Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/90

88 How could she have picked men up from the streets, from theatre audiences? And why?

The scene which had just ended had been so violent, so terrifying in its intensity, that he could not believe it had been. Yet as he sat up, the room told the tale: a chair overturned, the water carafe on the floor, the bed in wild disorder.

Moving slowly, as if afraid to disturb the strange calmness which enveloped him, he entered the bathroom. In the mirror, he saw his slim body, the body he loved.

"We must find some way to be happy!" she had pleaded. Yet what she had done was unspeakable. Was that happiness? Was this dull nervelessness happiness?

Then he remembered his share in the awful scene. She had, he recalled, told him that he could not love her as a man. In bitter agony, she had told him.

"But I do love you," he had finally cried.

Then in a breathless moment, she had become a tigress, clawing at his body; afterwards a cool still statue, which he had enveloped in a robe of kisses.

He now switched on the shower and stepped into the bath.

Tony, the little Italian boy who acted as dresser for the Presidio Theatre, was the first to tell him.

"Miss Rogers isn't in yet."

Ken was ready to go on. Her dressing-room door, No. 7, facing the stage entrance, was locked. He hurried to the doorman. No, Miss Rogers wasn't in. He turned back to the theatre, the theatre where he was playing, the magnificent theatre, dressing rooms with shower baths, the cool, comfortable green room beneath the stage, the perfection