CHAPTER XII – THE MOMENT AFTER
PETER tried to think. He could not lie there indefinitely with his face in his hands. But he couldn’t think. His mind had stopped running… At last he must face her. He remembered Napoleon. Slowly he lifted his head; got up.
She had seated herself on an arm of the Morris chair, taken off her tarn o’shanter and was running her fingers through her rumpled short hair. She did not look at him. After a moment she put the tam o’shanter on again, but did not instantly get up; instead, reached out and drew the manuscript toward her.
Peter stood over the fire.
“Is it any good saying I’m sorry,” he began… “Please don’t talk about it,” said she.
There was a long silence. Peter, helpless, tried and tried to think… hy had brought him to this. In his heart he cursed Hy.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Sue, fingering the manuscript; then suddenly turning and facing him – “you and I can’t do this sort of thing.”
“Oh, of course not,” he cried eagerly.
“If there’s going to be emotional tension between us, why – it’s going to Be hard to do the work.” She took the manuscript up now and looked thoughtfully from page to page. “As I see the situation – if I see it at all – it’s like this: You have solved our problem. Splendidly. There’s our play. Like the rest of us, you are giving all you have. We’ve got to work hard. More, we’ve got to cooperate, very finely and earnestly. But we’ve got to be IMpersonal, businesslike. We’ve simply got to.”
“I know it,” said he ruefully.
“So, if our wires – yours and mine – are going to get crossed like – like this, well, you and I just mustn’t see each other, that’s all.”
“Of course,” said he.
“It’s too bad. When you were reading the scenario, and I saw what power and life you have put into it, I thought it would be particularly interesting to have you coach me. You could help me so. But it is something, at least – ” she threw out her arms again with the gesture that he was sure he would associate with her as long as he lived – as he would remember the picture she made, seated there on an arm of the Morris chair, in his rooms…
His rooms! How often in his plays had he based his big scene on Her visit to His Rooms! And how very, very different all those scenes had been from this. He was bewildered, trying to follow her extraordinarily calm survey of the situation.
She was talking on. “ – it is something at least to know that you have been able to do this for us.”
She slipped off the arm of the chair now and stood before him – flushed, but calm enough – and extended her hand.
“The best way, I think,” she said, “is for you not to see much of me just now. That won’t interfere with work at rehearsals, of course. If there’s something you want to tell me about the part, you can drop me a line or call me up.”
Peter took her hand, clasped it for a moment, let it fall.
She moved deliberately to the door. He followed her.
“But – ” said Peter huskily – “but, wouldn’t I better walk home with you?”
“No,” said she, momentarily compressing her lips. “No! Better not! The time to start being businesslike is right now. Don’t you see?”
“Yes,” he murmured. “You are right, of course.” The telephone bell rang.
“Just a moment,” said Peter.
And Sue waited, by the door.
Peter took up the receiver. She heard him stammer —
“Oh – oh, all right – eleven o’clock – all right.”
“There,” said she, laughing a little. “It has happened, you see! I’m being put out.”
“I’m awfully sorry, Sue.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter! It’s just amusing.”
“But I wouldn’t have had it happen – ”
His voice trailed off.
“Good night,” said she again.
“Good night, Sue. You are treating me better than I deserve.”
“We won’t talk any more about it. Good night.” She tried to turn the catch on the lock. He reached out to help. His hand closed over hers. He turned; his eyes met hers; he took her in his arms again.
They moved slowly back toward the fire. “Peter – please!” she murmured. “It won’t do.”
“Oh, Sue – Sue!” he groaned. “If we feel this way, why not marry and make a good job of it?”
Peter said this as she might have said it – all directness, matter-of-fact. “I wouldn’t stop you, Sue. I wouldn’t ever dominate you or take you for granted. I’d live for you, Sue.”
“I know.” She caught her breath and moved away from him. “You wouldn’t stop me, but marriage and life would. No, Peter; not now. Marriage isn’t on my calendar… And, Peter, please don’t make love to me. I don’t want you to.”
Peter moved away, too, at this.
“Look here, Sue,” he said, after a moment’s thought, rather roughly, “you go. We won’t shake hands again. Just go. Right now. I promise I won’t bother you. And we – we’ll put the play through – put it through right.”
Her eyes were on his again, with a light in them.
A slow smile was coming to the corners of her mouth.
“Oh, Peter,” she said very gently, “don’t you – when you say that – you make me – ”
“Please – please go!” cried Peter.
The telephone rang.
“I’ll think over the matter of the trip south,” said she, “and – ”
“Sue, I want you to go!”
“ – and let you know”. I’m not sure but what you’re right. If we can do it up here…”
“Good God, Sue! Please! Please!”
She moved slowly toward the door, turned the catch herself, then glanced hesitatingly back.
Peter was standing rigidly before the fire, staring into it. He had picked up the poker and was holding it stiffly in his right hand.
She did not know that the man standing there was not Peter at all, but a very famous personage, shorter than Peter, and stouter, whose name had rung resoundingly down the slope of a hundred years.
He would not turn. So she went out.
CHAPTER XIII – TWO GIRLS OF THE VILLAGE
IT is not a simple matter to record in any detail the violent emotional reaction through which Peter now passed. Peter had the gift of creative imagination, the egotism to drive it far, and, for background, the character of a theatrical chameleon. Of these qualities, I have always believed that the egotism predominated. He could appear dignified, even distinguished; he could also appear excitable, ungoverned. Either would be Peter.
Nothing that had happened hitherto in his life had excited him as had the events of this evening. The excitement was, indeed, greater than he could bear. It set his imagination blazing, and there was among Peter’s intricate emotional processes no hose of common sense adequate to the task of subduing the flames. He stood, breathless, quivering, at the window, looking out over the dim Square, exulting to the point of nervous exhaustion. He walked the floor. He laughed aloud. Finally, his spirit went on around the emotional circle through a high point of crazy happiness to an equally crazy despondency. More time passed. The despondency deepened. She had made stipulations. He was not to see her again. If it should be necessary to communicate, he was to write. She had been kind about it, but that was what she had said. Yes, she had been kind, but her reaction would come as his had. She would hate him. Necessarily. Hy was to that extent right.
He sat on the couch (where she had sat), held the paper in shaking hands and stared wildly into the dying fire. Thoughts, pictures, were now racing through his mind, in a mad tangle, hopelessly confused. One notion he laid hold of as it went by… She had been his guest – here in his rooms. She had trusted herself with him. He had violated the trust. If he permitted a man to do such a thing in one of his plays, it would be for the purpose of exhibiting that man as a cad at least – probably as a villain. The inference was clear. Any audience that Peter was capable of mentally projecting would instantly, automatically, accept him as such. Peter himself knew no other attitude. And now to find himself guilty of this very act brought the final bewilderment.
So he, Peter, was a cad at least – perhaps a villain.
And then, at the lowest ebb of his reaction, his imagination set to work building up grotesque plans for a new different life. All these plans were out of the conventional stuff of his plays; all were theatrical. They had to do with self-effacement and sacrifice, with expiation, with true nobility. There was a moment when he considered self-destruction. If you think this wholly fantastic, I can only say that it was Peter. Another notion was of turning explorer, becoming a world’s rough hand, of meeting hardship and privation. He pictured himself writing Sue manly letters, once a year, say. He would live then in her memory not as a cad or villain, but (perhaps) as a man who had been broken by a great love. Then, in reminiscent moments, as when she saw a log fire burning low, she would think tenderly of him. She might even sigh… And he tried to think out acceptable devices for leaving his money in her hands. For he must see the Nature Film through.
He had just finished deciding this when Hy Lowe came.
Had Peter been less preoccupied, he would have noted that Hy was unusually silent. As it was, conscious only that the atmosphere of magical melancholy had been shattered when the door opened, Peter undressed, put out the gas lamp and went to bed, his bed being the very couch on which she had curled up while he read the scenario. He knew that sleep would be impossible, but he felt that he should make every possible effort to control himself. Hy was fussing about in the bedroom.
After a while – a long while – he heard Hy come tiptoeing into the room and stand motionless.
“What the devil do you want!” cried Peter, starting up, all nerves.
“Just wanted to make sure you weren’t asleep.” And Hy chuckled breathlessly.
“Quit your cackling! What do you want?”
“Let me sit down, Pete. Damn it. I’ve got to talk – to somebody. Pete, I’m crazy. I’m delirious. Never mind what I say. Oh, my boy. My boy, you don’t know – you can’t imagine!.. She’s the darling of the gods, Peter! The absolute darling of the absolute gods!”
“Is that any reason why you should come driveling all over my room at this time of night?”
“Wait, Pete – serious now. You’ve got to stand by me in this. The way I’ve stood by you once or twice. To-day was Friday, wasn’t it? Or am I crazy?”
“Both.”
“Then it’s to-morrow! I’m just trying to believe it, Pete, that’s all.”
“Believe what?”
“Look here – you’ve got to know, and protect me if any unexpected thing should come up. We’re going on a little trip, Peter.” Hy was solemn now, but his voice was uncertain. “Betty and I, Pete. To-morrow. On the night boat.”
Peter was silent. Hy stood there for what seemed rather a long time, then suddenly bolted back into the bedroom. In the morning he was less expansive, merely asking Peter to respect his confidence. Which request Peter gloomily resented as he resented Hy’s luck. The fortunate young man then packed a hand-bag and hurried off to breakfast at the club.
Peter tried to work on an empty stomach, but the effort gave him a headache, so he made himself a cup of coffee.
He walked the streets for a while with increasing restlessness; then, to soothe his nerves, went to the club and listlessly read the magazines. At noon he avoided his friends, but managed to eat a small luncheon. At two o’clock he went out aimlessly and entered the nearest moving-picture theater. At five he wandered back to the club and furtively asked the telephone boy if there’ had been any messages for him. There had not.
He permitted himself to be drawn into a riotous game of Kelly pool. Also he permitted himself a drink or two.
During the evening, I regret to note, he got himself rather drunk and went home in a taxicab. This was unusual with Peter and not successful. It intensified his self-consciousness and his sorrow, made him even gloomier. But it did help him to sleep.
He was awakened, just before nine o’clock on Sunday morning, by the banging of a door. Then Hy, dusty, bedraggled, haggard of face, rushed in and stared at him.
Peter decided it was a dream and rolled over.
Hy shook him. “For God’s sake, Pete!” he cried. How hoarse he was! “Where is she? Have you heard anything?”
Peter was coming awake.
“God, Pete, I’m crazy! Don’t you understand – She wasn’t on the boat. Must have got the wrong one. Oh, it’s awful!.. I walked that deck nearly all night – got off way up the river and came back to New York with the milk cans. Something terrible may have happened.”
Peter sat up.
“It seems to me,” he said, rubbing his tousled head, “that I remember something – last night – ”
Hy waited, panting.
“Look on the desk. Didn’t I bring up a note or something and lay it there?”
Hy was on the desk like a panther. There was a note. He tore it open, then thrust it into Peter’s hands, crying hoarsely, “Read it!” – and dropped, a limp, dirt-streaked wreck of a man, into the Morris chair.
This was the note:
“Henry, I’m not going. I hope this reaches you in time. Please understand – forgive if you can. You won’t see me again. B.”
Peter read it again, thoughtfully; then looked up. His own none-too-clear eyes met Hy’s distinctly bloodshot ones.
“And what do you think of that!” cried Hy. “What do you think of that!.. Damn women, anyway! They don’t play the game. They’re not square.”… He was clenching and unclenching his hands. Suddenly he reached for the telephone.
But just as his hand closed on it, the bell rang.
Hy snatched up the receiver. “Yes!” he cried shortly – “Yes! Yes! He lives here. Wait a moment, please. It’s for you, Fete.”
Peter sprang out of bed and hurried to the instrument.
“Yes,” said he, “this is Mr. Mann.”
“Peter, it’s Sue – Sue Wilde.”
“Oh – hello! I was going to call up myself in a few minutes. How have you been?”
“Not awfully fit. This constant rehearsing seems to be on my nerves, or something.”
There was a pause. Hy went off into the bedroom to get out of his travel-stained clothes.
“I wanted to say, Peter – I’ve been thinking it all over – ”
Peter braced himself.
“ – and I’ve come to the conclusion that you are right about that southern trip. It really isn’t necessary.”
“I’m glad you feel that way.”
“I do. And we must make Zanin see it as we do.”
“We’ll try.”
Another pause. Then this from Peter —
“Busy to-day?”
“I ought to be. Are you?”
“No. Can’t work. Wish we could do something.”
“I’d like some air – to get away from the streets and that stuffy theater. What could we do?”
“I’ll tell you what you need, child – just the thing! We’ll run down to one of the beaches and tramp. Pick up lunch anywhere. What do you say?”
“I’ll do it, Peter. Call for me, will you?.. And oh, Peter, here’s an odd thing! Betty packed up yesterday while I was out and went home. Just left a note. She has run away – given up. Going to marry a man in her town. He makes gas engines.”
Peter started the coffee machine, smiling as he worked. A sense of deep utter calm was flowing into his harassed spirit, pervading it.
He went into the bedroom and gazed with tolerant concern at the downcast Hy.
“The trouble with you, my boy,” he began, then paused.
“What’s the trouble with me?” growled Hy.
“The trouble with you, my boy, is that you don’t understand women.”
CHAPTER XIV – THE WORM TURNS FROM BOOKS TO LIFE
THE Worm worked hard all of this particular day at the Public Library, up at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. At five o’clock he came out, paused on the vast incline of marble steps to consider the spraying fountains of pale green foliage on the terraces (it was late April) and the brilliant thronging avenue and decided not to ride down to Washington Square on an autobus, but to save the ten cents and walk. Which is how he came to meet Sue Wilde.
She was moving slowly along with the stream of pedestrians, her old coat open, her big tarn o’shanter hanging down behind her head and framing her face in color. The face itself, usually vital, was pale.
She turned and walked with him. She was loafing, she said listlessly, watching the crowds and trying to think. And she added: “It helps.”
“Helps?”
“Just feeling them crowding around – I don’t know; it seems to keep you from forgetting that everybody else has problems.”
Then she closed her lips on this bit of self-revelation. They walked a little way in silence.
“Listen!” said she. “What are you doing?”
“Half an hour’s work at home clearing up my notes, then nothing. Thinking of dinner?”
She nodded.
“I’ll meet you. Wherever you say.”
“At the Muscovy, then. By seven.”
She stopped as if to turn away, hesitated, lingered, gazing out with sober eyes at the confusion of limousines, touring cars and taxis that rolled endlessly by, with here and there a high green bus lumbering above all the traffic. “Maybe we can have another of our talks, Henry,” she said. “I hope so. I need it – or something.”
“Sue,” said he, “you’re working too hard.”
She considered this, shook her head, turned abruptly away.
When he reached the old bachelor rookery in the Square he did not enter, but walked twice around the block, thinking about Sue. It had disturbed him to see that tired look in her odd deep-green eyes. Sue had been vivid, striking, straightforward; fired with a finely honest revolt against the sham life into an observance of which nearly all of us, soon or late, get beaten down. He didn’t want to see Sue beaten down like the rest.
It was pleasant that she, too, had felt deeply about their friendship. This thought brought a thrill of the sort that had to be put down quickly; for nothing could have been plainer than, that he stirred no thrill in Sue. No, he was not in the running there. He lived in books, the Worm; and he reflected with a rather unaccustomed touch of bitterness that books are pale things.
Peter, now – he had seemed lately to be in the running.
But it hardly seemed that Peter could be the one who had brought problems into Sue’s life… Jacob Zanin – there was another story! He was in the running decidedly. In that odd frank way of hers, Sue had given the Worm glimpses of this relationship.
He rounded the block a third time – a fourth – a fifth.
When he entered the apartment Peter was there, in the studio, telephoning. To a girl, unquestionably. You could always tell, “You aren’t fair to me. You throw me aside without a word of explanation.”
Thus Peter; his voice, pitched a little high, near to breaking with emotion; as if he were pleading with the one girl in the world – though, to be fair to Peter, she almost always was.
The Worm stepped into the bedroom, making as much noise as possible. But Peter talked on.
“Yes, you are taking exactly that position. As you know, I share your interest in freedom – but freedom without fairness or decent human consideration or even respect for one’s word, comes down to selfish caprice. Yes, selfish caprice!”
The Worm picked up a chair and banged it against the door-post. But even this failed to stop Peter.
“Oh, no, my dear, of course I didn’t mean that. I didn’t know what I was saying. You can’t imagine how I have looked forward to seeing you this evening. The thought of it has been with me all through this hard, hard day. I know my nerves are a wreck. I’m all out of tune. But everything seems to have landed on me at once…”
Finding the chair useless as a warning, the Worm sat upon it, made a wry face, folded his arms.
“… I’ve got to go away. You knew that, dear. This was my last chance to see you for weeks – and yet you speak of seeing me any time. It hurts, little girl. It just plain hurts to be put off like that. It doesn’t seem like us.”
The Worm wondered, rather casually, to how many girls Peter had talked in this way during the past three years – stage girls, shop girls – the pretty little Irish one, from the glove counter up-town; and that young marred person on the upper West Side of whom Peter had been unable to resist bragging a little; and Maria Tonifetti, manicurist at the sanitary barber shop of Marius; and – oh, yes, and Grace Herring. Only last year. The actress. She played Lena in Peter’s The Buzzard, and later made a small sensation in The Gold Heart. That affair had looked, for several months, like the real thing. The Worm recalled one tragic night, all of which, until breakfast rime, he had passed in that very studio talking Peter out of suicide.
He wondered who this new girl could be. Was it Sue, by any chance? Were they that far along?
The Worm got up with some impatience and went in there – just as Peter angrily slammed the receiver on its hook.
“I hear you’re going away,” the Worm observed
Peter swung around and peered through his big glasses. He made a visible effort to compose himself.
“Oh,” he said, “hello! What’s that? Yes, I’m leaving to-morrow afternoon. Neuerman is going to put The Truffler on the road for a few; weeks this spring to try out the cast.”
The Worm regarded him thoughtfully. “Look here, Pete,” said he, “it isn’t my fault that God gave me ears. I heard your little love scene.”
Peter looked blankly at him; then his face twisted convulsively and he buried his face in his hands.
“Oh, Henry!” he groaned. “It’s awful. I’m in love, man!” His voice was really trembling. “It’s got me at last – the real thing. I must tell somebody – it’s racking me to pieces – I can’t work, can’t sleep. It’s Sue Wilde. I’ve asked her to marry me – she can’t make up her mind. And now; I’ve got to go away for weeks and leave things… Za-Zanin…”
He sat up, stiffened his shoulders, bit his lip. The Worm feared he was going to cry. But instead he sprang up, rushed from the room and, a moment later, from the apartment.
The Worm sat on a corner of the desk and looked after him, thought about him, let his feelings rise a little… Peter, even in his anger and confusion, had managed to look unruffled, well-groomed. He always did. No conceivable outburst of emotion could have made him forget to place his coat on the hanger and crease his trousers carefully in the frame. His various suits were well made. They fitted him. They represented thought and money. His shoes – eight or nine pairs in all – were custom made and looked it. His scarfs were of imported silk. His collars came from England and cost forty cents each. His walking sticks had distinction… And Peter was successful with women. No doubt about that.
The Worm gazed down at himself. The old gray suit was; a shapeless thing. The coat pockets bulged – note-book and wad of loose notes on one side, a paper-bound volume in the Russian tongue on the other. He had just one other suit. It hung from a hook in the closet, and he knew that it, too, was shapeless.
A clock, somewhere outside, struck seven.
He started; stuffed his note-book and papers into a drawer; drew the volume in Russian from his other pocket, made as if to lay it on the table, then hesitated. It was his custom to have some reading always by him. Sue might be late. She often was.
Suddenly he raised the book above his head and threw it against the wall at the other end of the room. Then he picked up his old soft hat (he never wore an overcoat) and rushed out.
The Muscovy is a basement restaurant near Washington Square. You get into it from the street by stumbling down a dark twisting flight of uneven steps and opening a door under a high stoop. Art dines here and Anarchism; Ideas sit cheek by jowl with the Senses.
Sue was not late. She sat in the far corner at one of the few small tables in the crowded room. Two men, a poet and a painter, lounged against the table and chatted with her languidly. She had brightened a little for them. There was a touch of color in her cheeks and some life in her eyes. The Worm noted this fact as he made his way toward her.
The poet and the painter wandered languidly away. The chatter of the crowded smoky room rose to its diurnal climax; passed it as by twos and threes the diners drifted out to the street or up-stairs to the dancing and reading-rooms of the Freewoman’s Club; and then rapidly died to nothing.
Two belated couples strolled in, settled themselves sprawlingly at the long center table and discussed with the offhand, blandly sophisticated air that is the Village manner the currently accepted psychology of sex.
The Worm was smoking now – his old brier pipe – and felt a bit more like his quietly whimsical self. Sue, however, was moody over her coffee.
A pasty-faced, very calm young man, with longish hair, came in and joined in the discussion at the center table.
Sue followed this person with troubled eyes, “Listen, Henry!” she said then, “I’m wondering – ”
He waited.
“ – for the first time in two years – if I belong in Greenwich Village.”
“I’ve asked myself the same question, Sue.”
This remark perturbed her a little; as if it had not before occurred to her that other eyes were reading her. Then she rushed on – “Take Waters Coryell over there” – she indicated the pasty-faced one – “I used to think he was wonderful. But he’s all words, Like the rest of us. He always carries that calm assumption of being above ordinary human limitations. He talks comradeship and the perfect freedom. But I’ve had a glimpse into his methods – Abbie Esterzell, you know – ”
The Worm nodded.
“ – and it isn’t a pretty story. I’ve watched the women, too – the free lovers. Henry, they’re tragic. When they get just a little older.”
He nodded again. “But we were talking about you, Sue. You’re not all words.”
“Yes I am. All talk, theories, abstractions. It gets you, down here. You do it, like all the others. It’s a sort of mental taint. Yet it has been every thing to me. I’ve believed it, heart and soul. It has been my religion.”
“I’m not much on generalizing, Sue,” observed the Worm, “but sometimes I have thought that there’s a lot of bunk in this freedom theory – ‘self-realization,’ ‘the complete life,’ so on. I notice that most of the men and women I really admire aren’t worried about their liberty, Sometimes I’ve thought that there’s a limit to our human capacity for freedom just as there’s a limit to our capacity for food and drink and other pleasant things – sort of a natural boundary. The people that try to pass that boundary seem to detach themselves in some vital way from actual life. They get unreal – act queer —are queer. They reach a point where their pose is all they’ve got. As you say, it’s a taint. It’s a noble thing, all right, to light and bleed and die for freedom for others. But it seems to work out unhappily when people, men or women, insist too strongly on freedom for their individual selves.”
But Sue apparently was not listening. Her cheeks – they were flushed – rested on her small fists.
“Henry,” she said, “it’s a pretty serious thing to lose your religion.”
“Losing yours, Sue?”
“I’m afraid it’s gone.”
“You thought this little eddy of talk was real life?”
She nodded. “Oh, I did.”
“And then you encountered reality?”
Her eyes, startled, vivid, now somber, flashed up at him. “Henry, how did you know? What do you know?”
“Not a thing, Sue. But I know you a little. And I’ve thought about you.”
“Then,” she said, her eyes down again, suppression in her voice – “then they aren’t talking about me?”
“Not that I’ve heard. Sue. Though it would hardly come to me.”
She bit her lip. “There you have it, Henry. With the ideas I’ve held, and talked everywhere, I ought not to care what they say. But I do care.”
“Of course. They all do.”
“Do you think so?” She considered this. “You said something a moment ago that perhaps explains – about the natural boundary of human freedom… Listen! You knew Betty Deane, the girl that roomed with me? Well, less than a year ago, after letting herself go some all the year – it’s fair enough to say that, to you; she didn’t cover her tracks – she suddenly ran off and married a manufacturer up in her home town. I’m sure there wasn’t any love in it. I know it, from things she said and did. All the while he was after her she was having her good times here. I suppose she had reached the boundary. She married in a panic. She was having a little affair with your friend – what’s his name?”
“Hy Lowe?”
The Worm smiled faintly. The incorrigible Hy had within the week set up a fresh attachment. This time it was a new girl in the Village – one Hilda Hansen, from Wisconsin, who designed wall-paper part of the time.
But he realized that Sue, with a deeper flush now and a look in her eyes that he did not like to see there, was speaking.
“When I found out what Betty had done I said some savage things, Henry. Called her a coward. Oh, I was very superior – very sure of myself. And here’s the grotesque irony of it.” Her voice was unsteady. “Here’s what one little unexpected contact with reality can do to the sort of scornful independent mind I had. Twenty-four hours – less than that – after Betty went I found myself soberly considering doing the same thing.”
“Marrying?” The Worm’s voice was suddenly low and a thought husky.
She nodded.
“A man you don’t love?”
“I’ve had moments of thinking I loved him, hours of wondering how I could, possibly.”
He was some time in getting out his next remark. It was, “You’d better wait.”
She threw out her hands in an expressive way she had. “Wait? Yes, that’s what I’ve told myself, Henry. But I’ve lost my old clear sense of things. My nerves aren’t steady. I have queer reactions.”
Then she closed her lips as she had once before on this day, up there on the avenue. She even seemed to compose herself. Waters Coryell came over from the other table and for a little time talked down to them from his attitude of self-perfection.
When he had gone the Worm said, to make talk, “How are the pictures coming on?”
Then he saw that he had touched the same tired nerve center. Her flush began to return.
“Not very well,” she said; and thought for a moment, with knit brows and pursed lips.
She threw out her hands again. “They’re quarreling, Henry.”
“Zanin and Peter?”
She nodded. “It started over Zanin’s publicity. He is a genius, you know. Any sort of effort that will help get the picture across looks legitimate to him.”
“Of course,” mused the Worm, trying to resume the modestly judicial habit of mind that had seemed lately to be leaving him, “I suppose, in a way, he is right. It is terribly hard to make a success of such an enterprise. It is like war – the only possible course is to win.”