He opened his mouth and closed it. His silence had suddenly changed colour. It was almost as if he had; and she read it as easily as if he had spoken. They were not so—careful—with Sarah as they might have been with “nice” girls. Jerry had diagnosed it—the key of their relationship with men was that the men acted as if they were among themselves. There had been just that careless oblivion, that utter lack of the protective instinct toward Sarah; and the idea of it was so horribly perverted that she gave a little shiver.
“Aha, shimmying?” said Dum-Dum, finding speech at last. “Music too much for you? Come on, let’s dance till the others get through.”
She looked at him so strangely that his inviting pose disintegrated and he toppled back. “That’s—the first thing I’ve heard you say. Must I take that—as the keynote to your character?”
He was regarding her with alarm and now spoke soothingly. “Oh all right; but it’s darn good music!”
“Good music!” She checked herself. After all, silence was preferable to talking in different tongues.
Jerry came back to them on feet that no longer lilted to the music, her face sagging white against the painted masks of the girls on the floor. Crawf followed with a defiant expression, and Jim came last.
“They don’t remember a thing,” said Jerry; “they’re perfect nitwits, the whole nest of ’em. Every waiter spilled a different description—the head waiter doesn’t even remember whether they were old or young.”
“It seems to be the custom here,” said Jim, “to forget things like that!”
“But the cash you forked out would have tickled their memory if there had been anything to tickle,” said Jerry.
“What can we do now?” Joy asked limply. Somehow she had felt that coming down here would solve everything—that it was going to end up smoothly, things would explain themselves and roll into place, just like the ending of a story.