The offer she had made had proved a terrible temptation.The artist who had asked with such eagerness to use her head for his portrait of the Madonna on the canvas he was executing for the new cathedral, had long appealed to her vivid imagination.Two prints of his famous work hung on her walls.She had always wished to know him.He had married aSouthern girl.
That was just the point--he WAS married!
No girl could afford to be shut up alone in a studio with a fascinating married man for three hours-- or half an hour.What if she should fall in love with him at first sight! Such things had happened.They could happen again.Only tragedy could be the end of such an event.It was too dangerous to consider for a moment.
She would have consented had it been possible for Jane to chaperon her.That would have been obviously ridiculous.No artist with any self-respect would tolerate such a reflection on his honesty.No girl could afford to confess her fears in this brazen fashion.
The necessity for her refusal had depressed her beyond any experience she had passed through in the dreary desert of the past five years.
She lifted the sleeping kitten and whispered passionately: "Am I a silly fool, Kitty?Am I?"The tears came at last.She lay back on the pillows and let them pour down her cheeks without protest or effort at self-control.Every nerve of her strong, healthy body ached for the love and companionship of men which she had denied herself with an iron will.At nineteen it had been easy.The sheer animal joy in life had been enough.With the growth of each year the ache within had become more and more insistent.With each ripening season of body and mind, the hunger of love had grown more and more maddening.How long could she keep up this battle with every instinct of her being?
She rose at last, determined to go to Jane, confess that she had been a fool, and step out into the new world, New York's world, and begin to live.
She seized her hat and furs and put them on with feverish haste.
"God knows it's time I began--I'll be an old maid in another year and dry up--ugh!"She looked in the quaint oval mirror that hung beside her door and lifted her head with a touch of pride.
She had reached the street and started for the Broadway car before she suddenly remembered that Jane was "dining with a dangerous man."She couldn't turn back to that little room tonight without new courage.Her decision was instantaneous.She couldn't surrender to the flesh and the devil by yielding to Jane.
She would go to prayer-meeting!
Religion had always been a very real thing in her life.Her father was a Methodist presiding elder.She would have gone to the meeting tonight in the first place but for the snow.Dr.Craddock, the new sensational pastor of the Temple, was giving a series of Wednesday-night talks that had aroused wide interest and drawn immense crowds.
His theme tonight was one that promised all sorts of sensations--"The Woman of the Future." The only trouble with the Doctor was that the substance of his discourses sometimes failed to make good the startling suggestions of his titles.No matter--she would go.She felt a sense of righteous pride infighting her way to the church through the first storm of the winter.
In spite of the snow the church was crowded.The subject announced had evidently touched a vital spot in modern life.More people were thinking about "The Woman of the Future" than she had suspected.The crowd sat with eager, upturned faces.
The first half-hour's prayer and song service had just begun.Mary joined in the singing of the stirring evangelistic hymns with enthusiasm.Something in their battle-cry melody caught her spirit instantly tonight and her whole being responded.In ten minutes she was a good shouting Methodist and supremely happy without knowing why.She never paused to ask.Her nature was profoundly religious and she had been born and bred in the atmosphere of revivals.Her father was an aggressive evangelist both in his character and methods of work, and she was his own daughter--a child of emotion.
The individuals in the eager crowd which packed the popular church meant nothing to her personally.They had passed before her unseeing eyes Sunday after Sunday the past five years as mere shadows of an unknown world which swallowed them up the moment they reached the street.She had never seen the inside of one of their homes.Not one ofthem had drawn close enough to her to venture an invitation.
Two of the stewards she knew personally--one a bricklayer, the other a baker on Eighth Avenue.The preacher she had met in a purely formal way as the bishop of the flock.She liked Dr.Craddock.He was known in the ministry as a live wire.He was a man of vigorous physique--just turning fifty, magnetic, eloquent and popular with the masses.
