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RV 313 "I don't say I'm as passive as Jim."

"Jim's just loving it down there, isn't he? I'm so glad you persuaded him to stay."

Wyant frowned again, and stared past her at some invisible antagonist. "It was about the only thing I could persuade him to do."

Nona's hand hung back from the lighting of another cigarette. "What else did you try to?"

"What else? Why to act, damn it take a line.  face things  face the music." He stopped in a splutter of metaphors, and dipped his bristling moustache toward his coffee.

"What things?"

"Why: is he going to keep his wife, or isn't he?"

"He thinks that's for Lita to decide."

"For Lita to decide! A pretext for his damned sentimental inertness. A man—my son! God, what's happened to the young men? Sit by and see see Nona, couldn't I manage to have a talk with your mother?"

"You're having one with me. Isn't that enough for the moment?"

He gave another vague laugh, and took a light from her extended cigarette. She knew that, though he found her mother's visits oppressive, he kept a careful record of their number, and dimly resented any appearance of being "crowded out" by Pauline's other engagements. "I suppose she comes up to town sometimes, doesn't she?"

"Sometimes—but in such a rush! And we'll be