below me. Everybody kept saying to me: ‘Lucille, that man’s way below
you!’ But if I hadn’t met Chester, he’d have got me sure.”
“Yes, but listen,” said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down,
“at least you didn’t marry him.”
“I know I didn’t.”
“Well, I married him,” said Myrtle, ambiguously. “And that’s the
difference between your case and mine.”
“Why did you, Myrtle?” demanded Catherine. “Nobody forced you to.”
Myrtle considered.
“I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,” she said
finally. “I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t
fit to lick my shoe.”
“You were crazy about him for a while,” said Catherine.
“Crazy about him!” cried Myrtle incredulously. “Who said I was crazy
about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that
man there.”
She pointed suddenly at me, and everyone looked at me accusingly. I
tried to show by my expression that I expected no affection.
“The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made
a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and
never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he
was out: ‘Oh, is that your suit?’ I said. ‘This is the first I ever
heard about it.’ But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to
beat the band all afternoon.”
“She really ought to get away from him,” resumed Catherine to me.
“They’ve been living over that garage for eleven years. And Tom’s the
first sweetie she ever had.”
The bottle of whisky—a second one—was now in constant demand by all
present, excepting Catherine, who “felt just as good on nothing at
all.” Tom rang for the janitor and sent him for some celebrated
sandwiches, which were a complete supper in themselves. I wanted to
get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight,
but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident
argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet
high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed
their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening
streets, and I saw him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and
without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible
variety of life.
Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath

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