“At the Muscovy, then. By seven.”
She stopped as if to turn away, hesitated, lingered, gazing out with sober eyes at the confusion of limousines, touring cars and taxis that rolled endlessly by, with here and there a high green bus lumbering above all the traffic. “Maybe we can have another of our talks, Henry,” she said. “I hope so. I need it—or something.”
“Sue,” said he, “you're working too hard.”
She considered this, shook her head, turned abruptly away.
When he reached the old bachelor rookery in the Square he did not enter, but walked twice around the block, thinking about Sue. It had disturbed him to see that tired look in her odd deep-green eyes. Sue had been vivid, striking, straightforward; fired with a finely honest revolt against the sham life into an observance of which nearly all of us, soon or late, get beaten down. He didn't want to see Sue beaten down like the rest.
It was pleasant that she, too, had felt deeply about their friendship. This thought brought a thrill of the sort that had to be put down quickly; for nothing could have been plainer than, that he stirred no thrill in Sue. No, he was not in the running there. He lived in books, the Worm; and he reflected with a rather unaccustomed touch of bitterness that books are pale things.
Peter, now—he had seemed lately to be in the running.
But it hardly seemed that Peter could be the one who had brought problems into Sue's life.... Jacob Zanin—there was another story! He was in the running decidedly. In that odd frank way of hers, Sue had given the Worm glimpses of this relationship.
He rounded the block a third time—a fourth—a fifth.
When he entered the apartment Peter was there, in the studio, telephoning. To a girl, unquestionably. You could always tell, “You aren't fair to me. You throw me aside without a word of explanation.”