shipwreck of her beauty. But she seemed to be sinking. As I passed she flagged me down and took my arm, the one not engaged by my violin, and we went to the club car and started, or continued, to drink. At this same winter hour, Lily was posing for her husband, so she said, "Why don't you get off with me and drive home with your wife?" What she wanted me to say was, "Baby, why go to Connecticut? Let's jump off the train and paint the town red." But the train pulled out and soon we were running along Long Island Sound, with snow, with sunset, and the atmosphere corrupting the shape of the late sun, and the black boats saying, "Foo!" and spilling their smoke on the waves. And Clara was burning and she talked and talked and worked on me with her eyes and her turned-up nose. You could see the old mischief working, the life-craving, which wouldn't quit. She was telling me how she had visited Samoa and Tonga in her youth and had experienced passionate love on the beaches, on the rafts, in the flowers. It was like Churchill's blood, sweat, and tears, swearing to fight on the beaches, and so on. I couldn't help feeling sympathetic, partly. But my attitude is that if people are going to undo themselves before you, you shouldn't do them up again. You should let them retie their own parcels. Toward the last, as we got into the station, she was weeping, this old crook, and I felt terrible. I've told you how I feel when women cry. I was also incensed. We got out in the snow, and I supported her and found a taxi. When we entered her house, I tried to help her take off her galoshes, but with a cry she lifted me up by the face and began to kiss me. Whereupon, like a fool, in stead of pushing her away I kissed back. Yes, I returned the kisses. With the bridgework, new then, in my mouth. It was certainly a peculiar moment. Her shoes had come off with the galoshes. We embraced in the over-heated lamp-lighted entry which was filled with souvenirs of Samoa and of the South Seas, and kissed as if the next moment we were going to be separated by the stroke of death. I have never understood this foolish thing, for I was not passive. I tell you, I kissed back. Oh, ho! Mr. Henderson. What? Sorrow? Lust? Kissing has-been beauties? Drunk? In tears? Mad as a horsefly on the window pane? Furthermore Lily and Klaus Spohr saw it all. The studio door was open. Within was a coal fire in the grate. "Why are you kissing each other like that?" said Lily. Klaus Spohr never said a word. Whatever Clara saw fit to do was okay by him.
XI
And now I have told you the history of these teeth, which were made of a material called acrylic that's supposed to be unbreakable--fort comme la mort. But my striving wore them out. I have been told (by Lily, by Frances, or by Berthe? I can't remember which) that I grind my jaws in my sleep, and undoubtedly this has had a bad effect. Or maybe I have kissed life too hard and weakened the whole structure. Anyway my whole body was trembling when I spat out those molars, and I thought, "Maybe you've lived too long, Henderson." And I took a drink of bourbon from the canteen, which stung the cut in my tongue. Then I rinsed the fragments in whisky and buttoned them into my pocket on the chance that even out here I might run into someone who would know how to glue them into place. "Why are they keeping us waiting like this, Romilayu?" I said. Then I lowered my voice, asking, "You don't think they've heard about the frogs, do you?" "Wo, no, I no t'ink so, sah." From the direction of the palace we then heard a deep roar, and I said, "Would that be a lion?" Romilayu replied that he believed it was. "Yes, I thought so too," I said. "But the animal must be inside the town. Do they keep a lion in the palace?" He said uncertainly, "Dem mus' be." The smell of animals was certainly very noticeable in the town. At last the fellow who was guarding us received a sign in the dark which I didn't see, for he told us to get up and we entered the hut. Inside we were told to sit, and we sat on a pair of low stools. Torchlight was held over us by a couple