“Well, you ought to know all about me.”
“Yes—I ought to.” He gave the same ugly laugh of the night before but in his eyes was real pain. “But who knows what to expect of a chorus queen.”
[274]
] “Jimmie!”
“Oh, what’s the use?” came in husky desperation. “Let’s be merry!”
Sallie stared, choked and bewildered, into the darkness. She didn’t know how to answer, how to act. This new Jimmie, this—this nasty one! He was a stranger. Small teeth settled into her lower lip. She felt like slipping to the floor of the car and crying her eyes out.
For three nights they followed the same program—Sallie bewitching in a new costume chosen tearfully to conciliate the mysterious male—he taciturn, unresponsive, answering her labored conversation with husky monosyllables or hard cynicism that hurt without enlightening. Twice during those three days it drizzled and, instead of suggesting supper in the neighborhood as was their habit in bad weather, he drove the short ten blocks to the weary brownstone house and left her there.
“As if he was anxious to get rid of me,” sobbed Sallie into her pillow.
To dust and ashes in her mouth turned the sweets of her triumph over the girls. Though she continued to weave stories for their benefit, to elaborate on gifts in the past and the car in the future, to flash her diamond and twirl her pearls, the tang had gone out of it.
By Friday she felt she couldn’t stand it another minute. What had she done? Under the glimmering stars she gazed up first in mute pleading, then—
“Jimmie,” she choked, “take me home. I—I—guess I’d better—”