After that, she went to her room and sat down before her three-leaved mirror. There was where she nearly always sat when she came into her room, if she had nothing in mind to do. She went to that chair as naturally as a dog goes to his corner.  
She leaned forward, observing her profile; gravity seemed to be her mood. But after a long, almost motionless scrutiny¹, she began to produce dramatic sketches² upon that ever-ready stage, her countenance³: she showed gaiety, satire⁴, doubt, gentleness, appreciation⁵ of a companion and love-in-hiding—all studied in profile first, then repeated for a “three-quarter view.” Subsequently she ran through them, facing herself in full.
 
In this manner she outlined a playful scenario⁶ for her next interview with Arthur Russell; but grew solemn again, thinking of the impression she had already sought to give him. She had no twinges for any underminings of her “most intimate friend”—in fact, she felt that her work on a new portrait of Mildred for Mr.
 
Russell had been honest and accurate. But why had it been her instinct to show him an Alice Adams who didn't exist?
 
Almost everything she had said to him was upon spontaneous impulse, springing to her lips on the instant; yet it all seemed to have been founded upon a careful design, as if some hidden self kept such designs in stock and handed them up to her, ready-made, to be used for its own purpose. What appeared to be the desired result was a false-coloured image in Russell's mind; but if he liked that image he wouldn't be liking⁸ Alice Adams; nor would anything he thought about the image be a thought about her.
 
Nevertheless, she knew she would go on with her false, fancy colourings of this nothing as soon as she saw him again; she had just been practicing them. “What's the idea?” she wondered. “What makes me tell such lies? Why shouldn't I be just myself?” And then she thought, “But which one is myself?”
 
Her eyes dwelt on the solemn eyes in the mirror; and her lips, disquieted⁹ by a deepening wonder, parted to whisper:
 
“Who in the world are you?”
 
The apparition¹⁰ before her had obeyed her like an alert slave, but now, as she subsided¹¹ to a complete stillness, that aspect changed to the old mockery with which mirrors avenge¹² their wrongs. The nucleus¹³ of some queer thing seemed to gather and shape itself behind the nothingness of the reflected eyes until it became almost an actual strange presence. If it could be identified, perhaps the presence was that of the hidden designer who handed up the false, ready-made pictures, and, for unknown purposes, made Alice exhibit them; but whatever it was, she suddenly found it monkey-like and terrifying. In a flutter she jumped up and went to another part of the room.
 
A moment or two later she was whistling softly as she hung her light coat over a wooden triangle in her closet, and her musing¹⁴ now was quainter¹⁵ than the experience that led to it; for what she thought was this, “I certainly am a queer girl!” She took a little pride in so much originality¹⁶, believing herself probably the only person in the world to have such thoughts as had been hers since she entered the room, and the first to be disturbed by a strange presence in the mirror. In fact, the effect of the tiny episode became apparent in that look of preoccupied¹⁷ complacency to be seen for a time upon any girl who has found reason to suspect that she is a being without counterpart.
 
This slight glow, still faintly radiant, was observed across the dinner-table by Walter, but he misinterpreted it. “What YOU lookin' so self-satisfied about?” he inquired, and added in his knowing way, “I saw you, all right, cutie!”
 
“Where'd you see me?”
 
“Down-town.”
 
“This afternoon, you mean, Walter?”
 
“Yes, 'this afternoon, I mean, Walter,'” he returned, burlesquing¹⁸ her voice at least happily enough to please himself; for he laughed applausively. “Oh, you never saw me! I passed you close enough to pull a tooth, but you were awful busy. I never did see anybody as busy as you get, Alice, when you're towin' a barge¹⁹. My, but you keep your hands goin'! Looked like the air was full of 'em! That's why I'm onto why you look so tickled²⁰ this evening; I saw you with that big fish.”
 
Mrs. Adams laughed benevolently²¹; she was not displeased²² with this rallying. “Well, what of it, Walter?” she asked. “If you happen to see your sister on the street when some nice young man is being attentive²³ to her——”
 
Walter barked and then cackled. “Whoa, Sal!” he said. “You got the parts mixed. It's little Alice that was 'being attentive.' I know the big fish she was attentive to, all right, too.”
 
“Yes,” his sister retorted, quietly. “I should think you might have recognized him, Walter.”
 
Walter looked annoyed. “Still harpin' on THAT!” he complained. “The kind of women I like, if they get sore they just hit you somewhere on the face and then they're through. By the way, I heard this Russell was supposed to be your dear, old, sweet friend Mildred's steady. What you doin' walkin' as close to him as all that?”
 
Mrs. Adams addressed her son in gentle reproof²⁴, “Why Walter!”
 
“Oh, never mind, mama,” Alice said. “To the horrid²⁵ all things are horrid.”
 
“Get out!” Walter protested, carelessly. “I heard all about this Russell down at the shop. Young Joe Lamb's such a talker I wonder he don't ruin his grandfather's business; he keeps all us cheap help standin' round listening to him nine-tenths of our time. Well, Joe told me this Russell's some kin⁷ or other to the Palmer family, and he's got some little money of his own, and he's puttin' it into ole Palmer's trust company and Palmer's goin' to make him a vice-president of the company. Sort of a keep-the-money-in-the-family arrangement, Joe Lamb says.”
 
Mrs. Adams looked thoughtful. “I don't see——” she began.
 
“Why, this Russell's supposed to be tied up to Mildred,” her son explained. “When ole Palmer dies this Russell will be his son-in-law, and all he'll haf' to do'll be to barely lift his feet and step into the ole man's shoes. It's certainly a mighty²⁶ fat hand-me-out for this Russell! You better lay off o' there, Alice. Pick somebody that's got less to lose and you'll make better showing.”
 
Mrs. Adams's air of thoughtfulness had not departed. “But you say this Mr. Russell is well off on his own account, Walter.”
 
“Oh, Joe Lamb says he's got some little of his own. Didn't know how much.”
 
“Well, then——”
 
Walter laughed his laugh. “Cut it out,” he bade her. “Alice wouldn't run in fourth place.”
 
Alice had been looking at him in a detached way, as though estimating the value of a specimen²⁷ in a collection not her own. “Yes,” she said, indifferently. “You REALLY are vulgar, Walter.”
 
He had finished his meal; and, rising, he came round the table to her and patted her good-naturedly on the shoulder. “Good ole Allie!” he said. “HONEST, you wouldn't run in fourth place. If I was you I'd never even start in the class. That frozen-face gang will rule you off the track soon as they see your colours.”
 
“Walter!” his mother said again.
 
“Well, ain't I her brother?” he returned, seeming to be entirely²⁸ serious and direct, for the moment, at least. “I like the ole girl all right. Fact is, sometimes I'm kind of sorry for her.”
 
“But what's it all ABOUT?” Alice cried. “Simply because you met me down-town with a man I never saw but once before and just barely know! Why all this palaver²⁹?”
 
“'Why?'” he repeated, grinning. “Well, I've seen you start before, you know!” He went to the door, and paused. “I got no date to-night. Take you to the movies, you care to go.”
 
She declined crisply. “No, thanks!”
 
“Come on,” he said, as pleasantly as he knew how.
 
“Give me a chance to show you a better time than we had up at that frozen-face joint³⁰. I'll get you some chop suey afterward³¹.”
 
“No, thanks!”
 
“All right,” he responded and waved a flippant adieu. “As the barber says, 'The better the advice, the worse it's wasted!' Good-night!”
 
Alice shrugged³² her shoulders; but a moment or two later, as the jar of the carelessly slammed front door went through the house, she shook her head, reconsidering. “Perhaps I ought to have gone with him. It might have kept him away from whatever dreadful people are his friends—at least for one night.”
 
“Oh, I'm sure Walter's a GOOD boy,” Mrs. Adams said, soothingly³³; and this was what she almost always said when either her husband or Alice expressed such misgivings³⁴. “He's odd, and he's picked up right queer manners; but that's only because we haven't given him advantages like the other young men. But I'm sure he's a GOOD boy.”
 
She reverted³⁵ to the subject a little later, while she washed the dishes and Alice wiped them. “Of course Walter could take his place with the other nice boys of the town even yet,” she said. “I mean, if we could afford to help him financially. They all belong to the country clubs and have cars and——”
 
“Let's don't go into that any more, mama,” the daughter begged her. “What's the use?”
 
“It COULD be of use,” Mrs. Adams insisted. “It could if your father——”
 
“But papa CAN'T.”
 
“Yes, he can.”
 
“But how can he? He told me a man of his age CAN'T give up a business he's been in practically all his life, and just go groping about for something that might never turn up at all. I think he's right about it, too, of course!”
 
Mrs. Adams splashed among the plates with a new vigour³⁶ heightened by an old bitterness. “Oh, yes,” she said. “He talks that way; but he knows better.”
 
“How could he 'know better,' mama?”
 
“HE knows how!”
 
“But what does he know?”
 
Mrs. Adams tossed her head. “You don't suppose I'm such a fool I'd be urging him to give up something for nothing, do you, Alice? Do you suppose I'd want him to just go 'groping around' like he was telling you? That would be crazy, of course. Little as his work at Lamb's brings in, I wouldn't be so silly as to ask him to give it up just on a CHANCE he could find something else. Good gracious, Alice, you must give me credit for a little intelligence once in a while!”
 
Alice was puzzled. “But what else could there be except a chance? I don't see——”
 
“Well, I do,” her mother interrupted, decisively. “That man could make us all well off right now if he wanted to. We could have been rich long ago if he'd ever really felt as he ought to about his family.”
 
“What! Why, how could——”
 
“You know how as well as I do,” Mrs. Adams said, crossly. “I guess you haven't forgotten how he treated me about it the Sunday before he got sick.”
 
She went on with her work, putting into it a sudden violence inspired by the recollection; but Alice, enlightened, gave utterance³⁷ to a laugh of lugubrious³⁸ derision. “Oh, the GLUE factory again!” she cried. “How silly!” And she renewed her laughter.
 
So often ............