Thus I saw myself. My very hair began to rise and to tingle. How had I
dared to make this proposal to Dorothy? And as Dorothy was silent, and
looked down as we walked, poking with her parasol at pebbles in the
road, I was in a tense anxiety to know with what words she would break
the oppressive pause between us. "I could see," she said, "that you
liked me; and of course you wouldn't come so far to see me if you
didn't. And you must know that Reverdy's friendship for you makes a
difference. Do you know...?"
Dorothy lost her voice. The tears came out of her eyes. As she did not
speak I began again, trying to say for her what she did not say for
herself. "There's Zoe," I said. And then Dorothy quite lost control of
herself. She wept piteously. And then she grew calmer. She had faced the
reluctant fact when I spoke Zoe's name. We had stumbled up and over
that roughness in the road. Any rut or obstacle in it might now be
easier endured ... if worse was not to come.
Yes, these stories about me. Had Dorothy heard them? And the life I had
taken for Zoe's sake. I was sure Dorothy had not heard of that. Even the
first was a subject difficult to approach. I was twenty, Dorothy was
nineteen. But the greatest obstacle was the age in which we lived. Women
now draped themselves in mystery. There were whole realms of subjects
that were not talked between the sexes.
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