Jambers's
phonograph, but his melodies put her heart to its paces, and so did
Gilfoyle's.
Gilfoyle wrote her poems, too, real poems not meant for publication
at advertising rates. Kedzie had never had anybody commit poetry
at her before. It lifted her like that Biltmore elevator and sent
her heart up into her head. He lauded Kedzie's pout as well as her
more saltant expressions. He voiced a belief that life in a little
hut with her would be luxury beyond the contemptible stupidities
of life in a palace with another. Kedzie did not care for the hut
detail, but the idolatry of so "brainy" a man was inspiring.
Kedzie and Gilfoyle were mutually afraid: she of his intellect, he
of her beauty and of her very fragility. Of course, he called her
by her new name, "Miss Adair." Later he implored the priceless joy
of calling her by her first name.
Gilfoyle feared to ask this privilege in prose, and so he put it
in verse. Kedzie found it in her mail at the stage door. She huddled
in a corner of the big undressing-room where the nymphs prepared for
their task. The young rowdies kept peeking over her shoulder and
snatching at her letter, but when finally she read it aloud to them
as a punishment and a triumph, they were stricken with awe. It ran
thus:
Pretty maid, pretty maid, may I call you "Anita"?
Your last name is sweet, but your first name is sweeter.
Kedzie stumbled over this, because she had not yet eradicated
the Western final "r" from her pronunciation.
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