It was stric'ly business conv'sation.
I didn' ask him how many shildren he had and he didn' ask me if
I was a Benedictine or a--or a pony of brandy--thass pretty good.
Hope I can rememmer it to-mor'."
Kedzie smiled, but not at his boozy pun. She seemed more comfortable.
She fell asleep. Next to being innocent, being absolved is the most
soothing of sensations.
CHAPTER X
The next morning that parrot, still unmurdered, woke Kedzie early.
She buried one ear deep in the pillow and covered the other with
her hair and her hand. The parrot's voice receded to a distance,
but a still smaller voice began to call to her. She was squirming
deeper for a long snooze when her foot struck another.
Her husband!--King Log, audibly a-slumber. She pouted drowsily,
frowned, slid away, and tried to commit temporary suicide by
drowning herself in sleep.
Then her stupor faded as the tiny call resounded again in her soul.
She was no longer merely Mrs. Anita Gilfoyle, the flat-dwelling
nobody. She was now Anita Adair, the screen-queen. She was needed
at the studio.
She sat up, looked at her husband, her unacknowledged and
unacknowledging husband. A mysterious voice drew her from his side
as cogently as the hand of Yahweh drew the rib that became a woman
from under the elbow of Adam.
She rose and looked back and down at the man whom the law had united
her with indissolubly. Eve must have wondered back at Adam with
the same sense of escape while he lay asleep.
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