Highsmith, Patricia by The Price of Salt Page B

purpose?” Carol said wearily. “Especially when you’re so disagreeable.”
    “Because it concerns Rindy.” Then his voice faded unintelligibly.
    Then an instant later, Carol came in alone and closed the door. Carol stood against the door with her hands behind her, and they heard the car outside leaving. Carol must have agreed to see him tonight, Therese thought.
    “I’ll go,” Therese said. Carol said nothing. There was a deadness in the silence between them now, and Therese grew more uneasy. “I’d better go, hadn’t I?”
    “Yes, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about Harge. He’s not always-so rude. It was a mistake to say I had any guest here at all.”
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    Carol’s forehead wrinkled and she said with difficulty, “Do you mind if I put you on the train tonight, instead of driving you home?”
    “No.” She couldn’t have borne Carol’s driving her home and driving back alone tonight in the darkness.
    They were silent also in the car. Therese opened the door as soon as the car stopped at the station.
    “There’s a train in about four minutes,” Carol said.
    Therese blurted suddenly, “Will I see you again?”
    Carol only smiled at her, a little reproachfully, as the window between them rose up. “Au revoir,” she said.
    Of course, of course, she would see her again, Therese thought. An idiotic question!
    The car backed fast and turned away into the darkness.
    Therese longed for the store again, longed for Monday, because Carol might come in again on Monday. But it wasn’t likely. Tuesday was Christmas Eve. Certainly she could telephone Carol by Tuesday, if only to wish her a merry Christmas.
    But there was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol. That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. She flung herself on her-bed and drew a line with a pencil on a piece of paper. And another line, carefully, and another. A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves.

CHAPTER 7
    THE MAN LOOKED at it, holding it carelessly between thumb and forefinger.
    He was bald except for long strands of black hair that grew from a former brow line, plastered sweatily down over the naked scalp. His underlip was thrust out with the contempt and negation that had fixed itself on his face as soon as Therese had come to the counter and spoken her first words.
    “No,” he said at last.
    “Can’t you give me anything for it?” Therese asked.
    The lip came out farther. “Maybe fifty cents.” And he tossed it back across the counter.
    Therese’s fingers crept over it possessively. “Well, what about this?”
    From her coat pocket she dragged up the silver chain with the St.
    Christopher medallion.
    Again the thumb and forefinger were eloquent of scorn, turning the coin like filth. “Two fifty.”
    But it cost at least twenty dollars, Therese started to say, but she didn’t because that was what everybody said. “Thanks.” She picked up the chain and went out.
    Who were all the lucky people, she wondered, who had managed to sell their old pocketknives, broken wrist watches and carpenters’ planes that hung in clumps in the front window? She could not resist looking back through the window, finding the man’s face again under the row of hanging hunting knives. The man was looking at her, too, smiling at her. She felt he understood every move she made. Therese hurried down the sidewalk.
    In ten minutes, Therese was back. She pawned the silver medallion for two dollars and fifty cents.
    She hurried westward, ran across Lexington Avenue, then Park, and turned down Madison. She clutched the little box in her pocket until its sharp edges cut her fingers. Sister Beatrice had given it to her. It was inlaid brown wood and mother-of-pearl, in a checked pattern. She didn’t know what it was worth in money, but she had