Having taken Floyd
Vanderlip's measurement, she did not dare this with him; but she was not
afraid to go down into the town to Freda. And down she went, in the
bright light of day, to the house of the dancer. She was above silly
tongues, as was her husband, the captain. She wished to see this woman
and to speak with her, nor was she aware of any reason why she should
not. So she stood in the snow at the Greek girl's door, with the frost
at sixty below, and parleyed with the waiting-maid for a full five
minutes. She had also the pleasure of being turned away from that door,
and of going back up the hill, wroth at heart for the indignity which had
been put upon her. "Who was this woman that she should refuse to see
her?" she asked herself. One would think it the other way around, and
she herself but a dancing girl denied at the door of the wife of a
captain. As it was, she knew, had Freda come up the hill to her,--no
matter what the errand,--she would have made her welcome at her fire, and
they would have sat there as two women, and talked, merely as two women.
She had overstepped convention and lowered herself, but she had thought
it different with the women down in the town.
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