Evening Star Newspaper, July 14, 1935, Page 91

14 k- ’ Magazine Section section with its hundred Babel Towers reaching into the sky thrillingly, incredibly beautiful. Someone had been building an awful lot of sky- scrapers for a poverty-stricken com- munity! It was bewildering, and an awed small voice close to me was saying, **The Empire City — yes, The Empire City!” Then to my amaze- ment, | realized that the awed small voice was my own. In the cavernous gloom of the dock, I saw the Prince again. The place was filled by surging crowds, and all at once 1 became conscious that he was making his way toward me. For the first time since the night of our original encounter, his eyes were alight. They seemed to be trying to say something to me across the struggling mass of humanity which separated us, and try as I might, I could not help answering their un- spoken message. What a fool 1'd been to keep him away, what a fool! But now perhaps the excitement of land- ing, the homecoming had thawed out all the icy nonsense which had sprung up between us! I smiled and made a little beckoning gesture with my head. His smile flashed back, and he drew nearer. Then suddenly 1 saw his expression change, and turning, he made off in the opposite direction just as two arms closed around me from behind and a hearty masculine kiss was deposited on my lips. 1 gasped and looked up into the face of a perfect stranger. “Oh, good heavens! I'm sorry!” said the man. “I thought you were my sister!” “You're sorry!” 1 cried furiously. “You'd better be! You've ruined my life!”” And then before I realized what I was doing, I'd slapped his face and was fighting my way toward the exit, where 1 arrived just in time to see the Prince stepping into a sleek limousine. A footman closed the door, sprang up beside the chauffeur, and the car moved off while I, miserable and de- feated, crawled into the first available taxi and drove to my hotel. There was a box of red roses and a note from Clive Harding waiting for me. I was annoyed that Clive had not been at the boat. After all, he hadn’t a thing in the world to do except spend the family fortune on amusing himself; it did seem as if he could have managed to meet.me. His ex- cuse, I decided as I began to read his note, would have to be a good one. “Dear Chris: Welcome home, and please believe that only the most important business stopped my being on the pier this afternoon. How about coming to my office at about one tomorrow? We can have a bite of lunch and exchange news. As always, Clive.” His office! What on earth, I won- dered, could Clive Harding be doing in an office? Then it occurred to me to examine the letter-head on which his note had been written. It contained another shock. ‘‘Althea Products, Inc.”” was the firm name, and down the margin ran a list which announced that Althea produced “‘cold creams, with that distinctive Althea mellow- ness, face powder with Althea fra- grance,”” and so forth. Apparently Althea produced every known cos- metic from toenail enamel to hair slickem. The list formed a regular Althea Hedge, and what Clive, the idler, was doing behind it, passed understanding. Also, I didn’t think the suggestion that I pick kém up for lunch was so hot, either. But as I'd come back to marry him, I decided to overlook that, for very few marriages have ever been made by girls who waited in the parlor and did nothing else about it. Next day I put on the best-looking remains of my Paris wardrobe and started across town to Clive’s office, which was in an enormous new build- ing close to Grand Central Station A severely chic young woman behind a half acre of polished desk greeted me with subdued courtesy. I followed her through a series of heavily carpeted offices to a door marked private, and then in another moment Clive was holding both my hands and saying a lot of nice things. The door closed behind the young THIS WEEK Christophine Discovers America woman, and he held me off, looking me up and down. “Quite the foreigner!" he exclaimed. “You look like a duchess, my dear!'” “How about yourself?”” 1 de- manded, not entirely pleased. ‘‘You've changed a lot, too. What are you doing here — dusting chairs and filling ink-wells for the morale of it?"” “I'm only the president,”” he grinned. ‘“Things have changed, Chris. I had to do something after Dad’s bank folded, and Mother's maid had the recipe for several swell cosmetics. The darned thing has grown beyond belief, so here I am sitting on a powder-keg, but it happens to be face powder and not likely to blow up.” I looked at him, bewildered, trying to adjust my mind to this new, strange Clive Harding. He had matured, I thought, too quickly. But whatever he had become, he was certainly not the good-natured, carefree boy I had once been able to twist around my finger. Nor was he quite the man whose photograph had been my secret guide on so many dangerous occasions. He was harder, detached, preoccupied even now. “I've ordered lunch sent in,”” he announced. “Do you mind? We are organizing an office down in Texas, and I have to be on the long distance phone.” It was evident that he was more ahsorbed in this Texas affair than in my arrival, but I managed a smile. “Of course I don’t mind,” I said, “but I'm surprised. 1 thought all business had died, over here.’ “You can always sell something people want,” he laughed, ‘“‘and women are still making up.”’ It seemed strange to eat sandwiches. I had forgotten their existence. Clive noticed how little they interested me and apologized again. He was inter- rupted twice by telephone calls and, although we were alone, made no attempt to kiss me. Instead, I caught him watching me keenly, as though taking a quick inventory. Then when the farce of a meal was over, he lit my cigarette and his own and wanted | to know my plans. He let out a long whistle when he found out about the Kattleburg estate and that I was out of a job. “I really don’t know what I am going to do,” I told him. “That's one reason why I wanted to see you. The other reason is — well, after all. we've been pretty good friends.” At first he didn’t say anything. He got up and went to the window, staring out over the East River and the crowded forest of brick and steel. Then he turned and spoke gravely. “Christophine,”” he began, “I'm going to be perfectly frank. I'm afraid of you. You aren’t the same girl any _ more. I suppose, after all those years in Paris, I could hardly expect you to be. I'm not in love with anybody else — except perhaps the business. But you — surely you must see the thing that was between us is gone? 1'll feel like a swine, if you by chance don't agree. But I'd be even more of a swine to pretend.” Curiously enough, a flood of relief swept over me, and impulsively I got up and took his hand, moved by the first genuine emotion I'd felt for him in years. i “Clive, you're right!" I said ear- nestly. ““It wouldn’t do at all. But we've been such swell friends, and that can go on, I hope, always!" His smile was brilliant. “Good old trooper I"* he cried. “Thank the Lord that’s settled! And now about your affairs. Even if we're not going to be married, I can still give you a job.” ‘“Here?” I asked eagerly. “No, not here,” he said. “Look, Chris, I guess you haven't been home long enough to realize how scarce jobs are. In order to take you into the office, I'd have to throw somebody out — and I can’t do that. But what I can do is send you on the road.” “Send me on the what”’ 1 de- manded. “l can use you all through the Middle West,” he said. ‘‘Expenses, | Continued from page six drawing-account and commission. There's real money to be made if you work at it, and with your appearance, you'd be ideal for such a job."” “The Middle West!' [ retorted, laughing. “Don’t be funny, my dear! I've never been west, and I hope to heaven I can still be spared that! If vou think I am going into the Hinter- land and rub your scalp treatments into the hair of every Babbitt along Main Street, you're nuts!"’ Clive smiled, but made a little despairing gesture with his shoulders. “There you are!” he exclaimed. “That’s what I meant when I said you'dchanged. I don’t know what gets into you people who stay over there too long, but it’s a kind of poison. You ought to be spanked for a remark like that!”’ “My dear Clive,” I replied smooth- ly, “‘since you deserted your own kind in favor of Madame Althea, you seem to have lost all sense of humor. I've lived too long in civilization to care about moving out of it. Thanks for the offer and for the lunch. And now I'd better run along. Let’s see each other again when we can really meet as — friends!”’ “I'm sorry,” he said, looking more like the old humble Clive. “And I'm really worried about what you're going to do. Please promise me that you'll remember the job is yours any time you want it!” Somehow I found myself on the street, my mind still in a daze from the upset of my plans. Another bit of the earth under my feet had crumbled, and I turned blindly into I exington Avenue, confused by its unfamiliar mixture of squalor and new grandeur, and walked along slowly, trying to think. ; What was my next move to be? That Clive had told the truth about the scarcity of work, I felt convinced. My morning newspaper had already told that much. There were columns about relief work and appropriations for the needy. America seemed to be in a turmoil, and I was caught up in it and unprepared. And then | remembered the letter Mr. Kattleburg had entrusted to me. 1 had promised to deliver it to his daughter in person, and the fulfilling of this promise would stall off my problems for a day or two, anyhow. What was more, I realized I'd better deliver it while I still had a little money left, because Miss Kattleburg's house was near Philadelphia. It’s lovely to find a real excuse for stalling off any important step, and so I felt much better as I returned to my hotel. The city suddenly seemed terribly vital and full of interest — a challenge to my courage. ; I sent a wire to Philadelphia. By evening 1 had a reply to my request for an appointment, and it didn’t sound much like my dear old Boss. ““MISS MARCIA KATTLEBURG WILL RECEIVE YOU AT TWO O'CLOCK TO- MORROW AFTERNOON STOP KINDLY BE PUNCTUAL E. DOVOLL, SECRETARY" No welcome, no invitation to lunch, nothing to indicate that the young lady knew, as surely she must kmow, how long ,and faithfully I had served her father. I might have been a servant applying for a position. How- ever, Marcia Kattleburg was one of the richest women in the world, and S0 it was only natural that she should be surrounded by all sorts of formali- ties. Beside which, I reflected, the old man’s daughter would certainly have something of his impressive quality, his wonderful dignity and forcefulness. I only hoped she'd like me a little because I'd liked her father so much. Probably she was not responsible for the tone of the telegram. Just why I should have expected Philadelphia to stand perfectly still - out. 13 while I grew up. I can’t imagine, but I still retained the quaint picture of it that I had received on my only other visit, when I was about seven — red brick and scoured white steps; narrow streets named after trees; a lovely old building called Indepen- dence Hall (Somebody had told me the Declaration of Independence had been signed there, and I had wondered what that was, but been ashamed to ask); Betsy Ross House, where the first flag of our country was made; Washington, Lafayette, and other famous names, the very core of a great nation’s beginnings, with Mr. William Penn on top of a very tall tower, looking down on what he’d started and doubtless thinking thoughts about Brotherly Love. And then tea with a fashionable friend of my mother’s. All of which was a charming memory — the dry dullness of my history lessons made vivid and actual. But I had somehow taken for granted that Miss Kattleburg would live somewhere near Rittenhouse Square. And when [ stepped into a taxi at Broad Street Station and en- quired about her address, I got a shock. ¥ ““Oh, I know where it is okay,” said the driver, “but it's a long ways Take about half hour to get there.” I groaned inwardly at the thought of the taxi meter. But there was nothing to be done about it now. I told the driver to go ahead. We started out by way of a wide, tree- bordered parkway which reminded me of Paris, until I turned to look back and saw that William Penn was still on his pedestal, but that a far-flung palisade of skyscrapers shouldered him on either side. Another New York, I thought, but somehow with- out New York’s bitter tenseness. " We rolled on and on. The Parkway seemed endless, and the meter of the taxi became positively acrobatic, as it gaily ticked away my next week's lunch money. Presently we were in a beautifully wooded, rolling country, passing enormous estates. 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