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RV 171 "Why, you're crying!"

"I'm not! It's the rain. It's—"

"Nona!"

"Stan, you know it's no earthly use."

"Life's so rotten—"

"Not like this."

"This? This—what?"

She struggled out of another enfolding, put her head out of the window, and cried: "The Housetop!"

They found a corner at the back of the crowded floor. Nona blinked a little in the dazzle of light-garlands, the fumes of smoke, the clash of noise and colours. But there he and she sat, close together, hidden in their irresistible happiness, and though his lips had their moody twist she knew the same softness was in his veins as in hers, isolating them from the crowd as completely as if they had still been in the darkness of the taxi. That was the way she must take her life, she supposed; piece-meal, a tiny scrap of sweetness at a time, and never more than a scrap—never once! Well—it would be worse still if there were no moments like this, short and cruel as they seemed when they came.

The Housetop was packed. The low balcony crammed with fashionable people overhung them like a wreath of ripe fruits, peachy and white and golden, made of painted faces, bare arms, jewels,