealed sources was refracted in every direction by three blond walls of wax-rubbed pine. There were no shadows. The gallery was a solid cube of light, a medium where people moved and had their being like fish in a tank of illuminated water.
Now and then one of the guests remembered to glance at the paintings on the walls and tell the exiled artist in schoolgirl French that his
A young man and a girl were sitting on one of these settees—the one with its back to the glass wall. The girl was pretty, but there was nothing remarkable in her prettiness. Hundreds of girls have chestnut-brown curls that gleam red when light touches them and gray eyes that seem blue under a blue hat. The freckles across her short nose were faded as if she had changed an outdoor life for an indoor light in the last few years. The women in red fox and rayon velvet and flowered hats looked at the beautiful severity of her tweed suit and decided that she was underdressed. The women in silver fox and bagheera and clever black hats looked at the same suit and wondered if they could be overdressed. Something in the short curl of her upper lip and the tilt of her small, stubborn chin suggested that she cared little for their opinions. Her manner was composed and detached, rather businesslike. On her knee was a sketch pad; in her right hand, a soft, black pencil. From time to time, she sketched something in the crowd that pleased or amused her—a piquant profile, an impossible hat, or an ungainly silhouette.
The young man had slumped down on the seat beside her with his hands in his trouser pockets. He was a shade fairer than the girl and about her own age—in the late twenties. His eyes were too round, his mouth too wide, his legs too long; yet the general effect of his appearance was pleasing, for he had the look of youth, health, high spirits, and an affable disposition. At the moment he was not being affable. Neither was the girl.
“I don’t see why we should wait any longer.”
“Don’t you?” The man’s eye followed her pencil.
“Maybe we’d better call the whole thing off.”
“Now, Pauline—” he began.
She cut him short. “I don’t like secrets—particularly secret engagements. And I don’t see any reason for it. Both our parents were delighted. Though you don’t seem to realize it, there are other men in the world. Some of them ask me out to dinner and—so forth. If they knew I were engaged to you they—well, it would make things easier all around. As it is, I’m neither engaged nor disengaged. I’m suspended in a vacuum. It’s hard to act as if you were an engaged girl when nobody knows you are. It wouldn’t matter for a short time, but it’s been going on for several months now. Honestly, Rod, I’m tired of keeping my ring in a bureau drawer and looking self-conscious whenever your name is mentioned. I can understand waiting until after the run of the play to get married, but why can’t we tell people we’re engaged?”
“Because we just can’t.”
“Why?”
“It’s—well, you wouldn’t understand. You’ll just have to take it on trust that we can’t.”
“How are we ever going to get along after we’re married if you don’t trust my understanding enough to tell me things that matter so much to both of us?”
“And how are we ever going to get along if you don’t trust me at all?”
Pauline closed the sketch pad and slipped the pencil into a slot in the cover. “Rod, we can’t go on like this. We will have to call it off.”
