got so caught up in what he was
saying....

No, kid, a Demon is always an actor, no matter how much he believes in
what he's saying, and there never was an actor yet who wouldn't
instantly notice a member of the audience starting to walk out on his
big scene.

So Bruce knew, which made him a better actor than I'd have been willing
to grant, since it didn't look as if anyone else had thought of what had
just occurred to me, or they'd have gone over and put it to him.

Not me, though--I don't work that way. Besides, I didn't feel up to
it--Nervy Anna enfold me, I felt like pure hell.

"Maybe," I told myself encouragingly, "the Place is Hell," but added,
"Be your age, Greta--be a real rootless, ruleless, ruthless
twenty-nine."

CHAPTER 11

The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle gear,
Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of gray, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists

--Sassoon

THE WESTERN FRONT, 1917

"Please don't, Lili."

"I shall, my love."

"Sweetling, wake up! Hast the shakes?"

I opened my eyes a little and lied to Siddy with a smile and locked my
hands together tight and watched Bruce and Lili quarrel nobly near the
control divan and wished I had a great love to blur my misery and
provide me with a passable substitute for Change Winds.

Lili won the argument, judging from the way she threw her head back and
stepped away from Bruce's arms while giving him a proud, tender smile.
He walked off a few steps; praise be, he didn't shrug his shoulders at
us like an old husband, though his nerves were showing and he didn't
seem to be standing Introversion well at all, as who of us were?

Lili rested a hand on the head of the control divan and pressed her lips
together and looked around at us, mostly with her eyes. She'd wound a
gray silk bandeau around her bangs. Her short gray silk dress without a
waistline made her look, not so much like a flapper, though she looked
like that all right, as like a little girl, except the neckline was
scooped low enough to show she wasn't.

Her gaze hesitated and then stopped at me and I got a sunk feeling of
what was coming, because women are always picking on me for an audience.
Besides, Sid and I were the centrist party of two in