"I'll make it up to you, girl, for the rotter I am. I'm a rich man now,
Loo."
"'Sh-h-h!"
"I'll show you, girl. I can make somebody's life worth living. I'm going to do something for somebody to prove I'm worth the room I occupy, and that somebody's going to be you, Loo. I'm going to build you a house that'll go down in the history of this town. I'm going to wind you around with pearls to match that skin of yours. I'm going to put the kind of clothes on you that you read of queens wearing. I've seen enough of the kind of meanness money can breed. I'm going to make those Romans back there look like pikers. I'm—"
She reached out, placing her hand pat across his mouth, and, in the languid air of the room, shuddering so that her lips trembled.
"Charley—for God's sake—it—it's a sin to talk that way!"
"O God, I know it, girl! I'm all muddled—muddled."
He let his forehead drop against her arm, and in the long silence that ensued she sat there, her hand on his hair.
The roar of traffic, seventeen stories below, came up through the open windows like the sound of high seas, and from where she sat, staring out between the pink-brocade curtains, it was as if the close July sky dipped down to meet that sea, and space swam around them.
"O God!" he said, finally. "What does it all mean—this living and dying—"
"Right living, Charley, makes dying take care of itself."