“Is it something about some old story for the papers or something like that that’s worrying you?”
Jimmy felt impelled to make a snappy rejoinder, but his saner judgment prevailed. He checked himself just in time.
“That’s the general idea, girlie,” he said evenly and lapsed into ruminative silence again.
It was dark under the old elm and Jimmy couldn’t see Lolita’s face. Had he been able to he would have noted an expression on it that might possibly have given him concern. It was an expression that was a blend of petulance and of something wan and a bit forlorn, a mixture of irritation and of anguish that seemed perilously near the breaking point. When she spoke again her voice was tremulous and low.
“Stories, stories, stories,”—she paused with every repetition of the word—“that’s all you think about. What good do they do? What’s the use of them all? They don’t make anybody happier, do they? They don’t mean anything, do they? They really don’t, do they?”
Jimmy slipped out of the silences instantly and edged closer to Lolita. He tried to take her hand, but she drew it away quickly. He was bewildered by her attitude and there was a shade of genuine agitation in his voice as he made reply.
“What’s the matter, honey? Didn’t you like that little yarn and the two column picture of you the Journal ran the other morning? That sheet’s got a circulation of over four hundred thousand. Think of all those people readin’ about you and seein’ your picture and talkin’ about you. Didn’t that make you happy? I hoped it would. That’s what I got ’em to use it for.”
Lolita touched him gently on the arm.
“I didn’t mean to be nasty, Jimmy,” she said. “I really didn’t and I hate to tell you the truth, but you’d really ought to know it. Do you want to?”
“Fire ahead. You don’t even have to blindfold me.”