The Glass Slipper Read Free Page B

they saw were hurrying, bent against the savage wind.
    Andy sat frowning, saying nothing. They turned on Randolph Street, passed, now, crowds and lighted moving-picture theaters. There was Henrici’s, in a curious way the very heart of Chicago; it had been there and it would be there, catching the flow and pulse of the life of a great city. The theaters were lighted; already girls in fluffy long skirts with their youthful, very dressed-up escorts, were pouring into the Sherman Hotel on their way to the College Inn. They crossed under the stark, dark beams of the elevated, and a string of lighted cars rumbled and rattled swiftly over their heads. Kendal turned again on Wacker Drive; cars were thicker here, and became increasingly numerous until as they crossed Washington Boulevard they were obliged to crawl along, a foot at a time, in a flood of other long, chauffeur-driven cars, which gave glimpses of women, furred and jeweled, unassailable in their security against the cold, against the traffic hazards, against anything that was unsafe.
    Well, she was safe. Cinderella. Married to the king of her world. Who could be safer?
    She saw herself, suddenly, scurrying along Randolph, almost exactly a year ago now; taking the streetcar, transferring to a bus, clutching her little leather bag, aware that her nurse’s cape gave her a kind of immunity. She had gone that way the day she went from the hospital to nurse Crystal.
    Now she was riding so softly, so safely; so warmed and protected and secure, in her own car.
    They were almost there. She fumbled with the fastening of her glove, and Andy saw it and turned, taking off his own gloves.
    “Let me,” he said and fastened the glove swiftly and with the certain deftness of his surgeon’s fingers.
    The car drew up at last before the entrance to the Civic Opera. Women, their gowns shimmering in all colors below their furs, were crossing the wide walk quickly, so the wind would not disturb their elaborately coifed hair. Men were assisting their ladies’ progress with one hand and clutching their top hats with the other. The walk before the Civic Opera entrance was always windy, always cold.
    An attendant opened the car door. The cold wind struck against her silk-clad ankles and thin little silver sandals. Andy paused to speak to Kendal. A newsboy was near, shouting his wares above the din of motors and cars and the shouted orders of the mounted policemen. Andy turned, saw the newsboy and lingered to buy a paper and, in the cold and wind and under the great lights, to glance quickly and anxiously along the headlines. He frowned and threw the paper down and led her into the warm, bright confusion of the lobby.
    He knew, even, the number of the box which the Hattericks shared and had shared for years with two other families, and established Rue in her pink plush chair expertly. No one else was in the box that night, and Rue was glad. The overture had begun; the rustle and murmur was dying down, although new arrivals constantly drew the attention of the battery of opera glasses and delicate small lorgnettes.
    In Chicago, and in spite of sundry vicissitudes, the opera is still fashionable. Below the great, modernly rectangular proscenium, the orchestra seats were ablaze with color and jewels; behind them and above, the boxes were like velvet jewel cases themselves, flatteringly in the softest pink, only a little shaded by Chicago’s soot, And, like jewel cases, they set off beauty and color and glitter.
    “Everyone is here,” said Andy. “Hello — there’s Alicia.” There was a note of surprise in his voice which Rue was aware of even as she turned to follow his look.
    “Over there,” he said. “With the Streeters.”
    “Oh, I see. How lovely she is.”
    Alicia Pelham was lovely; Rue thought she was the loveliest woman she had ever seen, so utterly beautiful that it was actually difficult to talk to her — you were so transfixed with admiration. Alicia was probably in her late