Yes, you look at me. Look and look and look, you poor, queer tired women, It's a pretty hat, isn't it? Its meant to be looked at. That's why it's so big and red and new; that's why it has these great soft poppies on it.
Your poor hat is all weary and done with. It looks like a dead cat, a cat that was run over and pushed out of the way against the kerbstone.
Don't you wish you were I and could have a new hat whenever you pleased? You could walk fast, couldn't you, and hold your head high and raise your feet from the pavement if you were on your way to a new hat, a beautiful hat, a hat that cost more than ever you had?
Only I hope you wouldn't choose One like mine. For red is mourning, you know. Scarlet red for a love that's dead. Didn't you know that?
She's gone now. The taxi is moving ana she's left behind forever. I wonder what she thought when our eyes and our lives met. I wonder, did she envy me, so sleek and safe and young?
Or did she realize how quick Ta fe to fling away all I have if I could bear in miy breast the still dead heart that she carries in hers?
This is the sort of thing he hated so in me.
I know what he would say. "Oh, for heaven's sake!" he would say. "Can't you stop that fool sentimentalizing? Why do you have io do it? Why do you want {o do it? Just because you see an old charwoman on the street, there's no need to get sobbing about her. She's all right. She's fine "When your eyes and your lives met'—oh, tome on, now.
"Why, she never even saw you. And her still, dead heart,' nothing! She's probably on her wgy to get a bottle of bad gin and have a roaring time, "You don't have to dramatize everything. You don't have to insist that everybody's sad. Why are you always so sentimental? Don't do it, Rosalie."
That's what he would say. I know.
But he won't say that or anything else to me, any more. Never anything else, sweet or bitter He's gone away and he isn't coming back.
"Oh, of course, I'm coming back!" he said. "Mo, I don't know just when—I told you that. Ah, Rosalie, don't go making a national tragedy of it. It'll be a few months, maybe—and if ever two people needed a holiday from each other! It's nothing to ery abou TU be back. I'm not going to stay away from New York forever.'
But I knew. I knew. I knew because he had been far away from me long before he went. He's gone away and.he won't come back. He's góne away and he won't come back he's gone away and he'll never come back.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.