“I made them roses stepped upon by God,” said Alvin Tor.
“I am the symbol of your emotions,” said the woman.
Alvin Tor heavily dropped his raised arm, like a man smashing a trumpet. Restless white hands compressed the ruddy broadness of his face. The woman slid into the green swells like exhausted magic. Alvin Tor rowed back to the river.
II
A WOMAN lifted the green window-shades in her room and resentfully blinked at the sun-plastered clamours of a street. She turned to the bed upon which another woman reclined.
“Say, wasn’t that a nutty drunk we had last night?” she said. “Huggin’ a Bible and ravin’ about waves and mermaids and a lot of funny stuff!”
She dropped the green shade and stood against it a moment in the smouldering gloom of the room. Her brown hair had a drugged gentility: its short dark curls hugged her head with despondent understanding. Her face had been washed to an imperturbable transparency: it had the whiteness of reclining foam overcast with a twinge of green—the sea had lent her its skin.