Page:Mosquitos (Faulkner).pdf/349

 “Good God,” the other murmured.

“Yes,” agreed Mr. Talliaferro unhappily. He continued briskly however: “And so I said, as I’d planned, ‘I’m tired of this place. Let’s go.’ She demurred, but I was firm, and so at last she consented and told me to run down and engage a cab and she would join me on the street.”

“I should have suspected something then, but I didn’t. I ran down and engaged a cab. I gave the driver ten dollars and he agreed to drive out on some unfrequented road and to stop and pretend that he had lost something back along the road, and to wait there until I blew the horn for him.

“So I waited and waited. She didn’t appear, so at last I ordered the cab to wait and I ran back upstairs. I didn’t see her in the anteroom, so I went back to the dancing floor.”

He ceased, and sat for a while in a brooding dejection.

“Well?” the other prompted.

Mr. Talliaferro sighed. “I swear, I think I’ll give it up: never have anything to do with them any more. When I returned to the dancing floor I looked for her at the table where we had been sitting. She was not there, and for a moment I couldn’t find her, but presently I saw her, dancing. With a man I had never seen before. A large man, like you. I didn’t know what to think. I decided finally he was a friend of hers with whom she was dancing until I should return, having misunderstood our arrangement about meeting below. Yet she had told me herself to await her on the street. That’s what confused me.

“I waited at the door until I finally caught her eye, and I signaled to her. She flipped her hand in reply, as though she desired that I wait until the dance was finished. So I stood there. Other people were entering and leaving, but I kept my place near the door, where she could find me without difficulty. But when the music ceased, they went to a table