eltzer."
Amory shook his head indignantly.
"None that stuff!"
"But listen, Amory, you're making yourself sick. You're white as a
ghost."
Amory considered the question. He tried to look at himself in the mirror
but even by squinting up one eye could only see as far as the row of
bottles behind the bar.
"Like som'n solid. We go get some--some salad."
He settled his coat with an attempt at nonchalance, but letting go of
the bar was too much for him, and he slumped against a chair.
"We'll go over to Shanley's," suggested Carling, offering an elbow.
With this assistance Amory managed to get his legs in motion enough to
propel him across Forty-second Street.
Shanley's was very dim. He was conscious that he was talking in a loud
voice, very succinctly and convincingly, he thought, about a desire
to crush people under his heel. He consumed three club sandwiches,
devouring each as though it were no larger than a chocolate-drop.
Then Rosalind began popping into his mind again, and he found his lips
forming her name over and over. Next he was sleepy, and he had a hazy,
listless sense of people in dress suits, probably waiters, gathering
around the table....
... He was in a room and Carling was saying something about a knot in
his shoe-lace.
"Nemmine," he managed to articulate drowsily. "Sleep in 'em...."
*****
STILL ALCOHOLIC
He awoke laughing and his eyes lazily roamed his surroundings, evidently
a bedroom and bath in a good hotel. His head was whirring and picture
after picture was forming and blurring and melting before his eyes, but
beyond the desire to laugh he had no entirely conscious reaction. He
reached for the 'phone beside his bed.
"Hello--what hotel is this--?
"Knickerbocker? All right, send up two rye high-balls--"
He lay for a moment and wondered idly whether they'd send up a bottle
or just two of those little glass containers. Then, with an effort, he
struggled out of bed and ambled into the bathroom.
When he emerged, rubbing himself lazily with a towel, he found the bar
boy with the drinks and had a sudden desire to kid him. On reflection he
decided that this would be undignified, so he waved him away.
As the new alcohol tumbled into his stomach and warmed him, the isolated
pictures began slowly to form a cinema reel of the day before. Again he
saw Rosalind curled weeping among the pillows, again he felt her tears
against his cheek. Her words began ringing in hi
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