The night before the engagement was announced she
told Bloeckman. It was a heavy blow. She
did not enlighten Anthony as to the details, but she
implied that he had not hesitated to argue with her.
Anthony gathered that the interview had terminated
on a stormy note, with Gloria very cool and unmoved
lying in her corner of the sofa and Joseph Bloeckman
of “Films Par Excellence” pacing the carpet
with eyes narrowed and head bowed. Gloria had
been sorry for him but she had judged it best not to
show it. In a final burst of kindness she had
tried to make him hate her, there at the last.
But Anthony, understanding that Gloria’s indifference
was her strongest appeal, judged how futile this must
have been. He wondered, often but quite casually,
about Bloeckman—finally he forgot him entirely.
HEYDAY
One afternoon they found front seats on the sunny
roof of a bus and rode for hours from the fading Square
up along the sullied river, and then, as the stray
beams fled the westward streets, sailed down the turgid
Avenue, darkening with ominous bees from the department
stores. The traffic was clotted and gripped in
a patternless jam; the busses were packed four deep
like platforms above the crowd as they waited for the
moan of the traffic whistle.
“Isn’t it good!” cried Gloria.
“Look!”
A miller’s wagon, stark white with flour, driven
by a powdery clown, passed in front of them behind
a white horse and his black team-mate.
“What a pity!” she complained; “they’d
look so beautiful in the dusk, if only both horses
were white. I’m mighty happy just this minute,
in this city.”
Anthony shook his head in disagreement.
“I think the city’s a mountebank.
Always struggling to approach the tremendous and impressive
urbanity ascribed to it. Trying to be romantically
metropolitan.”
“I don’t. I think it is impressive.”
“Momentarily. But it’s really a transparent,
artificial sort of spectacle. It’s got
its press-agented stars and its flimsy, unenduring
stage settings and, I’ll admit, the greatest
army of supers ever assembled—” He
paused, laughed shortly, and added: “Technically
excellent, perhaps, but not convincing.”
“I’ll bet policemen think people are fools,”
said Gloria thoughtfully, as she watched a large but
cowardly lady being helped across the street.
“He always sees them frightened and inefficient
and old—they are,” she added.
And then: “We’d better get off.
I told mother I’d have an early supper and go
to bed. She says I look tired, damn it.”
“I wish we were married,” he muttered
soberly; “there’ll be no good night then
and we can do just as we want.”
“Won’t it be good! I think we ought
to travel a lot. I want to go to the Mediterranean
and Italy. And I’d like to go on the stage
some time—say for about a year.”
