Anthony, the courteous, the subtle, the perspicacious, was drunk each
day--in Sammy's with these men, in the apartment over a book, some book
he knew, and, very rarely, with Gloria, who, in his eyes, had begun to
develop the unmistakable outlines of a quarrelsome and unreasonable
woman. She was not the Gloria of old, certainly--the Gloria who, had she
been sick, would have preferred to inflict misery upon every one around
her, rather than confess that she needed sympathy or assistance. She was
not above whining now; she was not above being sorry for herself. Each
night when she prepared for bed she smeared her face with some new
unguent which she hoped illogically would give back the glow and
freshness to her vanishing beauty. When Anthony was drunk he taunted her
about this. When he was sober he was polite to her, on occasions even
tender; he seemed to show for short hours a trace of that old quality of
understanding too well to blame--that quality which was the best of him
and had worked swiftly and ceaselessly toward his ruin.
But he hated to be sober. It made him conscious of the people around
him, of that air of struggle, of greedy ambition, of hope more sordid
than despair, of incessant passage up or down, which in every metropolis
is most in evidence through the unstable middle class.
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