“Oh nothing. I’d never read it; I just bought it to see what it was like.” He flushed and compressed his lips as he shoved it in among the Times.
“It’s just a blackmail sheet.” Ellen was walking about the room. She had put the roses in a vase. A spiced coolness was spreading from them through the dustheavy air. “Daddy, there’s something I want to tell you about ... Jojo and I are going to get divorced.” Ed Thatcher sat with his hands on his knees nodding with tight lips, saying nothing. His face was gray and dark, almost the speckled gray of his pongee suit. “It’s nothing to take on about. We’ve just decided we cant get along together. It’s all going through quietly in the most approved style ... George Baldwin, who’s a friend of mine, is going to run it through.”
“He with Emery and Emery?”
“Yes.”
“Hum.”
They were silent. Ellen leaned over to breathe deep of the roses. She watched a little green measuring worm cross a bronzed leaf.
“Honestly I’m terribly fond of Jojo, but it drives me wild to live with him.... I owe him a whole lot, I know that.”
“I wish you’d never set eyes on him.”
Thatcher cleared his throat and turned his face away
from her to look out the window at the two endless bands of automobiles that passed along the road in front of the station. Dust rose from them and angular glitter of glass enamel and nickel. Tires made a swish on the oily macadam. Ellen dropped onto the davenport and let her eyes wander among the faded red roses of the carpet.