“Awfully busy to-day, honey.”
“You took dinner with her, of course.”
“No. It was a big day on the Street, and there was so much to do at the office that I dined down-town at the Bankers' Club with several men and then went back to the office. I ought to be there all night, but I couldn't keep away from you any longer.”
There were mysterious quirks of sound that meant kisses and sighs and tender inarticulations. There were cooing tones which the dictagraph repeated with hideous fidelity.
Zada asked, “Did he have hard daydie old office-ums?”
And he answered, with infatuated imbecility, “Yes, he diddums, but worst was lonelying for his Zadalums.”
“Did Peterkin miss his Zadalums truly—truly?”
The inveterate idioms of wooers took on in Charity's ear a grotesque obscenity, a sacrilegious burlesque of words as holy to her as prayer or the sacred dialect of priests. When Zada murmured, “Kissings! kissings!” Charity screamed: “Stop it, you beasts! You beasts!”
Then she clapped her hand over her lips, expecting to hear their panic at her outcry. But they were as oblivious of her pain or her rage as if an interplanetary space divided them. They went on with the murmur and susurrus of their communion, while Charity looked askance at the three men. They could not hear, but could imagine, and they stared at her doltishly.
“Leave the room! Go away!” she groaned.