STREETS AND HOUSES
195
"Your turn!" Sally cried, with a thump of her fist on the table.
The waiter returned to put their coffee and toast befo·re them (it
was absurdly more like breakfast than tea, Margaret thought in sudden
exasperation) . They were silent as
his
hands moved over the table.
He seemed, Margaret thought as the rush of her feeling changed into
sadness, to be trying to efface himself, as if he had interrupted at so
many unpropitious moments, been so resented that he was a little
desperate. Finally he smiled faintly and retreated.
"Your turn!" Sally repeated.
"Oh,
I?"
Margaret said, thinking about the waiter, and then
she fixed her attention. "Oh, my husband's Joshua Sydney," she said,
and wondered why she should give this fact as an explanation of what
she had been doing; and realized she had given it out of spite, in
return for having felt Sally's domination. Because Sally, she knew, and
could indeed see it in her face, would be familiar with the obscure
literary journal Josh had been editing all these years. But am I here
fo.r hostility? she asked herself, and in a quick fright of losing every–
thing she sought to adjust her vision of an immense occasion, to the
reality of Sally across the table, to find the key to open the occasion
to them both.
"Really?" Sally was asking, her face bright, animated. "How
extraordinary! I've been reading his magazine for years, the only
person in the whole of the valley who ever heard of it!"
"I knew you would!" Margaret cried, clasping her hands invol–
untarily in a gesture of pleading, delighted that Sally should know
Josh. "We have such fun!" she said impetuously, through her mind
in an instant-and dazzling her with her own good fortune-going
all the exciting toil and worry, the procession of great men bringing
in manuscripts, coming to parties, to the parties for which she had
never lost her childish love.
"I almost sent some poems to it once," Sally said abruptly, "but
I threw them away instead." And she saw pass over Margaret's face
the unmistakable shadow that came from knowing about the differ–
ence between true poets and· false: Margaret, Sally saw, was going
to hurry past this, not wishing to hurt her, not wishing to reveal her
knowledge of how many people thought they could write poetry and
had no justification in thinking so. And Sally realized she could never
mention poetry again, that poetry written was not the same thing as
poetry dreamed of being written, that it could not be spoken of to
Margaret now because she knew too much, that pity and a kind of
integrity of an ideal would no longer allow in Margaret the gene–
rosity with which she had once accepted such dreams. Sally shuddered
'
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