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“It’s a beautiful city. I was there once, back in my college days,” he said. “Don’t ask how long ago that was, either.”
He chuckled, but her humorless response killed his own mirth. She plainly had no intention of asking how long ago it had been since he had been of a college age. And that could only mean she took it to be a very long time.
“I expect it’s changed quite a bit since then,” he finished flatly. “The coming of the automobile, that sort of thing.”
“No doubt it has,” she said, not as if she meant it to be unflattering. And in fact, she did not. She was simply not very good at repartee, at the exchange of little flashes of humor. It required, for one thing, a confidence in one’s cleverness, and that she did not possess.
She did not really think he was that old. She just did not know what to say in reply. She so often said the wrong thing, something that offended or sounded foolish, that she had found it simpler not to attempt that sort of conversation
He did not see it that way, though. So much for flirtation, he told himself, picking up the papers on his desk, papers from her file. As it was, although he had not known what she had been thinking along that line earlier, she had been wrong. His attempts at flirtation with her had not been in the slightest degree professional. They had been genuine, if unsuccessful. She seemed completely unaware of the fact a man might find her desirable.
He wished her well again, and she thanked him again, and they said goodbye in a mutually embarrassed manner. Her hand clasp was firm, more determined than confident, and quite businesslike. He watched her go, admiring her pretty legs and the dark hair that she wore pulled back rather severely. She looked more like a girl of sixteen than a young woman of twenty-two.
He glanced at the papers again, seeing not only those specific reports, but seeing as well all of the facts and impressions gleaned from months of studying her, and learning about her life.
He did not like the picture he had formed in his mind of her father, that selfish dictatorial old tyrant. He could understand why she had been torn between love and hate of him. But he could, in a sense, understand too why the old man had made a virtual prisoner of the girl. The image of a garden came back to the doctor again. She was like a rare bloom whose beauty and fragrance delighted you, but that you dared not pick or wear for fear that it would wither. Her father had sought to hoard that loveliness for himself. She had tried to break free.
Her father’s death had been an accident, nothing more. If there was any blame, it was on his own shoulders. But guilt did strange things to a person’s reasoning. She had already been suffering guilt because of her resentment of him, the resentment that at times became almost hatred. Then had come the quarrel, because she had determined once and for all to break free. Then the fire—a drunken, angry man’s fire, that had cost him his life.
She still blamed herself for that. But at least she had learned to live with the burden of guilt, and had no longer to flee from it into the unseeing, unspeaking, unhearing state that had brought her to his attention.
Perhaps in time she would have accomplished that by herself anyway. It was difficult to say. She had spunk, plain old fashioned backbone, and that accounted for a lot. But there was something about her so fragile, so...he searched for the word he wanted...so vulnerable. She had that wall about herself, but it was not brick or wood. It was of the thinnest glass. How easily it might be shattered, the delicate blossoms within trampled underfoot.
He sighed and marked her file closed and put it in the out basket for his secretary.
CHAPTER THREE
The sky was so very blue, the air so very fresh. Of course it was the same sky and the same air that she had been seeing and breathing while she was at Lawndale. They seemed changed when you are free, seeing them without walls about you, with no chaperoning nurse close at hand to report your every look and action.
True, they were a little frightening too. The throngs of people going by were vaguely threatening. She waited for the traffic light to change, standing amid a little band of shoppers. A tall girl in a stunning outfit stepped impatiently off the curb and started across a second or two before the light changed. Helen watched her, envying her boldness, her easy self-confidence, but she did not emulate her. She waited until the light changed and the others had started across before she moved from the curb.
The city had completed its renovation of the square since she had been away. In its center was the old fountain, still handsome despite the stark modernity of its new setting.
She crossed the square diagonally, pausing to view a piece of the abstract sculpture. The sculptor had called it Time to Come, according to the legend. She thought it ugly but fascinating. It was a jumble of large blocks that seemed to have fallen there without pattern or design. Water ran through them, spilling out here, forming a pool there. It reminded her of the word association games they had played at Lawndale. She tried to think of a word to attach to this disarray. Uncertainty, she decided.
At the far corner of the square, she paused while waiting for the light, and looked back again at the sculpture, not quite certain whether “uncertainty” was the right word.
She would probably not have noticed the young man who was following her had he not been watching her so intently that he ran right into a woman with her arms full of packages.
The packages went everywhere, one of them making a noise that announced in advance the breaking of glass. Ellen Miles watched the two of them scrambling for the packages, the woman looking quite put out, the young man, in his nondescript clothes, obviously embarrassed.
Someone jostled her. The light had changed. She crossed the street. On the opposite side she looked back once more. The woman was still there, looking over her packages ruefully. The young man was gone, nor did she see him when her eyes quickly swept over the square.
Because it was such a lovely day, and her first day in a long time that she could be anywhere by yourself, really by herself, and because a nice looking young man had just been watching with such keen interest as she crossed the square, she laughed aloud.
The laugh was short-lived. She put a hand to her mouth to hide it and thought, if they see me laughing out loud to myself, they’ll send me back to Lawndale. That thought only made her laugh again. She hurried on, forgetting all about the young man in the square.
She was meeting her mother for lunch. She saw as she approached the table where her mother sat waiting, that she was late, and that her mother had been waiting anxiously. Mrs. Miles watched her daughter approach, making her way through the maze of tables. She felt a quick sense of relief when she saw her daughter, and she was not enough of an actress to hide it.
“I was beginning to worry,” she began in a scolding tone. She had a vaguely disappointed look, as if Ellen had more or less let her down. In her eyes there was perpetually a look of anguish, so that she could not say, “it’s a nice day,” without sounding somehow disappointed in the fact.
“I’m only five minutes late,” Ellen said, taking a seat.
“But you were alone....”
“I’d have to be some time, sooner or later,” Ellen said, but in the kindly tone. She really hadn’t meant to make her mother worry. She had simply been enjoying herself so much that she hadn’t watched the time. At Lawndale, everyone else had watched the time for her. They had told her when to come and when to go, when to eat and when to sleep, and sometimes even when to dream. She would have to readjust to the idea of watching the time for herself.
She slipped off her gloves, tugging them neatly away from each finger, and glanced around. It was the city’s nicest lunchroom, blandly expensive in decor. There was a discreet clatter all about them, and the tables were filled with blandly expensive looking women. They drank tea, or brandy alexanders, and ate cream caramels.
“Did you find everything you wanted?” Mrs. Miles asked when the waitress had come and