A group of boys were standing in a blue light and they were laughing in their harsh changing voices. She wished they would stop. Looking downward, she walked through the crowd, no longer with it.
Marjorie Ventusa was the center now of laughing people and her eyes were dazzled by changing lights.
Finally, out of breath, and at the northern end of the square, she stopped and pressed against a building. She looked back at the places she had just left and she was tired.
A stout little man was staring at her. He was trying to figure out what she was and what he might dare do. She looked at him with disgust, but he was not bothered by this and, thinking her a whore, he separated himself from the crowd and came over to where she stood. He leaned against the building a few feet from her. Slowly, calmly he took a package of cigarettes out of his pocket. He turned to her now, offering her a cigarette.
“Want a smoke?”
She shook her head. “No, thanks.”
He took one himself and lighted it. He inhaled to show how calm he was and then he said, “You want to walk maybe?”
“No,” she said furiously, comparing him with Robert Holton. “I don’t want to walk with you.” She turned away from him and went quickly toward the nearest movie. Without once looking back she bought a ticket. As she gave the ticket to the man at the door she heard the stout man whistle as he walked past the theater.
Setting her face, she walked into the marble and gold lobby. She walked, conscious of a thousand nonexistent eyes watching her back.
Then she entered the darkened hall of the movie. On the screen two characters, simulating love, were laughing loudly. Marjorie Ventusa was trapped.