She threw him a shrug
of contempt. Peter went away laughing. Kedzie waited a few minutes
and saw that Mr. Devoe had come to sit with Zada.
After a moment the music was resumed, and Zada rose to dance again
with Mr. Devoe--a curious sort of dance, in which she lifted her feet
high and placed them carefully, as if she were walking on a floor
covered with eggs and didn't want to break any.
But Kedzie's eyes were filling with sand. They had gazed too long
at brilliance. She dashed back to the elevator and to her room.
She was exhausted, and she pulled off her clothes and let them lie
where they fell. She slid her weary frame between the sheets and
instantly slept.
* * * * *
Charity Coe danced till all hours with Jim, with Tom Duane and
other men, and no one could have fancied that she had ever known
or cared what horrors filled the war hospitals across the sea.
She was frantic enough to accept a luncheon engagement with Jim and
his mother for the next day. She telephoned him in the morning: "Your
angel of a mother will forgive me when you tell her I'm lunching
down-town with my husband. The poor boy was detained at his office
last night and didn't get my telegram till he got home. When he
learned that I had come in and gone out again he was furious with
himself and me. I hadn't left word where I was, so he couldn't come
running after me. He waited at home and gave me a love of a call-down
for my dissipation.
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