Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/58

56 We'll work together—hard as hell. And what's more, I'll get booking for our act if I have to dance horizontally for every agent on the Coast. Come on, let's go!"

The day was unbearably long. At four o'clock, classes over, Anita proposed that she and Ken work together for an hour. She wanted him to watch her old vaudeville routine.

He sat on a bench in the bare practise hall. She wore a pair of shorts and a jersey silk shirt and danced with verve as he beat time with the palms of his hands. While she kicked and pirouetted and did a Russian dance, Ken watched the shadows lengthen through the high windows.

Late afternoon. A new adventure was beginning. He wished that he were not suffering the pangs of conscience. He wished he could freely forget the immediate past. He worried, fearing he was being unjust to Mr. Lowell … who, after all, had done him no apparent harm.

"You're not paying attention," Anita said, interrupting her dance. "Your rhythm is 'way off."

"I've got to talk to you," he said. "You did all the talking this noon."

"What's on your mind?"

"I ought to telephone Star-ridge. I haven't got a pair of sox or a handkerchief in the world, except in that house." She regarded him with a patent air of disbelief.

"Why don't you go back there tonight, talk it all over, and make up your mind?"

"No, I'm through," said Ken.

They were leaving the school together when Buddy Nolan called Ken.