Domestic wrecks may be a subject taboo in polite conversation, but Joe
De Barr was not excessively polite, and he had, moreover, a very likely
hope that Marie would yet choose to regard him with more favor than she
had shown in the past. He did not chance to see her at once, but as soon
as his work would permit he made it a point to meet her. He went about
it with beautiful directness. He made bold to call her up on "long
distance" from San Francisco, told her that he would be in San Jose that
night, and invited her to a show.
Marie accepted without enthusiasm--and her listlessness was not lost
over forty miles of telephone wire. Enough of it seeped to Joe's ears
to make him twist his mustache quite furiously when he came out of the
telephone booth. If she was still stuck on that fellow Bud, and couldn't
see anybody else, it was high time she was told a few things about him.
It was queer how a nice girl like Marie would hang on to some cheap
guy like Bud Moore. Regular fellows didn't stand any show--unless
they played what cards happened to fall their way. Joe, warned by her
indifference, set himself very seriously to the problem of playing his
cards to the best advantage.
He went into a flower store--disdaining the banked loveliness upon the
corners--and bought Marie a dozen great, heavy-headed chrysanthemums,
whose color he could not name to save his life, so called them pink and
let it go at that. They were not pink, and they were not sweet--Joe held
the bunch well away from his protesting olfactory nerves which were not
educated to tantalizing odors--but they were more expensive than roses,
and he knew that women raved over them. He expected Marie to rave over
them, whether she liked them or not.
Fortified by these, groomed and perfumed and as prosperous looking as a
tobacco salesman with a generous expense account may be, he went to San
Jose on an early evening train that carried a parlor car in which Joe
made himself comfortable. He fooled even the sophisticated porter
into thinking him a millionaire, wherefore he arrived in a glow of
self-esteem, which bred much optimism.
Marie was impressed--at least with his assurance and the chrysanthemums,
over which she was sufficiently enthusiastic to satisfy even Joe. Since
he had driven to the house in a hired automobile, he presently had the
added satisfaction of handing Marie into the tonneau as though she were
a queen entering the royal chariot, and of ordering the driver to take
them out around the golf links, since it was still very early. Then,
settling back with what purported to be a sigh of bliss, he regarded
Marie sitting small and still and listless beside him. The glow of the
chrysanthemums had already faded. Marie, with all the girlish prettiness
she had ever possessed, and with an added charm that was very elusive
and hard to analyze, seemed to have lost all of her old animation.