He was standing with a little paper of the white powder in his hand, separating half of it for her, and she was waiting impatiently for it.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well, what?”
“Are you coming over to live with me?” he demanded.
“Without being married?” she asked.
She was surprised that the idea no longer seemed horrible. Her eyes and her mind were on the little white powder that the man held in his hand.
Crumb laughed.
“Quit your kidding,” he said. “You know perfectly well that I can’t marry you yet. I have a wife in San Francisco.”
She did not know it perfectly well—she did not know it at all; yet it did not seem to matter so very much. A month ago she would have caressed a rattlesnake as willingly as she would have permitted a married man to make love to her; but now she could listen to a plea from one who wished her to come and live with him, without experiencing any numbing sense of outraged decency.
Of course, she had no intention of doing what he asked; but really the matter was of negligible import—the thing in which she was most concerned was the little white powder. She held out her hand for it, but he drew it away.