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him. The smoke didn't bother her. Nothing he did ever bothered her.
"Have a busy day?" he grumbled suspiciously.
"Very."
"Why the devil aren't you in bed asleep, then? It's after two."
For answer, she stroked his hair.
"What'd you do?" he jeered. "Write a new Venus and Adonis or something? Get all tuckered out reading fan mail from that bunch of fairies who read that stuff you write?"
She shook her head, mock-ruefully. It was impossible to get her in a bad humor.
"When Watson comes staggering in at tv;o a.m.," he reminded her, "his wife raises the roof."
Rita pouted disapproval.
"EUie Watson's an old shrew," she said.
George thought of trying again, then he groaned involuntarily.
"For Christ's sake, Rita, couldn't you once — just once — crumple up and bawl me out? Swear at me— say you wish you had never set eyes on me? Just once — so I'd get to think maybe you're a real woman instead of — instead of — Snow-white in a — a crystal coffin!"
"Why, George!"
Rita's eyes widened with deftly feigned bewilderment. He looked deep into them for some hopeful shadow of hidden sorrow. But there was none. She sprang lightly away, before he had a chance to suggest that he had pushed her.
"You're not a woman," he ranted. "You're the poems locked up in here — " he slapped the little desk so that it trembled on its dainty cabriole
nf February, mi\
legs, and the pottery bust of Shelleyilg, l quivered dangerously near the edgoLiD of its mirrored shelf. "What've yotjni got to worry about? 'George gives me™ everything I want . . . gold davenports (he kicked it) . . . silver carpet (he scuffed it) . . . ivory tables . . . first editions of Keats . . .' "
"But George," Rita interrupted, in a voice as innocent as cherubs playing on flutes, "isn't it a charming house? Don't you like a charming house?"
"It's a perfect house, and I hate it. I wish to God it would bum down to the ground some lucky day. I know what you think.
" 'George is no trouble at all,' that's what you think.
" 'He's away all day and leaves me to my writing. By the time he comes i home my feelings are all used up, and | I can afford to be nice as pie to him because I've given the best of myself to what is most important to me.'
"If I thrashed you to within an inch of your life and turned you out into a blizzard at midnight, you'd just crawl back giggling, and say, 'Why, George, darling, you're cross as an old bear!'
"Rita," he began to plead, holding her by the arms, "don't you suppose I can tell you're happy — but not because of me? Poets are supposed to know what goes on inside people. You do know, and you don't care! Rita, don't you ever feel sorry for me?"
And Rita's wide-eyed, unwavering gaze justified the terror he had felt. He sank into a chair. After a while she crept close and pulled his finger? from his face like a child playing a game. For one wild, unreasoning mo