Insult

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Lizzie Graham, playing the Panjandrum circuit for the tenth — or was it the fiftieth? — time in her life, left her hotel shortly after dinner to walk to the theater. She had all the time in the world to make her show, for they wouldn’t have dared to give her any spot in the bill but next-to-closing, headliner that she was. It was Spring and the evenings were pleasantly warm now, the distance from hotel to theater was not very great and lay in a straight line along the city’s liveliest and most attractive thoroughfare. Moreover she had developed a fondness for window shopping, killing time on her way to the theater by pausing and gazing her fill at whatever was on display and happened to interest her in the showcases en route. And this particular town, this Coast metropolis, had such attractive ones — fully equal to those in New York itself and much more centrally located, all on this one main thoroughfare that cut through it from hill to harbor. So each evening of the split week she was playing here she had walked, and tonight she was doing it again.

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