Fanshaw started tearing down the street towards the college office. O, this is hideous, hideous.
The reporter stared after him blandly from the doorstep.
Publicity, thought Fanshaw, pitiless publicity. And his mind seethed with people in streetcars, in restaurants and bars, their eyes bulging with delight, people in subways and under streetlamps reading of Wenny's death in paragraphs of smeary print. The headlines seemed reflected in their ghoulish eyes as they read gluttonously every detail of the bullet searing the warm flesh, the warm flesh quenched in the water of the basin, the body that people had loved, talked to, walked with, floating like an old coat among the melting ice-cakes at eight-twenty this morning. Youth had been killed. In offices and stores and front parlors and lonely hall bedrooms sallow-jowled faces sucked the blood through the nasty smelling print of the extras. The streets swarmed and seethed with faces drinking Wenny's blood.
He walked hastily into the college office, past a row of scared freshmen waiting a reprimand, and asked for the Dean of the Graduate School. He felt calmer in the quiet dinginess, among the low voices of the office. All the blood and clamor and hideousness of the streets was shut outside.
"Yes, come right in, Mr. Macdougan."
* * * *
The steam from the spout of the big blue teapot rose between Fanshaw and the sunlight of the window. He sat staring at its slow spiral, his cup forgotten in his hand. Beside the mantelpiece Nan, her brows contracted and a flush on her face, was reading a piece of the Sunday newspaper. In the blue velvet armchair Miss Fitzhugh sat hunched up, occasionally giving her red eyes a little dab with a handkerchief.
"O dear," Miss Fitzhugh was quavering faintly, "I haven't been so upset since I broke off my engagement and sent Billy back his ring."
"Please don't break down again, Fitzie, dear," said Nan savagely, letting the paper drop out of her hands. "My sense of humor is somewhat worn to a frazzle... My God, what swine people are!"
"But after all, dear, it's not as if we really believed he was dead. The word has no meaning to me now... Why I fell so happy in his presence, more than when he was alive; don't you?"