Kedzie screamed with laughter at some of the ribaldry and danced in a jostle of fauns, satyrs, nymphs, and maenads. Yet when her partner clenched her too straitly she could not forget that she was the wife of an absent soldier. And when on the way home he tried to flirt she could not quell the nausea in her soul.
But practice makes perfect and Kedzie was learning to be downright bad, though yet awhile she gave but stingy reward to her assiduous cavaliers. She was what Pet called a demi-veuve and unprofitable to the men she used as weapons of her revenge against her innocent and unwitting husband.
There was another factor working toward her debasement and that was the emancipation of her pocket-book. It was a fairy's purse now and she could not scatter her money faster than she found it renewed. Her entertainments grew more lavish and more reckless. She had an inspiration at last. She would put Jim's yacht into commission and take a party of friends on a cruise, well chaperoned, of course.
She sent instructions to the master of the vessel to get steam up. Knudsen sent back word that he would have to have an order from the boss. She promised to have him discharged and in her anger fired a telegram off to Jim, demanding that he rebuke the surly skipper and order the boat out.
The telegram found Jim in a state of doldrums. The food had turned against him, homesickness was like a fever in him, and the monotony of his routine had begun to get his nerves. He was startled and enraged at Kedzie's request for permission to go yachting and he fired back a telegram:
Knudsen was right I am astonished at your suggestion
do not approve in the slightest.
He regretted his anger when it was too late. Kedzie, who had already made up her list of guests and received their hilarious acceptances, was compelled to withdraw the invitations. She would have bought a yacht of her own, but she could not afford it! She was not allowed so large a fund. She, Mrs. Dyckman, wanted something and could not afford it! What was the use of anything, anyhow?
Times had changed for Kedzie indeed when the little beggar from the candy-store who had cried once when Skip Magruder, the bakery waiter, refused to take her to the movies twice in one Sunday, was crying now because her miser of a husband forbade her a turbine yacht as a plaything.
She was crushed with chagrin and she felt completely absolved of the last obligation. What kind of a brute had she married who would go away on a military picnic among his nice, warm cacti and deny his poor deserted wife a little boat-ride and a breath of fresh air?
If she had had any lingering inclination to visit Jim in Texas she gave it up now. She went to Newport instead and took Pet Bettany along for a companion—at Kedzie's expense, of course.