Twilight Sleep Read Online Free PDF Page A

unaware that lunch had been waiting for half an hour.
    "I had a sandwich and a cocktail after my exercises. I don't
suppose it's time for me to be hungry again," she conjectured.
"But perhaps you are, you poor child. Have you been waiting long?"
    "Not much! I know you too well to be punctual," Nona laughed.
    Lita widened her eyes. "Are you suggesting that I'm not? Well,
then, how about your ideal brother?"
    "He's down town working to keep a roof over your head and your
son's."
    Lita shrugged. "Oh, a roof—I don't care much for roofs, do you—
or is it ROOVES? Not this one, at any rate." She caught Nona by
the shoulders, held her at arm's–length, and with tilted head and
persuasively narrowed eyes, demanded: "This room is AWFUL, isn't
it? Now acknowledge that it is! And Jim won't give me the money
to do it over."
    "Do it over? But, Lita, you did it exactly as you pleased two
years ago!"
    "Two years ago? Do you mean to say you like anything that you
liked two years ago?"
    "Yes—you!" Nona retorted: adding rather helplessly: "And,
besides, everybody admires the room so much—." She stopped,
feeling that she was talking exactly like her mother.
    Lita's little hands dropped in a gesture of despair. "That's just
it! EVERYBODY admires it. Even Mrs. Manford does. And when you
think what sort of things EVERYBODY admires! What's the use of
pretending, Nona? It's the typical cliché drawing–room. Every one
of the couples who were married the year we were has one like it.
The first time Tommy Ardwin saw it—you know he's the new decorator—
he said: 'Gracious, how familiar all this seems!' and began to
whistle 'Home, Sweet Home'!"
    "But of course he would, you simpleton! When what he wants is to
be asked to do it over!"
    Lita heaved a sigh. "If he only could! Perhaps he might reconcile
me to this house. But I don't believe anybody could do that." She
glanced about her with an air of ineffable disgust. "I'd like to
throw everything in it into the street. I've been so bored here."
    Nona laughed. "You'd be bored anywhere. I wish another Tommy
Ardwin would come along and tell you what an old cliché being bored
is."
    "An old cliché? Why shouldn't it be? When life itself is such a
bore? You can't redecorate life!"
    "If you could, what would you begin by throwing into the street?
The baby?"
    Lita's eyes woke to fire. "Don't be an idiot! You know I adore my
baby."
    "Well—then Jim?"
    "You know I adore my Jim!" echoed the young wife, mimicking her own
emotion.
    "Hullo—that sounds ominous!" Jim Wyant came in, clearing the air
with his fresh good–humoured presence. "I fear my bride when she
says she adores me," he said, taking Nona into a brotherly embrace.
    As he stood there, sturdy and tawny, a trifle undersized, with his
bright blue eyes and short blunt–nosed face, in which everything
was so handsomely modelled and yet so safe and sober, Nona fell
again to her dangerous wondering. Something had gone out of his
face—all the wild uncertain things, the violin, model–making,
inventing, dreaming, vacillating—everything she had best loved
except the twinkle in his sobered eyes. Whatever else was left now
was all plain utility. Well, better so, no doubt—when one looked
at Lita! Her glance caught her sister–in–law's face in a mirror
between two panels, and the reflection of her own beside it; she
winced a little at the contrast. At her best she had none of that
milky translucence, or of the long lines which made Lita seem in
perpetual motion, as a tremor of air lives in certain trees.
Though Nona was as tall and nearly as slim, she seemed to herself
to be built, while Lita was spun of spray and sunlight. Perhaps it
was Nona's general brownness—she had Dexter Manford's brown
crinkled hair, his strong black lashes setting her rather usual–
looking gray eyes; and the texture of her dusky healthy skin,
compared to Lita's, seemed rough and opaque. The comparison added
to her general vague sense of discouragement. "It's not