“Don’t let’s read any more poems anyway,” said Edward.
Everyone began to say Good-bye in the street. All the automobiles of the guests opened their bright eyes like sleepy servants pretending they had never been asleep. To the loud snores of awaking engines Emily said to Edward, “I wish the law didn’t hate fire so. It would be fun to have a garden of fire and plant little seedling fires in the moonlight....”
“I don’t like fire. It makes a fool of one.”
Edward went into the restaurant to pay for the supper. The long hot room looked tired and almost indecent. The poems were scattered about the disordered table. A fallen bottle of wine had given up the ghost pillowed on a sheaf of poems and paper crabs. Edward found his own poem—which had been the leader of the sheaf—disgraced and brought very low. It was on the floor, and stamped upon it was the wet imprint of a rubber heel. As he picked it up he saw that Emily was waiting for him in the doorway. She came along the room towards him.
“Edward....” she said in an impatient voice, and took his arm and shook it. He could hardly hear what she said. She looked flushed and excited. Did she say, “It makes my life so lovely—to be loved?...” Did she say that?
Edward’s thoughts were in ashes. She was watching him so insolently. He crumpled the muddy copy of the poem and put it into her hand. He felt nothing but an angry anxiety that she should love his poem and that she should see how it had been insulted.
They heard Rhoda’s voice outside, “Emily.... Emily....”
CHAPTER THREE
If you were careless ever; if ever a thing you missed