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By Root 900 0

to have his dinner at the restaurant or at the house, and when she would join him afterwards. In a hundred small ways she betrayed that she despised him for taking her money, and on his side, he did little to make things better. Monty, alas, was like Bert. A catastrophic change had taken place in his life, and he was wholly unable to adjust himself to it. In some way, indeed, he was worse off than Bert, for Bert lived with his dreams, and at least they kept him mellow. But Monty was an amateur cynic, and cynics are too cynical to dream. He had been born to a way of life that included taste, manners, and a jaunty aloofness from money, as though it were beneath a gentleman's notice. But what he didn't realize was that all these things rested squarely on money: it was the possession of money that enabled him to be aloof from it. For the rest, his days were dedicated to play, play on which the newspapers cast a certain agreeable' importance, but play nevertheless. Now, with the money gone, he was unable to give up the old way of life, or find a new one. He became a jumble of sorry fictions, an attitude with nothing behind it but pretense. He retained something that he thought of as his pride, but it had no meaning, and exhibited itself mainly in mounting bitterness toward Mildred. He carped at her constantly, sneered at her loyalty to Mr. Roosevelt, revealed that his mother knew the whole Roosevelt family, and regarded Franldin Delano as a phony 'and a joke. His gags about the Pie Wagon, once easily patronizing and occasionally funny, took on a touch of malice, and Veda, ever fashionable, topped them with downright insolence. The gay little trio wasn't quite so gay.

And then one night in the den, when Mildred tucked another $20 into his pocket, he omitted his usual mumble about paying it back. Instead, he took out the bill, touched his forelock with it, and said: "Your paid gigolo thanks you."

"I don't think that was very nice."

"It's true, isn't it?"

"Is that the only reason you come here?"

"Not at all. Come what may, swing high, swing low, for better or for worse, you're still the best piece of tail I ever had, or ever could imagine."

He got this off with a nervous, rasping little laugh, and for a few seconds Mildred felt prickly all over, as though the blood were leaving her body. Then her face felt hot, and she became aware of a throbbing silence that had fallen between them. Sheer pride demanded that she say something, and yet for a time she couldn't. Then, in a low, shaking voice, she said: "Monty, suppose you go home."

"What's the matter?"

"I think you know."

"Well, by all that's holy, I don't know!"

"I told you to go."

Instead of going, he shook his head, as though she were incredibly obtuse, and launched into a dissertation on the relations between the sexes. The sense of it was that as long as this thing was there, everything was all right; that it was the strongest bond there was, and what he was really doing, if she only had sense enough to know it, was paying her a compliment. What she really objected to was his language, wasn't it? If he had said it flowery, so it sounded poetic, she would have felt differently, wouldn't she?

But every moment or two he gave the same nervous, rasping laugh, and again she was unable to speak. Then, gathering herself with an effort, she rose to one of her rare moments of eloquence. "If you told me that, and intended it as a compliment, it might have been one, I don't know. Almost anything is a compliment, if you, mean it. But when you tell me that, and it's the only thing you have to tell me, then it's not a compliment. It's the worst thing I ever had said to me in my life."

"Oh, so you want the I-love-you scene."

"I want you to go."

Hot tears started to her eyes, but she winked them back. He shook his head, got up, then turned to her as though he had to explain something to a child. "We're not talking about things. We're talking about words. I'm not a poet. I don't even want to be a poet. To me, that's just funny. I say something to you my own way, and wham you go