It
was now twenty minutes past four, he was to go to Savina at a quarter
to six, and until then there was nothing, nothing, to force him this
way or that: no directors' meetings, gabbling East-lake figures,
responsibility, housewife or children. He hadn't realized the extent to
which he had been surrounded and confined, the imponderable mass of
what he had not only been indifferent to but actually disliked. He
could lie down--he had been up the entire past night--and be called in
an hour; he could sit as he was, in an unbuttoned waistcoat with his
legs comfortably spread out; he could motor or walk on Fifth Avenue;
smoke; drink--all in an inviolable security of being.
Or, going back to that moment when he had, so mistakenly, turned aside
from visionary promptings to a solid comfortable career, he might--what
was it?--write. Perhaps his sharp regret at the loss of his youth was
premature, youth itself comparatively unimportant. But no, that would
involve him in fresh distasteful efforts, imperceptibly it would build
up a whole new world of responsibilities: writing would be arduous,
editors captious, and articles, stories, books, tie him back again to
all that from which he had so miraculously escaped. Savina would be
enough. What a beautiful body, so unexpectedly full, she had; how
astounding, intoxicating, was the difference between what she seemed to
be and what she was.
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