IN THE far-off, placid days, when woman's place was still the home, the love story was a much less complicated affair. Then Grace or Mabel or Genevieve, returning from the school that had finished her, curled up on a sofa in the parlor in the genial company of a box of chocolates and a copy of When Knighthood Was in Flower. There she waited, disturbed only by the occasional rattle of dishes manipulated by mother in the kitchen.
Between this dear girl and the grave intervened but a single possibility—the arrival of the young knight on his milk-white charger. At the first faint sound of Cupid paging her she leaped to her feet, rearranged her hair and ran out on the porch with open arms. Unless the competition happened to be unusually keen the knight had little difficulty in persuading her to desert the parlor. She had never liked the wall paper, anyhow. The first thing father knew he was paying for a trousseau and sweeping rice off the front walk.
But times have altered. The parlor is deserted. Grace and Genevieve and Mabel are abroad in the marts of trade, and doing very well, thank you. The young man who would catch the eye of one of them must swap his charger for a touring car—and he must be able in argument. Can he persuade his lady that matrimony offers the same thrills and excitement as a good job downtown? Can he prove his ability to support her in the style to which she has been accustomed by her own weekly pay envelope?
In the long list of stumbling-blocks that may detain the eager lover that pay envelope has taken its place, the greatest of them all. The handsome commoner who fell for the Crown Princess of Ruritania had considerable chasm to span. The poor but honest ribbon clerk who adored the millionaire's only daughter was in for a bit of bridge building. But in all history there has been no such gulf as this—the frowning, impassable gulf between the young man who gets forty dollars a week and the girl of his choice in the same office who is getting sixty.
On the worried side of such a gulf John Henry Jackson sat at his desk in the office of the Phœnix Advertising Agency. A tall young man of twenty-five or so with keen blue eyes—not bad-looking, if you came right down to it. In fact, had the Phœnix people paid young men according to their looks—but they didn't. They had it on a more sordid basis, and forty a week was regarded as good money for a copy writer new to the game.
John Henry glanced across to the desk that stood just outside the door marked "George H. Camby, President." There she sat, on the pleasanter side of the chasm, Miss Myra Dalton, old Camby's secretary. Affectionately John Henry regarded the back of that head, which was, he knew, fairly buzzing with efficiency. Somewhere around on the other side shone her face, very lovely, but at the moment stern and preoccupied.
For these were business hours, and how she reveled in them! Not because she was decorative did old Camby pay her that sixty a week. The best secretary in town, said Camby, who was no idle boaster. She was, too. She had that passion for detail, for accuracy, which is the vice of so many otherwise charming women. And dog-gone it, reflected John Henry, how she loved her job!
Only the night before he had taken her to dinner—a strained moment when he paid the check—and then to the theater, seats down in front, an extravagance she could have managed so much more easily. The play was a sort of holdover from an earlier day, when the mating of man and maid was a matter of moonlight and soft glances, strong arms that clasped and fair cheeks mantling with blushes. It had thrown John Henry a little off his balance.
They decided to dispense with the crowded trolleys and walked home. Up above shone a cold October moon in a setting of bright, glittering stars. What the play had begun the heavens now completed. John Henry went quite mad. He resolved to turn back the clock, ignore the chasm, put his fate to one supreme test.
"It's a wonderful night, isn't it?" he began. "Just look at that moon!"
"Cold, though," said Myra. "Do you think Mr. Camby will land that new chewing-gum account?"
"I—I don't know. How should I?" John Henry's ardor cooled. "Can't you forget Camby—on a night like this?"
"I can't forget my work. I love it."
"Silly old work!" sneered John Henry jealously.
"If you feel that way," she rebuked, "you'll never get on."
"Perhaps not. But aren't there other things in life besides getting on? In that play to-night——"
"Oh, yes—the play! Very nice. Very pretty—but fifty years behind the times."
John Henry made no answer. Twenty minutes later at her door he said good night, himself as chill and distant as the moon. Now in the cold gray light of the morning after he was glad she had foiled his purpose. After all, some gulfs were not so easily bridged. A man might ask a girl to desert all her loved ones, to go with him to a far land, to make his people her people, his life her life. But could he ask her to exchange two hundred and forty dollars a month for a half interest in one hundred and sixty—with apartment rents where they were? Well, hardly!