Dyckman had been lonely and blue, rejected and dejected. Kedzie was
something different. He had known lots of actresses, large and small,
stately, learned, cheap, stupid, brilliant, bad, good, gorgeous,
shabby, wanton, icy. But Kedzie was his first movie actress. She
dwelt in a strange realm of unknown colors and machineries.
She was a new toy in a new toyhouse--a whole Noah's ark of queer
toys. He wanted to play with those toys. She made him a
_revenant_ to childhood. Or, as he put it:
"Gee! but you make me feel as silly as a kid."
That surprised Kedzie. It was not the sort of talk she expected
from a world which was stranger to her than the movie studio to
him. He was perfectly natural, and that threw her into a spasm of
artificiality.
He sat staring down at her. He put his hands under his knees and sat
on them to keep them from touching her, as they wanted to. For all
he knew, she was covered with fresh paint. That made her practically
irresistible. Would it come off if he kissed her? He had to find out.
Finally he said, so helplessly, passively, that it would be more
accurate to say it was said by him:
"Say, Miss Adair, I'm a dead-goner if you don't gimme a kiss."
Kedzie was horrified. Skip Magruder would have been eleganter than
that. She answered, with dignity:
"Certainly, if you so desire."
That ought to have chaperoned him back to his senses, but he was too
far gone. His long arms shot out, went round her, gathered her up
to his breast.
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