Page:Spider Boy (1928).pdf/47

 Presently Ambrose announced that he was going to bed.

Guess I'll turn in too, Abel Morris agreed. I got a good ways to go yet.

In silence Ambrose walked behind Abel Morris through the Pullman coaches, the aisles canyons of green curtains through the folds of which protruded now a man's socked foot, now a woman's buttocks, as the passengers prepared to retire in that indecent fashion exacted by American sleeping-cars.

Opening his door, Ambrose invited Abel Morris to enter, but the latter hesitated on the threshold.

I guess I'll go to bed, he said, but I want to thank you, Mr. Deacon. It's been an honour and a pleasure to meet you. You got something, you know, that I envy. You got a name, a name people know, a name they'll remember after you're dead. Posterity'll read your plays and see 'em acted. Now I haven't even got a son. . . to carry on my name. . . . That friend of yours, he's a creator too. . . . His voice was stern now. . . . He shouldn't fool around other women. It ain't right. Well, anyway, I guess it ain't none of my business. I just know how I feel. I guess I'll go to bed. I s'pose you're going to Hollywood?