He was some time in getting out his next remark. It was, “You'd better wait.”
She threw out her hands in an expressive way she had. “Wait? Yes, that's what I've told myself, Henry. But I've lost my old clear sense of things. My nerves aren't steady. I have queer reactions.”
Then she closed her lips as she had once before on this day, up there on the avenue. She even seemed to compose herself. Waters Coryell came over from the other table and for a little time talked down to them from his attitude of self-perfection.
When he had gone the Worm said, to make talk, “How are the pictures coming on?”
Then he saw that he had touched the same tired nerve center. Her flush began to return.
“Not very well,” she said; and thought for a moment, with knit brows and pursed lips.
She threw out her hands again. “They're quarreling, Henry.”
“Zanin and Peter?”
She nodded. “It started over Zanin's publicity. He is a genius, you know. Any sort of effort that will help get the picture across looks legitimate to him.”
“Of course,” mused the Worm, trying to resume the modestly judicial habit of mind that had seemed lately to be leaving him, “I suppose, in a way, he is right. It is terribly hard to make a success of such an enterprise. It is like war—-the only possible course is to win.”