Peter confronted him; spoke with vehemence. “Sue is free—absolutely. I want her to be free. I wouldn't have it otherwise. Not for a moment. It's absurd that she should hesitate about dining with you, or—or”—this with less assurance—“with any man.”
Peter walked around the room, stopping again before the Worm who was now sitting on the desk, looking over the evening paper.
“Oh, come now!” said Peter. “Put up that paper. Listen to me. Here you are, one of my oldest friends, and you make me out a Victorian monster with the woman I love. Damn it, man, you ought to know me better! And you ought to know Sue better. If her ideas are modern and free, mine are, if anything, freer. Yes, they are! In a sense—in a sense—I go farther than she does. She is marrying me because it is the thing she wants to do. That's the only possible basis on which I would accept her love. If that love ever dies”.... Peter was suddenly all eloquence and heroism. Self-convinced, all afire, he stood there with upraised arm. And the Worm, rather fascinated, let his paper drop and watched the man... “If that love ever dies,” the impressive voice rang on, “no matter what the circumstances, engaged, married, it absolutely does not matter, Sue is free. Good God! You should know better—you, of all people! You know me—do you suppose I would fasten on Sue, on that adorable, inspired girl, the shackles of an old-fashioned property marriage! Do you suppose I would have the hardihood to impose trammels on that free spirit!”
Carried away by his own climax Peter whirled, snatched up the desk telephone, called Sue's number, waited tense as a statue for the first sound of her voice, then said, instantly assuming the caressingly gentle voice of the perfect lover: “Sue, dear, hello! How are you? Tired? Oh, I'm sorry. Better get out somewhere. Wish I could come, but a job's a job. I'll stick it out. Wait though! Here's Henry Bates with nothing to do. I'm going to send him over to take you out—make you eat something and then walk a bit. It's what you need, little girl. No, not a word! I'm going to ring off now. He'll come right over. Good-by, dear.”
He put down the instrument, turned with an air of calm triumph. “All right,” he said commandingly. “Run along. Take her to the Muscovy. I may possibly join you later but don't wait for me. I'll tell you right now, we're not going to have any more of this fool notion that Sue isn't free.” With which he sat down at his typewriter and plunged into his work.
The Worm, taken aback, stared at him. Then, slowly, he smiled. He didn't care particularly about the Muscovy. It was too self-consciously “interesting”—too much like all the semi-amateur, short-lived little basement restaurants that succeed one another with some rapidity in the Greenwich Village section. The Worm was thinking again of Jim's exceedingly Anglo-Saxon chop house and of those salty deep-sea oysters, arrived this day. At the Muscovy you had Russian table-cloths and napkins. The tables were too small there, and set too close together. You couldn't talk. You couldn't think. He wondered if Peter hadn't chosen the place, thus arbitrarily, because Sue's friends would be there and would see her enacting this freedom of his.
Peter was now pecking with a rather extraordinary show of energy at the typewriter. The Worm, studying him, noted that his body was rigidly erect and his forehead beaded with sweat, and began to realize that the man was in a distinct state of nerves. It was no good talking to him—not now. So, meekly but not unhumorously obeying orders, the Worm set out.
Sue met him at her door with a demure smile.
“Where is it?” she asked—“Jim's?”
He shook his head. His face, the tone of his voice, were impenetrable. There was not so much as a glimmer of mischief in his quietly expressive eyes; though Sue, knowing Henry Bates, looked there for it. “No,” he said, “we are to go to the Muscovy.”