The strolling couples used to
step gratefully into the embrace of these shadows, and from them
into other embraces. Pearlie, sitting on the porch, could see
them dimly, although they could not see her. She could not help
remarking that these strolling couples were strangely lacking in
sprightly conversation. Their remarks were but fragmentary,
disjointed affairs, spoken in low tones with a queer, tremulous
note in them. When they reached the deepest, blackest, kindliest
shadow, which fell just before the end of the row of trees, the
strolling couples almost always stopped, and then there came a
quick movement, and a little smothered cry from the girl, and
then a sound, and then a silence. Pearlie, sitting alone on the
porch in the dark, listened to these things and blushed
furiously. Pearlie had never strolled into the kindly shadows
with a little beating of the heart, and she had never been
surprised with a quick arm about her and eager lips pressed
warmly against her own.
In the daytime Pearlie worked as public stenographer at the Burke
Hotel. She rose at seven in the morning, and rolled for fifteen
minutes, and lay on her back and elevated her heels in the air,
and stood stiff kneed while she touched the floor with her finger
tips one hundred times, and went without her breakfast.
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