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Moths in the Arc Light
by
At least a tenth of his thoughts were devoted to planning a vacation for the girl across. She should lie with nervous fingers relaxed among the long-starred grasses, and in the cornflower blue of the sky and comic plump white clouds find healing. After arranging everything perfectly he always reminded himself that she probably hadn’t been with her firm long enough to have earned more than a five-day vacation, and with etched scorn he pointed out that he was a fool to think about a girl of whom he knew only that:
She seemed to take dictation quickly.
She walked gracefully.
She appeared at a distance to have delicate oval cheeks.
She was between sixteen and forty.
She was not a man.
About Article Five, he was sure.
He was so strong-minded and practical with himself that by the end of his holidays the girl was cloudy in his mind. He was cured of sentimentalizing. He regarded with amusement his re-enforced-concrete romance, his moth dance under the arc light’s sterile glare. He would—oh, he’d call on Christine Parrish when he got back. Christine was the sister of a classmate of his; she danced well and said the right things about Park Avenue and the Washington Square Players.
He got back to town on Monday evening, just at closing time. He ran up to his office, to announce his return. He dashed into his private room—less dashingly to the window. The girl across was thumbing a book, probably finding a telephone number. She glanced up, raising a finger toward her lips. Then his hat was off, and he was bowing, waving. She sat with her half-raised hand suspended. Suddenly she threw it up in a flickering gesture of welcome.
Bates sat at his desk. The members of his staff as they came in to report—or just to be tactful and remind the chief of their valuable existence—had never seen him so cheerful. When they were gone he tried to remember what it was he had planned to do. Oh, yes; call up Christine Parrish. Let it go. He’d do it some other night. He went to the window. The girl was gone, but the pale ghost of her gesture seemed to glimmer in the darkening window.
He dined at the new Yale Club, and sat out on the roof after dinner with a couple of temporary widowers and Bunk Selby’s kid brother, who had graduated in the spring. The city beneath them flared like burning grass. Broadway was a streak of tawny fire; across the East River a blast furnace stuttered flames; the Biltmore and Ritz and Manhattan, the Belmont and Grand Central Station were palaces more mysterious in their flashing first stories, their masses of shadow, their splashes of white uplifted wall, than Venice on carnival night. Bates loved the hot beauty of his city; he was glad to be back; he didn’t exactly know why, but the coming fall and winter gave promise of endless conquest and happiness. Not since he had first come to the city had he looked forward so exultantly. Now, as then, the future was not all neatly listed, but chaotic and trembling with adventure.
All he said to the men smoking with him was “Good vacation—fine loaf. ” Or, “Got any money on copper?”
But they looked at him curiously.
“You sound as though you’d had a corking time. What you been doing? Licking McLoughlin at tennis or something?”
Bunk Selby’s kid brother, not having been out of college long enough to have become reliable and stupid, ventured: “Say, Bunk, I bet your young friend Mr. Bates is in love!”
“Huh!” said Bunk with married fatness. “Batesy? Never! He’s the buds’ best bunker. ”