“My dear these things arent anybody’s fault.... I dont blame you.... If you’d really loved me then ...”
“What do you think I stay in this hell for except for you? Oh you’re such a brute.” She sat dryeyed staring at her feet in their gray buckskin slippers, twisting and untwisting in her fingers the wet string of her handkerchief.
“Look here Cecily a divorce would be very harmful to my situation downtown just at the moment, but if you really dont want to go on living with me I’ll see what I can arrange.... But in any event you must have more confidence in me. You know I’m fond of you. And for God’s sake dont go to see anybody about it without consulting me. You dont want a scandal and headlines in the papers, do you?”
“All right ... leave me alone.... I dont care about anything.”
“All right.... I’m pretty late. I’ll go on downtown in that taxi. You don’t want to come shopping or anything?”
She shook her head. He kissed her on the forehead, took his straw hat and stick in the hall and hurried out.
“Oh I’m the most miserable woman,” she groaned and got to her feet. Her head ached as if it were bound with hot wire. She went to the window and leaned out into the sunlight. Across Park Avenue the flameblue sky was barred with the red girder cage of a new building. Steam riveters rattled incessantly; now and then a donkeyengine whistled and there was a jingle of chains and a fresh girder soared crosswise in the air. Men in blue overalls moved about the scaffolding. Beyond to the northwest a shining head of clouds soared blooming compactly like a cauliflower. Oh if it would only rain. As the thought came to her there was a low growl of thunder above the din of building and of traffic. Oh if it would only rain.
Ellen had just hung a chintz curtain in the window to hide with its blotchy pattern of red and purple flowers the vista of desert backyards and brick flanks of downtown houses. In the middle of the bare room was a boxcouch cumbered with teacups, a copper chafingdish and percolator; the yellow hardwood floor was littered with snippings of chintz and curtainpins; books, dresses, bedlinen cascaded from a trunk in the corner; from a new mop in the fireplace exuded a smell of cedar oil. Ellen was leaning against the wall in a daffodilcolored kimono looking happily about the big shoebox-shaped room when the buzzer startled her. She pushed a rope of hair up off her forehead and pressed the button that worked the latch. There was a little knock on the door. A woman was standing in the dark of the hall.
“Why Cassie I couldn’t make out who you were. Come in.... What’s the matter?”
“You are sure I’m not intwuding?”