“People are always talking about the dead,” Helgin said, in a bored voice. “The indecent vagaries of critics are not interesting to me. They might be vastly engrossing to some entomologist, though.”
“Oh, you’re all a lot of bugs,” Dora said, as she caressed Margaret’s arm while Margaret regarded her with a resigned look that said: “Well, I suppose you must do this.”
“You’re crazy, and you take yourselves so darn seriously it gives me a pain!” Dora continued. “Come on, let’s have another drink and act like human beings.”
The conversation changed to a game in which the others bantered with Dora and laughed at her amiable but scoffing retorts. Blanche, who had been bewildered and almost awe-stricken ever since her introduction to these people, began to listen and observe with a clearer, though still strongly respectful, attitude. They were the people whom she had always longed to meet, and they knew much more than she did, and they were bold creators while she was only despairing and partly tongue-tied, ye-es, but still, they were by no means perfect. They wasted so much time in slamming each other as cleverly as they could, and while they were always good-natured about it, you couldn’t fail to spy the malice beneath at least half of their smiles and remarks. They never expressed any whole-hearted liking, or sympathy, or placid interest in their reactions toward each other, and their talk reminded her of a game in which each one strove to make his “comeback” a little “smarter” and quicker than that of the others. Yet Oppendorf alone seemed to be different. The others, with the exception of Margaret, were always trying to twit or arouse him—something about him seemed to plague them almost against their will—and never quite succeeding. His eyes were sleepy and retiring, and he closed them half of the time during his conversation. When he laughed or raised his voice now and then, it was in a jerky way, “like some one else” was pulling some strings tied to him. Funny man ... what had given him this air of tired sadness? Well, at any rate, she could never fall in love with him—he was too much like a careful ghost!
The man whom she loved would have to be robust, and natural, and, well ... sort of eager to be alive, in spite of the fact that he knew all about the shams and meannesses which life held. Yes, that was it ... he’d be glad, and a little hopeful, in spite of all the rotten things he saw and heard.
She began to talk more frankly, her tongue loosened a bit by the two drinks of whisky that Oppendorf had given her.
“Say, why don’t all of you just call each other liars and boobs, and have it over with?” she asked, with a smile.
“At an early age, I was confronted by the choice of using the other side’s tactics now and then or becoming a hermit,” Oppendorf replied, in his deliberate way. “I am still direct enough, however, to be ostracized by practically every literary party or group in New York.”
“I admire your indignation,” Helgin said to Blanche. “Ride us all on a rail and tell us what vicious double-dealers we are.”
He had decided to egg her on for purposes of entertainment. “It wouldn’t have the least effect on any of you,” Blanche answered, composedly. “Besides, I’m only a stranger and I really haven’t any right to criticize. You’re all doing things—real things that amount to something—and I’m just a hair-curler in a Beauty Shop.”