“Well,” she sighed at length, rebelling against so wooden a silence, “anything new at the store today?”
“No,” Jerome laughed shortly.
“Doesn’t anything ever happen there?”
“No.” He laughed again. And she was thinking: “What a stupid conversation!” Stella sometimes had sparkling enough conversations with persons her mind conjured to flashes of fragmentary tête-à-tête, though they might not, it is perhaps true, stand up under a test of modern psychology. “Don’t you ever think of getting into something else?” she demanded.
“Oh, I’ve thought of plenty of things I’d like to do, but”—he drew a fine distinction—“this seems to be about the only thing I really know how to do.”
“Because you’ve never tried.”
“Well, what would you like to have me try?”
“Isn’t there anything you’d like to try yourself?” She lifted her head impetuously. “If I were a man I think I’d discover something besides being a clerk in a ship supply store!”
She was really scolding him now, though she hadn’t meant to speak with quite such driving scorn. It was a day when everything grated, nothing went well; a day when blouse strings knotted and buttons flew off; a day aggravated by everything and everybody. By this time her mood of revolt was poignant indeed. Jerome looked at her in mild, inquisitive amazement.