petrel on her way. She looked up at the ragged sierras of cloud-capped buildings that rose above the streets, shaded by the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray, drab, ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so like the wintry mountains of her Western home that she felt a satisfaction such as the hundred-thousand-dollar house had seldom brought her.
A policeman caused her to waver on a corner, just by his eye and weight.
“Hello, Mabel!” said he. “Kind of late for you to be out, ain’t it?”
“I—I am just going to the drug store,” said Nevada, hurrying past him.
The excuse serves as a passport for the most sophisticated. Does it prove that woman never progresses, or that she sprang from Adam’s rib, full-fledged in intellect and wiles?
Turning eastward, the direct blast cut down Nevada’s speed one-half. She made zigzag tracks in the snow; but she was as tough as a piñon sapling, and bowed to it as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building loomed before her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some well-remembered cañon. The haunt of business and its hostile neighbor, art, was darkened and silent. The elevator stopped at ten.
