Still flushed, her neck was pink beneath her pearls, she looked about her for a place to lay her flowers, spied the window-sill, took three steps toward Stella, and laid her flowers down, almost as if in Stella’s lap; paused, raised her eyes. The window was just in front of her. The clear plate-glass with the light behind it was a perfect mirror. Laurel gave her a long look. Six feet away Stella caught that looked, hugged it to her close. She had never seen anything so dazzling, so luminous, in all her life before! It wasn’t meant for her. It wasn’t meant for anyone on earth. It was like catching a bit of shooting star—of shooting heaven.

The young man to whom Laurel gave her hand a moment later, the young god who had made Laurel look at herself like that, was none other than Richard Grosvenor. Stella would have known him anywhere.

“That’s all right, then, too,” she murmured.

3

“DIDN’T I TELL you to get along there?”

“Yes, sir. I’m going. I was only seeing how pretty the young lady was.”

THE END

About the Author

About the Author

OLIVE HIGGINS PROUTY (1882–1974) is the author of many books including Stella Dallas (1923), which was adapted into three films and a long-running radio serial. Later in her life, Prouty became patron and mentor to Sylvia Plath, and the inspiration for Philomena Guinea, the meddlesome character in Plath’s The Bell Jar.

Also Available from Feminist Press

Also Available from Feminist Press

Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women’s writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-twentieth century. From mystery to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era.

SKYSCRAPER

Faith Baldwin

Afterword by Laura Hapke

eISBN: 9781558617872 | ISBN: 9781558614574

Lynn is an ambitious young woman who loves her job in a gleaming new Manhattan skyscraper. Soon, Lynn falls in love with Tom, the young clerk down the hall. They are so in love that if they don’t get married, something improper is bound to happen…. But her company has a strict new policy: Any woman who marries will be immediately fired. First published in 1931 as a serial in Cosmopolitan—the same year the Empire State Building opened its doors—Skyscraper marks the advent of a new kind of romance, and a new kind of heroine. This Sex in the City for its time was made into a pre-Code Hollywood movie starring Maureen O’Sullivan.

“With its sexual bargains and betrayals, insider trades and financial maneuvers, Skyscraper is pulp fiction at its best.”

—Maria Dibattista, author of Fast-Talking Dames

“A captivating and quietly subversive novel, featuring a spunky young working woman struggling to make it on her own. Skyscraper declares that despite all challenges, women should insist on their right to have it all.”

—Alicia Daly, Ms.