"I'm sorry I cut in on you --its unfair to you.
You're pure woman --and all that sort of thing.
Here, I'll get some one else to dance with you."
He rose clumsily to his feet, but she reached up and pulled him down beside her on the stairs.
"Here, Gordon. You're ridiculous.
You're hurting me.
You're acting like a --like a crazy man -- --"
"I admit it.
I'm a little crazy.
Something's wrong with me, Edith.
There's something left me.
It doesn't matter."
"It does, tell me."
"Just that.
I was always queer --little bit different from other boys.
All right in college, but now it's all wrong.
Things have been snapping inside me for four months like little hooks on a dress, and it's about to come off when a few more hooks go.
I'm very gradually going loony."
He turned his eyes full on her and began to laugh, and she shrank away from him.
"What is the matter?"
"Just me," he repeated.
"I'm going loony.
This whole place is like a dream to me --this Delmonico's -- --"
As he talked she saw he had changed utterly.
He wasn't at all light and gay and careless --a great lethargy and discouragement had come over him.
Revulsion seized her, followed by a faint, surprising boredom.
His voice seemed to come out of a great void.
"Edith," he said, "I used to think I was clever, talented, an artist.
Now I know I'm nothing.
Can't draw, Edith.
Don't know why I'm telling you this."
She nodded absently.
"I can't draw, I can't do anything.
I'm poor as a church mouse."
He laughed, bitterly and rather too loud.
"I've become a damn beggar, a leech on my friends.
I'm a failure.
I'm poor as hell."
Her distaste was growing.
She barely nodded this time, waiting for her first possible cue to rise.
Suddenly Gordon's eyes filled with tears.
"Edith," he said, turning to her with what was evidently a strong effort at self-control,
"I can't tell you what it means to me to know there's one person left who's interested in me."
He reached out and patted her hand, and involuntarily she drew it away.
"It's mighty fine of you," he repeated.
"Well," she said slowly, looking him in the eye, "any one's always glad to see an old friend --but I'm sorry to see you like this, Gordon."
There was a pause while they looked at each other, and the momentary eagerness in his eyes wavered.
She rose and stood looking at him, her face quite expressionless.
"Shall we dance?" she suggested, coolly.
--Love is fragile --she was thinking --but perhaps the pieces are saved, the things that hovered on lips, that might have been said.