“But it isn’t any fun any more. All I do is sit in the office and let the young fellows do the work. My future’s all cut out for me. I suppose I could get solemn and pompous and practice little private vices ... but there’s more in me than that.”
“Why dont you go into politics?”
“Why should I go up to Washington into that greasy backwater when I’m right on the spot where they give the orders? The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there’s nowhere else. It’s the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.”
Ellen was watching the people in light summer clothes dancing on the waxed square of floor in the center; she caught sight of Tony Hunter’s oval pink and white face at a table on the far side of the room. Oglethorpe was not with him. Stan’s friend Herf sat with his back to her. She watched him laughing, his long rumpled black head poised a
little askew on a scraggly neck. The other two men she didn’t know.
“Who are you looking at?”
“Just some friends of Jojo’s.... I wonder how on earth they got way out here. It’s not exactly on that gang’s beat.”
“Always the way when I try to get away with something,” said Baldwin with a wry smile.
“I should say you’d done exactly what you wanted to all your life.”
“Oh Elaine if you’d only let me do what I want to now. I want you to let me make you happy. You’re such a brave little girl making your way all alone the way you do. By gad you are so full of love and mystery and glitter ...” He faltered, took a deep swallow of wine, went on with flushing face. “I feel like a schoolboy ... I’m making a fool of myself. Elaine I’d do anything in the world for you.”