How luminous that
look was now! The simple look of proud and assured and most determined
ownership! It lay quietly on her face now as always. It was the look he
must have bestowed on his shell the first time he saw it. Ownership!
"--the point is," the Demon was saying terribly, "I don't believe in
long engagements."
He had once been persuaded, yielding out of spineless bravado, to
descend the shaft of a mine in a huge bucket. The sensations of that
plunge were now reproduced. He looked up to the far circle of light that
ever diminished as he went down and down.
"I don't believe in them either," said the flapper firmly. "They're
perfectly no good."
"I never did believe in 'em," he heard himself saying. And added with
firmness equal to the flapper's, "Silly!" He was wondering if they would
ever pull him to the surface again; if the rope would break.
"Just what I think," chanted the flapper. "Silly, and then some!"
"Then some!" repeated the male being in helpless, terrified
corroboration.
"Won't he ever come?" queried the Demon. "Oh, here he is!"
The waiter was neatly removing tea and things from the tray. Bean
recalled how on that other occasion he had fearfully believed the earth
would close upon him, how hope revived as he was precariously drawn
upward, and what a novel view the earth's fair surface presented when he
again stood firmly upon it.
It was the waiter who raised him from this other abyss where he had been
like to perish, the waiter and the things, including tea: plates, forks,
napkins, cups and saucers, tea and hot water, jam, biscuit, toast.
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