Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/317

Mrs. Hamill waited, and wished she could spank him.

Finally he stretched himself in a chair near hers, poked his thumbs in the pockets of his vest, dropped his head back, and said, "I saw Yvonne today."

"Yes?"

"Yes. And it didn't mean anything!" With his elbows he impelled his body forward and looked straight at his mother, and there was a sort of wonder in his eyes. "Can you beat that? After all these months of—of moping around like I have, it simply didn't—mean—anything! I didn't feel anything."

"Did you—talk to her?"

Jock shook his head. "She didn't see me. She was in a machine" . . .

Mrs. Hamill, from the sentences that followed, got this picture:

Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street at high noon. A procession of motor-cars, and, on the corner, a damp impatient host of people, waiting for them to slide by.

". . . And a fellow standing next to me said to his girl, 'There's the new Demorest Straight Eight.' Demorest is the one, you know. I looked" . . .

A magnificent two-passenger racing car, low slung, painted gray, without a top. In the deep well of it, lounging recumbent behind the massive steering wheel—Yvonne. Yvonne in a gray gown and a tight gray turban with long uncurled feathers that sprayed down on one shoulder. Yvonne, with hair that was a loop of flame on her cheek, with diamonds that glittered in the sunlight on her hands, with a Russian wolfhound in a jeweled collar sitting stiffly on his haunches beside her.

A picture almost indelicately sensational. Beauty on parade, demanding every eye.