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She blushed bitterly and mumbled, "Well, of all the nerve!" After some hesitation she wrote on Skip's note the "scatting" words, "Nothing doing" and sent it back by the dismal stage doorkeeper. She had hoped Skip would have the decency to go away and die quietly and not hang round to see her leave with Mr. Gilfoyle. Skip had a hitch in one leg, but Mr.
"Yes, I went and married a dirty little rat name's Gilfoyle he thinks my real name's Anita Adair. I got it out of a movie, first day I ran off from you folks. I had an awful time, momma like to starved would have, only for clerkin' in a candy-store. Then I got work posln' for commercial photographers. Did you see the Breathasweeta Chewin' Gum Girl? No? That was me.
He suggested an apartment. This reminded Kedzie of how Gilfoyle had sent her out on a flat-hunt. She would have more money now, but there would doubtless be something the matter with every place. The most urgent thing was to get out of New Jersey. They could discuss residences in the car. And they did discuss them. Building a new house would take years.
He had outstretched himself on a sumptuous divan. She was seated on a carved chair, leaning against the tall back of it like a figure in high relief. About them the great room brooded colossally. Gilfoyle would have hated Charity and Jim as perfect examples of the idle rich, too stupid to work, too pampered to be worthy of sympathy.
There was probably never a practiser of blackmail who did not find a better word for the duress he applied. Gilfoyle needed help. He had no cash to hire a detective with. But he knew a detective or two who might go into the thing with him on spec'. Gilfoyle began to compose a scheme of poetic revenge. It should be his palinode to Anita.
When he had first smitten it from his brain she had thought it an inspiration and him a king. Now it sounded silly, coarse, a little indecent. Of course it had not succeeded. How could he ever have been so foolish as to utter it "Kiss me again who are you?" Why, it was vulgar! Gilfoyle looked dismally incompetent as he drooped and mumbled.
He was one of those "cadets" the papers had been full of a few years before, who lured young girls to ruin under the guise of false marriages and then sold them as "white slaves." Kedzle's wrath was at the fact that Gilfoyle was not legally an abductor. She would have been glad merely to be ruined, and she would have rejoiced at the possibility of a false marriage.
She went into the hall in a rage, still holding the photograph. She flung the door open and in walked Gilfoyle. She fell back stupefied. He grinned, and took her in with devouring eyes. If he had no right to devour her, who had? He approved of her with a rush of delight: "Well, Anita, here I am. And how's the little wife?" She could not answer him.
He slipped the lyric to Marguerite and she read it with squeals of delight, while Gilfoyle looked as modest as such a genius could. The other girl had to read it, of course, while Gilfoyle tried to look unconscious. He was as successful as one is who tries to hold a casual expression for a photograph. The other girl's reward was a shrug and the diluted claret of a "Very nice!"
He saw mid-Western women of all sorts about him, but he was of those who must have a type for every section of humanity and who will not be shaken in their belief by any majority of exceptions. When Gilfoyle got Kedzie's letter saying that she would not join him yet awhile he wrote her a letter of poetic grief at the separation.
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