It had been so long since the
old neuralgic stabbings of spirit. She wanted to jump and had a
ludicrous vision of herself landing down in the cream of white shoulders
and crashing through the U of one of those immaculate shirt fronts. She
could have torn and scratched the indestructibility of her failure and
wanted suddenly and terribly to wrap those pearl-twined taffy braids
around the rising throat of Marguerite as she sprayed the auditorium
with the "Jewel Song," a great fire hose of liquid music finding out
every cranny.
In the deep-napped velvet of this melodious darkness Lilly rose
suddenly, pushing her way out through knee-impeded aisles and a string
of protestations.
An usher helped her to find a door. She ran down several flights and
into a side street. A slant of rain met her and she charged into it with
bent head and umbrella. Bubbles with a tap of sleet in them exploded
like little torpedoes on the sidewalks, curbs were rushing water, and
Broadway was as black and oily-looking as a foundry. She tried to
visualize it as she had seen it that first morning from her window at
the Hudson Hotel, pink with sun.
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