up to him in everlasting close-ups: he feasted virtuously upon their proffered lips and, conflict over, murder sanctified, and virtue crowned, walked away with his siren into the convenient blaze of a constantly setting sun.
With burning sidelong face he looked quickly up at Gant, twisting his convulsive neck.
Across the street, a calcium glare from the corner light bathed coldly the new brick facade of the Orpheum Theatre. All This Week Gus Nolan and His Georgia Peaches. Also the Piedmont Comedy Four and Miss Bobbie Dukane.
The theatre was dark, the second show was over. They stared curiously across the street at the posters. In this cold silence where were the Peaches? At the Athens now, upon the Square. They always went there after. Gant looked at his watch. 11:12. Big Bill Messier outside swinging his club and watching them. On the counter stools a dozen bucks and ogling rakehells. I’ve got a car outside. Dalliance under difficulties. Later, the Genevieve on Liberty Street. They all stay there. Whisperings. Footfalls. Raided.
Girls from good families, some of them, I suppose, Gant thought.
Opposite the Baptist Church a hearse was drawn up before Gorham’s Undertaking Parlors. A light burned dimly through the ferns. Who can that be? he wondered. Miss Annie Patton critically ill. She’s past eighty. Some lunger from New York. A little Jew with a peaked face. Some one all the time. Await alike th’inevitable hour. Ah, Lord!
With loss of hunger, he thought of undertaking and undertakers, and in particular of Mr. Gorham. He was a man with blond hair and white eyebrows.
Waited to marry her when that rich young Cuban died, so they could take honeymoon to Havana.
They turned down Spring Street by the Baptist Church. This is really like a city of the dead, Eugene thought. The town, rimmed with frost, lay frozen below the stars in a cataleptic trance. The animacy of life hung in abeyance. Nothing grew old, nothing decayed, nothing died. It was triumph over time. If a great
