He said: "When may I see you again? Soon, please!"
She smiled, with a hurt patience, and answered, "Not for
a long while."
He chuckled: "To-morrow, eh? That's great!"
She wished that he would not say, "That's great." If he would only
say, "Ripping!" or, "I say, that's ripping!" or, "Awfully good of
you," or, "No end"--anything swagger. But he would not swagger.
He escorted her to the elevator, where she gave him a queenly hand
and murmured, "Good night!"
He watched her go up like _Medea in machina;_ then he turned
away and stumbled back into his limousine. It was still fragrant
from her presence. The perfume she was using then was a rather
aggressive essence of a lingering tenacity upon the atmosphere.
But Dyckman was so excited that he liked it. The limousine could
hardly contain him.
Kedzie felicitated herself on escaping from his thrall just in time
to avoid being stupefied by it. She thanked Heaven that she had not
flung her arms around him and claimed him for her own. She had the
cleverness of elusion that her sex displays in all the species, from
Cleopatras to clams, from butterflies to rhinoceroses. How wisely
they practise to evade what they demand, leaving the stupid male
to ponder the mysteries of womankind!
When Kedzie reached her mirror she told the approving person she
found there that she was doing pretty well for a poor young girl not
long in from the country. She postured joyously as she undressed,
and danced a feminine war-dance in much the same costume that she
wore when Jim Dyckman fished her out of the pool at Newport.
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