Page:Lewis - Babbitt.djvu/337

Rh Too kind of bothered by this Paul Riesling business, I guess. But— Do you know, you're the first person that's really understood what I was getting at, Tanis— Listen to me, will you! Fat nerve I've got, calling you Tanis!"

"Oh, do! And shall I call you George? Don't you think it's awfully nice when two people have so much—what shall I call it?—so much analysis that they can discard all these stupid conventions and understand each other and become acquainted right away, like ships that pass in the night?"

"I certainly do! I certainly do!"

He was no longer quiescent in his chair; he wandered about the room, he dropped on the couch beside her. But as he awkwardly stretched his hand toward her fragile, immaculate fingers, she said brightly, "Do give me a cigarette. Would you think poor Tanis was dreadfully naughty if she smoked?"

"Lord, no! I like it!"

He had often and weightily pondered flappers smoking in Zenith restaurants, but he knew only one woman who smoked—Mrs. Sam Doppelbrau, his flighty neighbor. He ceremoniously lighted Tanis's cigarette, looked for a place to deposit the burnt match, and dropped it into his pocket.

"I'm sure you want a cigar, you poor man!" she crooned.

"Do you mind one?"

"Oh, no! I love the smell of a good cigar; so nice and—so nice and like a man. You'll find an ash-tray in my bedroom, on the table beside the bed, if you don't mind getting it."

He was embarrassed by her bedroom: the broad couch with a cover of violet silk, mauve curtains striped with gold. Chinese Chippendale bureau, and an amazing row of slippers, with ribbon-wound shoe-trees, and primrose stockings lying across them. His manner of bringing the ash-tray had just the right note of easy friendliness, he felt. "A boob like Verg Gunch would try to get funny about seeing her bedroom,