36
PARTISAN REVIEW
know I'm going to keep on liking it. I liked you last night and I'll
keep on liking you as long as you want to come here. But don't harbor
the idea that I'm going to like you more." A note of menace had
crept into his voice with the last words; he stood, staring down at
her harshly, and teetering a little on his feet. Dottie fingered the
tassel of his dressing-gown sash. "All right, Dick," she whispered.
"When you get yourself fixed up, you can bring your things
here and I'll keep them for you. Just give me a call after you've been
to the doctor." A breath of last night's liquor wafted into her face;
she choked. It occurred to her that she might have lost her virginity
with a man whom
she
did not greatly like, now that she began to
know him better and to grasp his strange philosophy of life. But
her training had instilled the principle that it was a mark of low
breeding to consider that you might have been wrong in a person.
"I can't take you out," he said gently, as if he read her reluctance.
"I can only ask you to come here whenever you're in town. The wel–
come-mat will be out. I've nothing but my bed to offer you. I don't
go to theaters or restaurants." Dottie opened her mouth, but Dick
shook his head. "I don't like ladies who want to pay my check. What
I make at the League takes care of my simple wants: my carfare,
my bar bill, and a few frugal canned goods." Dottie's forehead
wrinkled; she felt shocked and scared by such poverty. "There's an
aunt up in Marblehead," he assured her, "who comes through with
a check now and then. Some day, if I live long enough, I'll be her
heir. But I hate possessions, Boston; forgive me if I think of you
generically. I hate the itch to acquire. I don't care for this kinetic
society." Dottie, very much troubled, felt that the time had come to
interpose a gentle remonstrance. "But Dick," she said quietly, "there
are false possessions and true possessions.
If
everybody thought like
you, the human race would never have got anywhere. We'd still be
living in caves. Why, the wheel wouldn't have been invented! People
need an incentive, maybe not a money-incentive...." Dick laughed.
"You must be the fiftieth woman who has said that to me. It's a
credit to universal education that whenever a girl meets Dick Brown
she begins to talk about the wheel and the lever. I've even had a
French prostitute tell me about the fulcrum." Dottie laughed un–
easily. "Good-by, Dick," she said, quickly. "I mustn't keep you from
your work." "Aren't you going to take the phone number?" he in-
