woman are you? I never heard you speak a word that a child of ten could not have spoken. I never heard you say a thing that ought to be remembered. The only things I know about you are that you are a Boston spinstress—thirty—no longer very young—a few grey hairs already on your head—comfortably secure on dead investments—over here on a spree—away from father and the family and The Boston Evening Transcript—but never losing them: always knowing that you will return to them—in God’s name, woman, is that all you are?”
She laughed her sudden, short and angry laugh, and yet there was no rancour in it.
“That’s what Frank would call a brief but masterly description, isn’t it? I suppose I should be grateful.” She looked at him with quiet eyes, and said simply: “What of it? Even if what you say is true, what of it? As you say, I’m just a dull, ordinary kind of person, and until you and Francis came along no one thought me anything else or thought any the less of me for being like that. Listen”—her voice was hard and straight and sullen—“what do you expect people to be, anyway? Do you think it’s fair and decent to talk about how beautiful I am when I’m not beautiful, and then to turn and curse me because I’m just an ordinary girl?” She was silent a moment, with an angry flush upon her face, and then she said: “As for my intellect, I went to Bryn Mawr, and I got through without flunking, with a C average. That’s about the kind of brain I’ve got.” She turned and looked at him with straight, angry eyes, now shut a little with tears.
“What of it?” she said. “You say that I am dull and dumb and ordinary—well, I never pretended to be anything else. You know, we all can’t be great geniuses, like you and Francis,” she said, and suddenly her eyes were wet, and tears began to trickle down across her flushed face. “I’m just what I am, I’ve never pretended to be any different—if you think I’m dull and stupid and ordinary, you have no right to insult me like this.—Come on, I’m going home.”—She started to get up, he seized her, pulled her to him.
“Oh, you bitch!… You big, dumb, lovely bitch!… Oh, Ann, Ann, you sweet devil, how I love you—I can never let you go—oh, Goddamn you, Ann—”
It ended at last, at daybreak in a bistro near Les Halles, where they had often gone at dawn with Elinor and Starwick for rolls and chocolate or coffee. Outside they could hear the nightly roar and rumble of the market, the cries of the vendors, and smell all the sweet smells of earth and morning,
