The Priceless Pearl

								

beauty. She was not insulted; no one threatened her virtue or offered
to run away with her. It was simply that, like Helen of Troy, "Where'er
she came she brought calamity."
Her first place had been with a publishing firm, Dixon & Gregory.
When Pearl came to them the business was managed by the two sons of
the original firm; the elder Dixon was dead, and the elder Gregory,
a man of fifty-six or eight, came to the office only once or twice
a week. A desk for her had been put in his private room, as it was
almost always vacant. It ceased, however, to be vacant as soon as he
saw Pearl. He had no idea that he had fallen in love with her--perhaps
he had not. He certainly never troubled, her with attentions; as
far as she knew he was hardly aware of her existence. His emotion,
whatever it was, took the form of quarreling with anyone who did speak
to her--even in the course of necessary business. When at last one
day he met her and the younger Dixon going out to lunch at the same
hour and in the same elevator, but purely by accident, he made such a
violent and inexplicable scene that the two younger partners, after
consultation, decided that the only thing to do was to get rid of the
girl quietly--get her to resign. They were both very nice about it,
and themselves found her another place--as secretary to a magazine
editor--a man of ice, they assured her. She never saw the elder Mr.
Gregory again, and a few months later read in the papers of his death.
Her new position went well for several months. The editor was, as
represented, a man of ice; but, as Hamlet has observed, being as pure
as snow and as chaste as ice does not protect against calumny, and the
wife of the editor, entering the office one day to find her husband and
his secretary bending over an illegible manuscript, refused to allow
such dangerous beauty so near her husband, and Pearl lost her second
job.
Her next place was with an ambitious young firm which was putting a
new cleaning fluid on the market. At first, in a busy office, Pearl
seemed to pass almost unnoticed. Then one day the two partners, young
men both and heretofore like brothers, came to her together and asked
her if she would do the firm a great favor--sit for her portrait to
a well-known artist so that they might use her picture as a poster
to advertise their product. Pearl consented--she thought it would be
rather good fun. The result was successful. Indeed, the only criticism
of the picture--which represented Pearl in tawny yellow holding up a
saffron-colored robe at which she smiled brilliantly, with beneath it
the caption, Why Does She Smile? Because Her Old Dress is Made New
by--was that it would have been better to get a real person to sit for
the picture, as the public was tired of these idealized types of female
beauty. But the trouble started over who was to own the original
pastel. It developed that each partner had started the idea from a
hidden wish to own a portrait of Pearl. They quarreled bitterly. The