Kedzie's past was catching up with her. It is a glorious thing
when one's past comes up loaded with food, munitions, good deeds,
charities, mercies, valued friendships. But poor little Kedzie's
little past included one incompetent and unacknowledged husband
and two village parents.
Kedzie had concealed the existence of Gilfoyle from her new friends
as anxiously as if he had been a baby born out of wedlock instead of
a grown man born into it. And Gilfoyle had returned the compliment.
He had not told his new friends in Chicago that he was married,
because the Anita Adair that he had left in New York was, as F.P.A.
would say, his idea of nothing to brag about.
Gilfoyle had loved Kedzie once as a pretty photographer's model, and
had admired her as an exquisite dancing-creature who seemed to have
spun off at a tangent from the painted side of an old Greek amphora.
He had actually written poetry to her! And when a poet has done that
for a girl he feels that he has done more for her than she can ever
repay. Even if she gives him her mortal self, what is that to the
immortality he has given her?
When Kedzie telegraphed Gilfoyle that she had lost her job in Newport
and had arrived in New York lonely and afraid, had he not taken care
of her good name by giving her his own? Not to mention a small matter
of all his money!
She had repaid him with frantic discontent. The morning after the
wedding, was she not imitating the parrot's shrill ridicule of life
and love? Did she ridicule his poetry, or didn't she? She did.
Pages:
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355