Temporarily, that is. When the crash of the spring of '10 came and bounced me back on my father and into the firm of N. J. Wells, her favor dropped a dozen points to the market's one. In February we were engaged, in April we were hardly speaking. In May they sold me out. I'd been late again.
And now, there she was on the psychomat screen, obviously plumping out, and not nearly so pretty as memory had pictured her. She was staring at me with an expression of enmity, and I was glaring back. The buzzes became voices.
"You nit-wit!" she snapped. "You can't bury me out here. I want to go back to New York, where there's a little life. I'm bored with you and your golf."
"And I'm bored with you and your whole dizzy crowd."
"At least they're alive. You're a walking corpse. Just because you were lucky enough to gamble yourself into the money, you think you're a tin god."
"Well, I don't think you're Cleopatra! Those friends of yours—they trail after you because you give parties and spend money—my money."
"Better than spending it to knock a white walnut along a mountainside!"
"Indeed? You ought to try it, Marie." (That was her real name.) "It might help your figure—though I doubt if anything could!"
She glared in rage and—well, that was a painful half hour. I won't give all the details, but I was glad when the screen dissolved into meaningless colored clouds.
"Whew!" I said, staring at Van Manderpootz, who had been reading.