“Go to matinees; go—­”

“Tell me how to make myself like Alma Zitelle to you, Harry.  For God’s sake, tell me!”

He looked away from her, the red rising up above the rear of his collar.

“You’re going to drive me crazy desperate, too, some day, on that jealousy stuff.  I’m trying to do the right thing by you and hold myself in, but—­there’s limits.”

“Harry, it—­ain’t jealousy.  I could stand anything if I only knew.  If you’d only come out with it.  Not keep me sitting here night after night, when I know you—­you’re with her.  It’s the suspense, Harry, as much as anything is killing me.  I could stand it, maybe, if I only knew.  If I only knew!”

He sprang up, wheeling to face her across the couch.

“You mean that?”

“Harry!”

“Well, then, since you’re the one wants it, since you’re forcing me to it—­I’ll end your suspense, Millie.  Yes.  Let me go, Millie.  There’s no use trying to keep life in something that’s dead.  Let me go.”

She stood looking at him, cheeks cased in palms, and her sagging eye-sockets seeming to darken, even as she stared.

“You—­her—­”

“It happens every day, Millie.  Man and woman grow apart, that’s all.  Your own son is man enough to understand that.  Nobody to blame.  Just happens.”

“Harry—­you mean—­”

“Aw, now, Millie, it’s no easier for me to say than for you to listen.  I’d sooner cut off my right hand than put it up to you.  Been putting it off all these months.  If you hadn’t nagged—­led up to it, I’d have stuck it out somehow and made things miserable for both of us.  It’s just as well you brought it up.  I—­Life’s life, Millie, and what you going to do about it?”

A sound escaped her like the rising moan of a gale up a flue; then she sat down against trembling that seized her and sent ripples along the iridescent sequins.

“Harry—­Alma Zitelle—­you mean—­Harry?”

“Now what’s the use going into all that, Millie?  What’s the difference who I mean?  It happened.”

“Harry, she—­she’s a common woman.”

“We won’t discuss that.”

“She’ll climb on you to what she wants higher up still.  She won’t bring you nothing but misery, Harry.  I know what I’m saying; she’ll—­”

“You’re talking about something you know nothing about—­you—­”

“I do.  I do.  You’re hypnotized, Harry.  It’s her looks.  Her dressing like a snake.  Her hair.  I can get mine fixed redder ’n hers, Harry.  It takes a little time.  Mine’s only started to turn, Harry, is why it don’t look right yet to you.  This dress, it’s from her own dressmaker.  Harry—­I promise you I can make myself like—­her—­I promise you, Harry—­”

“For God’s sake, Millie, don’t talk like—­that!  It’s awful!  What’s those things got to do with it?  It’s—­awful!”

“They have, Harry.  They have, only a man don’t know it.  She’s a bad woman, Harry—­she’s got you fascinated with the way she dresses and does—­”