"
Charity laughed a little and said, "All right--anything to make
you talk."
She went to the piano and shifted the music. There were dozens of
songs about roses. She dropped to the bench and began to play and
croon Edward Carpenter's luscious music to Waller's old poem,
"Go, Lovely Rose."
Jim began to talk almost at once. Charity went on singing, smiling
a little at the familiar experience of being asked to sing only to
be talked over. Jim grew garrulous as he read across her shoulder
with characteristic impoliteness.
_"Tell her that wastes her time and me,"_ he quoted; then
he groaned: "That's you and me, Charity Coe. But you're wasting
yourself most of all."
He bent closer to peek at the name of the author. "Who's this
feller Waller, who knows so much?"
"Hush and listen," she said, and hummed the song through. It made
a new and deep impression on her in that humor. She felt that she
had wasted the rosiness of her own life. Girlhood was gone; youth
was gone; carefreedom was gone. Like petals they had fallen from
the core of her soul. The words of the lyric stabbed her:
Then die that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee.
How small a part of time they share
That are so sweet and fair.
Her fingers slipped from the keys and, as it were, died in her lap.
Jim Dyckman understood a woman for once, and in a gush of pity for
her and of resentment for her disprized preciousness caught at her
to embrace her.
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