“Really? You really knew another––er––Mamise?”
“Yes. Years ago.”
“Was she nice?”
“Very.”
“Oh!” She was sorry about that, too. The road slipped across a loose-planked, bone-racking bridge. With some jealousy she asked, “What was she like?”
“You.”
“That’s odd.” A little shabby, topply-tombed graveyard glided by, reverting to oblivion. “Tell me about her.”
A big motor charged past so fast that the passengers were only blurs, a grim chauffeur-effect with blobs of fat womankind trailing snapping veils. The car trailed a long streamer of dust that tasted of the road. When this was penetrated they entered upon a stretch of pleasant travel for eyes and wheels, on a long, long channel through a fruitful prairie, a very allegory of placid opulence.
“It was funny,” said Davidge. “I was younger than I am. I went to a show one night. A musical team played that everlasting ‘Poet and Peasant’ on the xylophones. They played nearly everything on nearly everything––same old stuff, accordions, horns, bells; same old jokes by the same fool clown and the solemn dubs. But they had a girl with ’em––a young thing. She didn’t play very well. She had a way with her, though––seemed kind of disgusted with life and the rest of the troupe and the audience. And she had a right to be disgusted, for she was as pretty as––I don’t know what. She was just beautiful––slim and limber and long––what you might imagine a nymph would look like if she got loose in a music-hall.
“I was crazy about her. If I could ever have written a poem about anybody, it would have been about her. She struck me as something sort of––well, divine. She wore the usual, and not much of it––low neck, bare arms, and––tights. But I kind of revered her; she was so dog-on pretty.