d later that Vernabelle called it
being willowy. She had slaty-gray eyes and a pale, dramatic face with
long teeth and a dignified and powerful-looking nose. She was kind of
hungry-looking or soulful or something. And she wore about two yards of
crockery necklace that rattled when she moved. Sounded like that Chinaman
with his dishes out there in the kitchen. I learned later that this was
art jewellery.

Vernabelle greeted me with many contortions like she was taking an
exercise and said she had heard so much about me and how interesting
it was to meet one who did things. I said I was merely in the cattle
business. She said "How perfect!" and clasped her hands in ecstasy over
the very idea. She said I was by way of being the ideal type for it. And
did I employ real cowboys; and they, too, must be fascinating, because
they did things. I said they did if watched; otherwise not. And did I
acquire an ascendancy over their rough natures. I said we quickly parted
forever if I didn't do that. Then she clanked across to the couch, where
she set down on her feet. I give her credit for that much judgment. That
girl never did just plain set down. It was either on one foot or on both
feet, or she draped herself along the furniture to show how willowy she
could be without its hurting.

She now lighted a new cigarette from her old one and went on telling the
fish-faces about her how little colour she had found here. She said we
was by way of being a mere flat expanse in dull tints. But what could
be expected of a crude commercialism where the arts was by way of being
starved. Ah, it was so different from dear old Washington Square, where
one was by way of being at the heart of life. It took me some time to
get this by-way-of-being stuff, but the others was eating it up. Metta
Bigler hovered round proud as Lucifer and trying to smoke for the first
time in her life, though making poor work of it, like she was eating
the cigarette and every now and then finding bits she couldn't swallow,
and holding it off at arm's length in between bites. Mrs. Henrietta
Templeton Price was making better work of the cigarettes, and Beryl Mae
Macomber, a wealthy young society heiress and debutante, aged seventeen,
was saying that she had always felt this lack in Red Gap and would of
been in the movies long since if her aunt had listened to reason. The
only man present was Edgar Tomlinson, who is Red Gap's most prominent
first-nighter and does the Lounge