“That’s because you’re a Puritan. In Paris you were always being shocked by the exhibitions.” McCall winked at Dr. Levin, who was listening with a smile on his face.
“Ah, yes, a Puritan who drinks cocktails. I don’t mind an exhibition of legs, if they’re good legs—as these are. But in Paris they went too far. Legs were a mere starter. Whenever a person exhibits a moral impulse, you accuse him of being a Puritan.”
“Exactly,” said McCall. “You don’t expect me to call you a goddam prude in company. A person has to be polite. Puritan is merely a euphuism.”
They argued genially for a while and then appealed to Dr. Levin.
“As usual, you are both wrong—and both right,” said Levin, lighting a cigarette. “McCall is a poet and a symbolist. In what to you, Hamilton, would be a shocking disregard of the morals, and to me a mere display of the umbilical region, becomes in McCall’s mind a symbol of freedom, of art, of life. But we’ve sat here almost an hour and it’s time to be moving.”
At the Moulin Rouge, dimly lighted, with soft lights and women’s gowns and jewels glowing subduedly, McCall passed into a sentimental mood.
“Want to hear a little poem I wrote? Wrote it to the sweetest little girl in the world, wrote it on the back of an old envelope one day in the hospital.”
McCall was having difficulty with his “l’s.” A woman with seductive arms and eyes leaned over to him from the next table and smiled, while her escort was fumbling in his pockets for some change.
“She’s the sweetest little girl in the world and I’ll never see her again—never.”
“What’s the matter? A lover’s quarrel?” asked Levin.