This was the being she had selected from
all mankind for her companion through the long, long years to come.
This was her playmate, partner, hero, master, financier, bedfellow,
lifefellow. For him she had given up her rights to freedom, to
praise, to chivalry, to individuality, her hopes of wealth, luxury,
flattery.
She glanced about the room--the pine bureau with its imitation
stain, broken handles, and curdled mirror, the ugly chairs, the
gilt radiator, the worn rug, the bed that other wretches had
occupied. She wondered who they were and where they were.
She remembered Newport, the Noxon home. She tried to picture a
bedroom there. She saw a palace of the best moving-picture period.
She remembered the first moving picture she had seen in New York,
and contrasted the Anita Adair of that adventure with the Anita
Adair of this. She recalled that girl locking her door against the
swell husband, and the poor but honest lover with the revolver.
Kedzie wished she had locked her own door--only there was no door,
merely a shoddy portiere, for there was not room to open a door.
Her old ambitions came back to her. She had planned to know rich
people and rebuke their wicked wiles. One rich man had held her in
his arms, lifted her out of the pool. It was no less a man than
Jim Dyckman, and she had repulsed him.
She caught a glimpse of her own tousled head in the mirror,
and she sneered at it. "You darn fool--oh, you darn fool!"
At last the parrot woke Gilfoyle.
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