It was absurd, too absurd, blustered Mr. Queen inwardly. Out of my way, wench.
But the wench said: “Oh, Mr. Queen,” in an ecstatic whisper, “It’s simply wonderful! Do you think she’ll do it?”
“Why, of course she’ll do it,” pooh-poohed Mr. Queen. “All this blather about crowd phobia. Nonsense! Where is she?”
“She’s been crying and laughing and... oh, she looks beautiful! Wait till you see her. It’s the most marvelous thing that’s ever happened to her. I do hope nothing...”
“Now, now,” said Mr. Queen brusquely. “Less chatter, my dear. Let’s have a look at this beauty.”
Nevertheless, he approached Paula’s door with a quaking heart. What was the matter with him? All this fuss and nervousness over a little thing like going to a night-club!
He knocked and the secretary, looking anxious, faded away; and Paula’s voice came tremulously: “Come... come in.”
Mr. Queen touched his black tie, coughed, and went in.
Paula was standing, tall and tense, against the closed glass doors of the farthest wall, staring at him. She was wearing elbow-length red evening gloves, and her braceleted hands were pressed to her heart. She was wearing... well, it shimmered and crinkled where the light struck it — cloth of gold? What the devil was it? — and a long white fur evening cape over her shoulders, caught at the neck with a magnificent marcasite brooch, and her hair done up in — well, it looked like the hair of one of those court pages of the time of Elizabeth; simply exquisite. Simply the last word. Simply — there was no last word.
“Holy smoke,” breathed Mr. Queen.
She was white to the lips. “Do I... do I look all right?”
“You look,” said Mr. Queen reverently, “like one of the Seraphim. You look,” said Mr. Queen, “like the popular conception of Cleopatra, although Cleo had a hooked nose and probably a black skin, and your nose and skin... You look,” said Mr. Queen, “you look like one of those godlike beings from Aldebaran, or some place, that H. G. Wells likes to describe. You look swell.”
“Don’t be funny,” she said with a little angry glance. “I mean the clothes.”
“The clothes? Oh, the clothes. Incidentally, I thought you said you didn’t have any evening clothes. Liar!”
“I didn’t, and don’t; that’s why I asked,” she said helplessly. “I’ve had to borrow the cape from Bess, and the dress from Lillian, and the shoes from a neighbor down the street whose feet are as big as mine, and I feel like the original Communist. Oh, Ellery, are you sure I’ll do?”
Ellery advanced across the room with determined strides. She shrank against the glass doors.
“Ellery. What are you...”
“May I present the loveliest lady I know,” said Mr. Queen with fierce gallantry, “with these?” And he held out a little cellophane box, and in the box there lay an exquisite corsage of camellias.
Paula gasped: “Oh!” and then she said softly, “That was sweet,” and suddenly she was no longer tense, but pliant, and a little abstracted, and she pinned the corsage to her bodice with swift, flashing, red-swathed fingers.
And Mr. Queen said, wetting his lips: “Paula.”
“Yes?”
Mr. Queen said again: “Paula.”
“Yes?” she looked up, frowning.
Mr. Queen said: “Paula, will you... May I... Oh, hell, there’s only one way to do it, and that’s to do it!”
And he seized her and pulled her as close to his stiff shirt as the shirt would permit and clumsily kissed her on the mouth.
She lay still in his arms, her eyes closed, breathing quickly. Then, without opening her eyes, she said: “Kiss me some more.”
And after a while Mr. Queen said thickly: “I think — Let’s not go out and say we did. Let’s sort of — stay here.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”
But there was iron in that man’s soul, after all. He sternly put aside temptation. “No, we are going out. It’s the very soul of the treatment.”
“Oh, I can’t. I mean... I don’t think I can.”
Mr. Queen took her by the arm and marched her straight across the room to the closed door.
“Open that door,” he said.
“But I’m... now I’m all messed!”
“You’re beautiful. Open that door.”
“You mean... open it?”
“Open it. Yourself. With your own hands.”
The twin imps of fear peered out of her wide, grave eyes. She gulped like a little girl and her red-gloved right hand crept forward to touch the knob. She looked at Ellery in distress.
“Open it, darling,” said Mr. Queen in a low voice.
Slowly her hand turned the knob until it would turn no more. Then, quickly, like little Lulu about to swallow her cod-liver oil, Paula closed her eyes and jerked the door open.
And, her eyes still closed, stumbled blindly across the threshold into the world.