Page:Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos, 1925).djvu/305

Rh terfere with my art, you understand I was so crazy to succeed."

"Would you do the same thing again?"

"I wonder"

"How does it go? The moving finger writes and having writ moves on "

"Something about Nor all your tears wash out a word of it But Billy," she threw back her head and laughed, "I thought you were getting ready to propose to me all over again Ou my throat."

"Ruth I wish you werent taking that X-ray treatment I've heard it's very dangerous. Dont let me alarm you about it my dear but I have heard of cases of cancer contracted that way."

"That's nonsense Billy That's only when X-rays are improperly used, and it takes years of exposure No I think this Dr. Warner's a remarkable man."

Later, sitting in the uptown express in the subway, she still could feel his soft hand patting her gloved hand. "Good-by little girl, God bless you," he'd said huskily. He's gotten to be a ham actor if there ever was one, something was jeering inside her all the while. "Thank heavens you will never know." Then with a sweep of his broadbrimmed hat and a toss of his silky white hair, as if he were playing in Monsieur Beaucaire, he had turned and walked off among the crowd up Broadway. I may be down on my luck, but I'm not all ham inside the way he is Cancer he said. She looked up and down the car at the joggling faces opposite her. Of all those people one of them must have it. Silly, that's not cancer. She put her hand to her throat. Her throat was terribly swollen, her throat throbbed feverishly. Maybe it was worse. It is something alive that grows in flesh, eats all your life, leaves you horrible, rotten The people opposite stared straight ahead of them, young men and young women, middleaged people, green faces in the dingy light, under the sourcolored advertisements. A train-