“Oh George I’m starved, simply starved.”
“So am I” he said in a crackling voice. “And Elaine I’ve got news for you,” he went on hurriedly as if he were afraid she’d interrupt him.
“Cecily has consented to a divorce. We’re going to rush it through quietly in Paris this summer. Now what I want to know is, will you...?”
She leaned over and patted his hand that grasped the edge of the table. “George lets eat our dinner first.... We’ve got to be sensible. God knows we’ve messed things up enough in the past both of us.... Let’s drink to the crime wave.” The smooth infinitesimal foam of the cocktail was soothing in her tongue and throat, glowed gradually warmly through her. She looked at him laughing with sparkling eyes. He drank his at a gulp.
“By gad Elaine,” he said flaming up helplessly, “you’re the most wonderful thing in the world.”
Through dinner she felt a gradual icy coldness stealing through her like novocaine. She had made up her mind. It seemed as if she had set the photograph of herself in her own place, forever frozen into a single gesture. An invisible silk band of bitterness was tightening round her throat, strangling. Beyond the plates, the ivory pink lamp, the broken pieces of bread, his face above the blank shirtfront jerked and nodded; the flush grew on his cheeks; his nose caught the light now on one side, now on the other, his taut lips moved eloquently over his yellow teeth. Ellen felt herself sitting with her ankles crossed, rigid as a porcelain figure under her clothes, everything about her seemed to be growing hard and enameled, the air bluestreaked with cigarettesmoke, was turning to glass. His wooden face of a marionette waggled senselessly in front of her. She shuddered and hunched up her shoulders.
“What’s the matter, Elaine?” he burst out. She lied:
“Nothing George.... Somebody walked over my grave I guess.”
“Couldnt I get you a wrap or something?”
She shook her head.