He
didn't like that arm and body himself. A young whippersnapper
had been able to take liberties with it. It had gone back on
him. He sat up suddenly. No, by God, he had gone back on it!
He had gone back on himself. He had gone back on Dede. She was
right, a thousand times right, and she had sense enough to know
it, sense enough to refuse to marry a money slave with a
whiskey-rotted carcass.
He got out of bed and looked at himself in the long mirror on the
wardrobe door. He wasn't pretty. The old-time lean cheeks
were gone. These were heavy, seeming to hang down by their own
weight. He looked for the lines of cruelty Dede had spoken of,
and he found them, and he found the harshness in the eyes as
well, the eyes that were muddy now after all the cocktails of the
night before, and of the months and years before. He looked at
the clearly defined pouches that showed under his eyes, and
they've shocked him. He rolled up the sleeve of his pajamas. No
wonder the hammer-thrower had put his hand down. Those weren't
muscles. A rising tide of fat had submerged them. He stripped
off the pajama coat. Again he was shocked, this time but the
bulk of his body.
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