“You didn’t come with him, did you?”
“No-o, don’t be scared,” she said, in raillery. “He’s with a girl friend, Margaret Wheeler, and my, how they’re gone on each other. It always seems to annoy them when they’ve got to talk to somebody else.”
“Who’d you come with?”
“With Ben Helgin, the novelist. I only met him and Oppendorf last night, and I’m only a curiosity to him. He just wanted to see how the slum-girlie would get along in the mi-ighty studio. I hope he’s satisfied now.”
“Do you know, people who patronize and bend down all the time, do it as a hop-fiend sniffs his cocaine,” he said. “They might have to take a close peek at themselves otherwise.”
“Isn’t it the truth,” she answered. “When I think of all the dopes people use to kid themselves along, I get the Jailhouse Blues. I was just as bad myself, two or three years ago, before I commenced to get wise to myself.”
A pause came, during which they looked at each other with a budding and almost incredulous desire.
“By the way, I have another confession to make,” he said. “Close your eyes and take the blow. I’m one of those dreamy, high-handed, impossible poets you’ve heard about. Vanderin likes my stuff and he’s induced Koller, the publisher, to take a first book of mine. I grind it out between the times when I’m slaving down at Tony’s.”
“Three cheers,” she answered, delightedly. “Perhaps we can put our heads together now, and maybe you’ll help me with my work. I know you must have much more education than I’ve got.”
“Oh, I did work my way through two years of college, but I stopped after that,” he said. “It was too dry, and heavy, and, well, conservative, to satisfy me. A million don’ts and rules and rules and boundaries. They’re all right to know but they’re not so sacred to me.”