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Updated: June 8, 2025
The nice things!" Adna snapped: "View? Our next view will be the poorhouse if we don't hustle our stumps. We got to get out of here and find the cheapest place they is in town to live or go back home on the next train."
She told Adna that she would have to travel the rest of the way in a sleeper or in a baggage-car, for she just naturally had to lay down. So Adna paid for two berths. It weakened him like a hemorrhage. Kedzie's first sorrow was in leaving Chicago. They changed trains there, bouncing across the town in a bus. That transit colored Kedzie's soul like dragging a ribbon through a vat of dye.
"Who does he think you are?" asked Mrs. Thropp. "Anita Adair, the famous favorite of the screen," said Kedzie, rather advertisingly. "Hadn't you better tell him?" Adna ventured. "I don't dast. He'd never speak to me again. He'd run like a rabbit if he thought I was a grass widow." Mrs. Thropp remonstrated: "I don't believe he'd ever give you up. He must love you a heap if he wants to marry you."
Suddenly she set her jaw and broke into the parley of her husband and their daughter: "Well, I've made up my mind. Adna, you shut up awhile and get on out this room. I'm going to have a few words with my girl." Adna looked into the face of his wife and saw there that red-and-white-striped expression which always puts a wise man to flight. He was glad to be permitted to retreat.
"Adna," she whispered, and he told the clerk that her father's name was Adna Adair. She told the truth about her mother's maiden name. She could afford to do that, and she could honestly aver that she had never had any husband or husbands "up to yet," and that she had not been divorced "so far." Also both declared that they knew of no legal impediment to their marriage.
"What did he work at?" said Adna. "Poetry." "Is poetry work?" "Work? That's all it is. Poetry is all work and no pay. You should have seen that gink sweatin' over the fool stuff. He'd work a week for five dollars' worth of foolishness. And besides, as soon as he married me he lost his job." "Poetry?" Adna mumbled. "Advertising." "Oh!"
Adna saw the taxicab pass over the valise she had carried. It left no trace of Kedzie. Her annihilation was uncanny. He gaped. "Where's Kedzie?" Mrs. Thropp screamed. A policeman checked the traffic with uplifted hand. Adna ran to him. Mrs. Thropp told him what had happened. "I saw the goil drop the bag and beat it for the walk," said the officer. "Which way'd she go?"
The smaller one took a second look at Adna and retreated with scorn, snickering: "You kin have him." The other, who was a good loser at craps or tips, re-examined his clients, flickered his eyelids, and started down the platform to have it over with as soon as possible. He paused to say: "Where you-all want to go to a taxicab?"
He would leave all the baggage there while he hunted a place to stop. They could not find the tunnelway, but debouched on the street. Crossing Vanderbilt Avenue was a problem for village folk heavy laden. The taxicabs were hooting and scurrying. Adna found himself in the middle of the street, entirely surrounded by demoniac motors. His wife wanted to lie down there and die.
Adna dared neither to go nor to stay. Suddenly a chauffeur of an empty limousine, fearing to lose a chance to swear at a taxi-driver, kept his head turned to the left and steered straight for the spot where the Thropps awaited their doom. Adna had his wife pendent from one arm and a valise or two from the other. Kedzie carried a third valise.
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