“Yes, Jimmie.”
“Then I can’t drag over here twice a week, when our host and hostess are at the movies, and stand around like a cigar-store Indian while the”—he drew a breath against what seemed like resistance in his lungs—“while one of the most beautiful women I ever saw sits opposite me, using every sentence I pronounce as the spring board for a terrific pass.”
“No. That would be too difficult.”
“So—I better go home.”
Audrey spun on the piano stool so that her back was toward him. The turquoise trimming on her dress shivered infinitesimally. “Yes, Jimmie. If that’s how you really feel.”
“Great God! It’s not how I feel at all!”
She came around again. “Well?”
“But it’s what I think.”
“People do what they feel. Not what they think. If they really feel a way, they make themselves think it’s the right thought—in the end. That’s why I—well, it might be a short world, Jimmie. A short life. I never minded wasting time before, in mine. Now—that’s all that I mind.”
Jimmie stood up. “Audrey, you’d be awesomely easy to take advantage of.”