And Lily? Lily was in her dressing-room, stupefied with delight. How soon it was done! How simple it was! Jimmy, after all, with his scrawls and his scribbles, with his brain-work: what a discovery he had made! She would have liked it to last for ever, the flight on the aerobike; she still seemed to be rushing up to the stars, to feel the coolness of the night on her face. How funny it was, going up, up, up and out through that hole. She was still laughing at it, with little convulsive movements of the shoulders, and stammering out things.
When she was dressed, she received Jimmy’s congratulations and everybody’s. They gave her a bouquet:
“To our little favorite!”
She answered, without knowing what she said; went home. Everything seemed to be turning round and round. She ate a few mouthfuls, washed down with a glass of milk; and then, suddenly, made a rush for Glass-Eye! A pillow fight followed:
“Here, take that! Take that! And that! And that!”
Ten minutes of an epic struggle, on the bed thrown into confusion and disorder, as after a murder; huge slaps on the firm, rounded forms; virile smackings; and Glass-Eye, breathlessly, had to own herself beaten, to beg for mercy.
“That’ll teach them!” cried Lily, falling on the bed, panting, drunk with joy, drunk with joy! Trampy, Mexico, Ma’s insults, the jealousies, the grudges, Daisy, the fat freaks: pooh, none of that existed for her! Nothing remained but herself, drunk with an immense joy! She was almost delirious, in the excess of her great happiness:
“I’ll smash up their damned troupes, do you hear, Glass-Eye? There! Like that!” And she tried to renew the fight, but her strength failed her. “Dished and done for, their damned troupes!”
And she laughed, she burst with laughing, when she thought of their eighteen feet of stage:
“Stages as big as my hand, Glass-Eye, is what they’ve got to turn in!”