"
"That's what they say," persisted Muriel stubbornly.
Anthony paced the room. "It's preposterous!" he declared. "The very
people we take on parties shout the story around as a great joke--and
eventually it gets back to us in some such form as this."
Gloria began running her finger through a stray red-dish curl. Muriel
licked her veil as she considered her next remark.
"You ought to have a baby."
Gloria looked up wearily.
"We can't afford it."
"All the people in the slums have them," said Muriel triumphantly.
Anthony and Gloria exchanged a smile. They had reached the stage of
violent quarrels that were never made up, quarrels that smouldered and
broke out again at intervals or died away from sheer indifference--but
this visit of Muriel's drew them temporarily together. When the
discomfort under which they were living was remarked upon by a third
party, it gave them the impetus to face this hostile world together. It
was very seldom, now, that the impulse toward reunion sprang
from within.
Anthony found himself associating his own existence with that of the
apartment's night elevator man, a pale, scraggly bearded person of about
sixty, with an air of being somewhat above his station.
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