Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/189

 The half-hour was over.

He swayed up-stairs to Suite B and knocked. A distant "Come in."

She was in the bedroom beyond. He inched into the stale hotel parlor—wallpaper with two-foot roses, a table with an atrocious knobby gilt vase, two stiff chairs and a grudging settee ranged round the wall. The lilies which her disciples had sent her were decaying in boxes, in a wash-bowl, in a heap in the corner. Round a china cuspidor lay faint rose petals.

He sat awkwardly on the edge of one of the chairs. He dared not venture beyond the dusty brocade curtains which separated the two rooms, but his fancy ventured fast enough.

She threw open the curtains and stood there, a flame blasting the faded apartment. She had discarded her white robe for a dressing-gown of scarlet with sleeves of cloth of gold—gold and scarlet; riotous black hair; long, pale, white face. She slipped over to the settee, and summoned him, "Come!"

He diffidently dropped his arm about her, and her head was on his shoulder. His arm drew tighter. But, "Oh, don't make love to me," she sighed, not moving. "You'll know it all right when I want you to! Just be nice and comforting tonight."

"But I can't always—"

"I know. Perhaps you won't always have to. Perhaps! Oh, I need— What I need tonight is some salve for my vanity. Have I ever said that I was a reincarnated Joan of Arc? I really do half believe that sometimes. Of course it's just insanity. Actually I'm a very ignorant young woman with a lot of misdirected energy and some tiny idealism. I preach elegant sermons for six weeks, but if I stayed in a town six weeks and one day, I'd have to start the music box over again. I can talk my sermons beautifully . . . but Cecil wrote most of 'em for me, and the rest I cheerfully stole."

"Do you like Cecil?"

"Oh, is a nice, jealous, big, fat man!" She who that evening had been a disturbing organ note was lisping baby-talk now.

"Damn it, Sharon, don't try to be a baby when I'm serious!"

"Damn it, Elmer, don't say 'damn it'! Oh, I hate the little vices—smoking, swearing, scandal, drinking just enough to be silly. I love the big ones—murder, lust, cruelty, ambition!"

"And Cecil? Is he one of the big vices that you love?"