THE VERY TIRED GIRL
Then he laughed teasingly and added: "I—hope—you'll—have—a—good—time."
And Noreen, cleaving for one last second to the outer edge of the banisters, smiled up at him, so strainingly up, that her face, to the man above her, looked like a little flat white plate with a crimson-lipped rose wilting on it.
Then she disappeared into the parlor.
With equal abruptness the Political Economist changed his mind about going out, and went back instead to his own room and plunged himself down in his chair, and smoked and thought, until his friend, the Poet at the big writing-desk, slapped down his manuscript and stared at him inquisitively.
"Lord Almighty! I wish I could draw!" said the Political Economist. It was not so much an exclamation as a reverent entreaty. His eyes narrowed sketchily across the vision that haunted him. "If I could draw," he persisted, "I'd make a picture that would hit the world like a knuckled fist straight between its selfish old eyes. And I'd call that picture 'Talent.' I'd make an ocean chopping white and squally, with black clouds scudding like fury across the sky, and no land in sight except rocks. And I'd fill that ocean full of sharks and things—not showing too much, you know, but just an occasional shimmer of fins through the foam.
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