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But afterward, on the way "home" as she called what other people called her "lair" she grew suddenly and deeply solemn. "So your wife is with Dyckman again," she said. "It looks to me like a sketch." Cheever flushed. He hated her slang and he did not accept her conclusion, but this time he did not forbid her to mention his wife.
"You're an angel," said Jim, and meant it. He thought all the way home what an angel she was, and Charity was thinking at the same time what a fool she had been to let Peter Cheever dazzle her to the fact that Jim Dyckman was the one man in the world that she belonged to. She needed just him and he just her. Sometimes Jim Dyckman was foolish enough to wish that he had been his wife's first lover.
He felt that it was not quite right for him to dance in public with such persons. He had his code. Even the swine have their ethics. Zada put her hand in Cheever's arm and cooed to him, but in vain. It was then that Jim Dyckman caught sight of them. He was slinking about the roofs as lonely and dejected as a homeless cat.
Thropp's cheapness of appearance better than she did. A woman may grow shoddy and careless, but she rarely grows oblivious of her uncomeliness. She will rather cherish it as the final cruelty of circumstances. Mrs. Thropp was keenly alive to the effect it would have on Dyckman if Kedzie introduced her and Adna as the encumbrances on her beauty.
Later in the afternoon he gave up the effort to snub her and went to the Noxon home. It was about the hour when Kedzie in her new flat had been burning her fingers at the gas-stove. Jim Dyckman was preparing to burn his fingers at the shrine of Mrs. Cheever. He rang the bell and asked for Mrs. Noxon, though her motor was waiting at the door, as he was glad to note. Mrs.
Kedzie felt the same veiled scorn, and it alarmed her; yet when Dyckman proposed the publication of their troth she forbade it vigorously. She writhed at the worse than Tantalus fate that compelled her to push from her own thirsty lips the grapes of felicity. She had no intention of committing bigamy, even if she had been temptable to such recklessness.
That was the way the Paul Reveres of 1916 summoned the troops to arms. Mr. Minute-Man Dyckman sat on the edge of his bed in his silk pajamas with the telephone-receiver at his ear, and yawned: "H'lo.... Who is it?... What is it?... Oh, it's you, sergeant.... Yes?... No!... For God's sake!... I'll get out right away." "What's the matter? Is the house on fire?"
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.
Hardly more could be crowded into a shrug. Dyckman came out of his kennels and paddocks, blinked, stared, gaped. Then he began to stand up by first stepping down. He bestrode the narrow aisle like a Colossus.
"Who cares who you saw," said Pet, and viciously started to change the subject, so that Prissy had to jump the prelude. "It was Jim Dyckman. Well, in he comes from the train, you understand, and looks about among the crowd of people waiting for the train to meet people, you understand." Pet broke in, frantically: "Yes, I understand!
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