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And the idea came to Kedzie and Gilfoyle that children were one of the liabilities of their own marriage. They were afraid of each other, now, as well as of the world. If only they had not been in such haste to be married! If only they could recall those hasty words! Gilfoyle put out the lights "because they draw the insects," he said, but Kedzie thought that he was beginning to economize. He was.
He praised him till Kedzie began to think him worth cultivation, especially as he proposed to flood the country with portraits of Kedzie as the Breathasweeta Girl. The muse of advertising swooped down and whispered to Gilfoyle the delicious lines to be printed under Kedzie's smile. Kiss me again. Who are you? You use Breathasweeta. You must be all right. Kalteyer was swept off his feet.
The villain in melodrama is as likely as not to be as decent a fellow as any. When he slinks from the stage in his final hissed exit he goes to his dressing-room, scours off his grease-paint, and probably returns to his devoted family or seats himself before a bowl of milk-and-crackers in his club. Gilfoyle was as decent a fellow as ever villain was.
And so Kedzie was sheltered and passed on upward by Skip Magruder the lunch-room waiter, and by Mr. Kalteyer the chewing-gum purveyor, by Eben E. Kiam the commercial photographer, by Thomas Gilfoyle the advertising bard, by Ferriday the motion-picture director, on up and up to Jim Dyckman. Every man gave her the best help he could. And even the women she met unconsciously assisted her skyward.
Gilfoyle did not call for the letter in Chicago, since he was in New York. It was held in Chicago for the legal period and then it was sent to the Dead Letter Office, where a clerk wasted a deal of time and ingenuity in an effort to trace the sender or the addressee. Kedzie meanwhile had watched for the postman and hunted through her mail with frenzy.
When the shaken wits of the parents began to return to a partial calm they remembered that Kedzie had mentioned somebody named Gilfoyle Gargoyle would have been a better name for him, since he grinned down in mockery upon a cathedral of hope. Adna whispered, "When did you divorce the other feller?" "I didn't; that's the trouble." "Why don't you?" "I can't find him."
She had berated him, chucked him, taken up with a fast millionaire; and when he returned to resume his place in her heart she had greeted him with her finger-nails. Thus, as usual in wars, each side had bitter grievances which the other could neither acknowledge nor understand. Gilfoyle was as bitter against Kedzie as she was against him.
Gilfoyle she had been, and her footsore tramp from cheap flat to cheap flat, ending in the place that cost three hundred dollars a year furnished. She finally decided not to attempt housekeeping yet awhile, and selected a double-decked apartment of twenty-four rooms and forty-eight baths. And she talked the agent down to a rental of ten thousand dollars a year unfurnished.
She went to the hall to pick up the photograph of Jim Dyckman. Both halves of it were gone. Now she was frightened. Gilfoyle had departed meekly, but he had taken the picture; therefore he must have been filled with hate. He had revenge in his mind. And she trembled at her danger. He might strike at any time. She suspected his exact intention. She dreaded to have Jim Dyckman call on her.
She was certainly not going to follow Gilfoyle into the beyond. Jim was left helpless with an unanswerable riddle on his mind. He could only curse himself for being fool enough to get married, and join the vast club of the Repenters at Leisure. He felt sorrier for Kedzie than ever, but he also felt sorry for himself.
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