"I don't care about the money. I don't care about the fan dancer. But it seems to me (I'm sorry!) he's not an ordinary poor-devil embezzler. He carefully gathered together and smashed, with a kind of glee, everything he pretended to represent."
Cy knew he had gone too far. He tried, physically tried, to stop the rush of words. When Jean looked at him, it was as though the colour had gone out of her eyes.
"You beast!" she said. "You insufferable beast1"
And now there was silence in the hot library of second-hand books, except for a faint mumble of voices in the adjoining study.
Crystal was now sitting at one end of the long table, leaning back, her beach robe open, her back to the two eastern windows. Cy, wishing to God he could recall what he had said to Jean, blundered over and automatically sat down at right angles to Crystal.
There was a long silence.
"Tell me," said Crystal in her soft voice. "Why are you so unhappy in life?"
"Unhappy?" He raised his head. "Damn it, I'm not unhappy!"
"Oh, I know," said Crystal. Her fingers, with the scarlet nails, tapped on the table. "You think this is my usual approach with men. Ask almost anybody if he's unhappy, and he'll say no but think yes. Well, I mean what I say. I'll show you."
Cy did not reply.
"Of whom," asked Crystal, "does Jean remind you so much?"
Cy started up, eyes wide open, with a crash against the table which shook its whole length. A pencil was about to roll off, and Crystal caught it deftly without looking at him.
Trust a woman, he thought bitterly, to see straight through the bandages and mufflings and blue spectacles we wear, like a new version of the Invisible Man! This girl, twenty-four years old, and—no, not flighty, you couldn't call her that-had read him as though he were as transparent as Huntington Davis.
Trying to appear casual, Cy sat down again.
"What makes you think Jean reminds me of somebody?" he asked.
Crystal's dark blue eyes, under the wings of brown hair, were not coquettish and not provocative; they were sombre.
"Last night, when I first met you," said Crystal, "I thought you were nice-looking and had," she grimaced, "possibilities. Later..."
"Later?"
"You were watching Jean all the time. It wasn't what they'd call a predatory look. It was, 'Jean's like her, and yet she's not like her; Jean's less vivid, less...' Oh, I don't know!" Crystal paused. "Who does Jean remind you of?"
Cy moistened his lips.
"My wife," he said. "She's dead."
Again there was a long silence.
"I'm sorry," said Crystal. "I didn't mean to hurt"
"Not at all. It doesn't matter." (But it did matter. It was like the stab of a physical pain.)
"Let's change the subject, shall we?" Crystal suggested brightly. "Where did you get that scar down your side? I—I noticed it at the pool. Did you get it in the war?"
"Not exactly. In an air raid."
"Oh? Were you in many air raids?"
"Most of them, like millions of other people. My wife was killed in one."
Again silence. Crystal sat rigid. Cy himself sought desperately to change the subject, but his eyes strayed towards what could be seen of Crystal's bathing suit
"How," he asked desperately, "does your skin stay so white if you do much swimming? Both you and Jean are fair-complexioned, but even Jean has a very slight tan."
"Oh, that's artificial." Crystal laughed, breathing quickly. "If s suntan lotion Jean gets from the druggist And (didn't you notice?) she always grabs a robe as soon as she's been in the water for more than a minute or two. I solve the problem by never getting into the sun."
"Or never doing much swimming either?"
"That's right. If s too strenuous. I..."
Both their nerves were on edge. From the adjoining room there was a crash, followed by a faint rattling and rolling noise. Both Cy and Crystal started when they heard it, followed by Byles's voice:
"Do you have to be so clumsy? Why upset the chess table?"
"Burn me. I didn't do it," retorted the voice of H.M. "This young feller here..."
"Sorry, sorry!" Bob's tones were hoarse. "But Mr. Byles said..."
Someone in the study moved towards the double doors and, with a wrench, snapped them shut. The noise seemed to affect Crystal so that she spoke rapidly, in a low tone, and could not seem to stop.
"Jean," she said, "told me a lot about you last night. We sat up until all hours. Weren't you awfully sick when you lost your job?"
Cy laughed, rather too loudly.
"No," he answered. "That’s the first time you've been wrong. If you mean money," and now he was speaking truth, "I have a private income. It'll keep my comfortably if I never do another stroke of newspaper work."
"You're not actually happy here in America, are you?"
"Crystal, don't talk nonsense! Of course I am!"
"You may think you are. You may have convinced yourself of that. But in your heart it's not true."
"Look here!"
"You want Europe, and especially England, as England was before the war. But those old days have gone forever. You know that, you hate it, and it's poisoning your life."
Crystal spoke steadily, breathing quickly, yet in a passion of words.
"You want a life of graciousness, and dignity, and a 'decent reserve.' Oh, don't deny it! I heard what you said to Jean awhile ago. That's why you've liked Dad, ever since you've know him. And you hate him now, because he's broken the pattern. As for your wife..."
"Crystal, for God's sake!"
"You're trying to cherish her memory, in the Browningesque way. And you can't do it; nobody can. But you hate Dad because—he couldn't"
Cy got up from the table.
He walked to one of the eastern windows, his back to Crystal, and stared out The broad lawns gleamed at noonday. There were several persons round, or in, the empty swimming pool. Beyond the pool were the rhododendron bushes; then, parallel with them, the bathing cabins; beyond these, the high green trees of the woods. Cy saw none of this; it was only a blur.
He took out a pack of cigarettes, lighted one with shaky hands, and returned to the table.
Crystal, no longer the posed hostess, all her affected sophistication gone, was huddled in the chair like a girl about to cry’
"You know," Cy said, "your ability to read minds..."
"Your mind, that's all. Don't you see?"
"... is uncanny and if s enough to scare anyone."
"You think I'm spoiled and selfish," said Crystal, looking up. "Well! Maybe I am. I never thought about it much. But one thing Dad said about me really shocked me, because it wasnt true!"
"Need we go into it, Crystal?" "Yes! We've got to talk this out!" "Why?"
"You know why as well as I do."
He did know. He was falling for Crystal Manning. When he looked down into the dark blue eyes, her physical presence again seemed to merge with and become a part of him, as though she were actually in his arms. What they both might have said then, or perhaps even have done, will never be known—because their idyll cracked to bits before the outside world.
Into the library walked two motorcycle policemen, Officer O'Casey following close on the footsteps of Officer Ferris. Officer Ferris, he of the alert eye and the wish for action, spoke in a voice of deep respect
"The old gent with the big bay window," he informed Cy, "said I'd probably find this in the pool. And I did."
Across the palm of his hand he held a sodden piece of newspaper, several times folded, but only about an inch wide by seven inches long. Seeking a place where the wet paper would not harm the table, Officer Ferris carefully placed it along one of the handles of the shears.