What an asinine blunder! She would think he considered himself
particularly favored. She would think he was reacting with the most
inept intimacy to a quite trivial episode.
He remembered that during the previous month his janitor, to whom he had
delivered a rather muddled lecture on the "brother-hoove man," had come
up next day and, on the basis of what had happened the night before,
seated himself in the window seat for a cordial and chatty half-hour.
Anthony wondered in horror if Gloria would regard him as he had regarded
that man. Him--Anthony Patch! Horror!
It never occurred to him that he was a passive thing, acted upon by an
influence above and beyond Gloria, that he was merely the sensitive
plate on which the photograph was made. Some gargantuan photographer had
focussed the camera on Gloria and _snap_!--the poor plate could but
develop, confined like all things to its nature.
But Anthony, lying upon his couch and staring at the orange lamp, passed
his thin fingers incessantly through his dark hair and made new symbols
for the hours. She was in a shop now, it seemed, moving lithely among
the velvets and the furs, her own dress making, as she walked, a
debonair rustle in that world of silken rustles and cool soprano
laughter and scents of many slain but living flowers.
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