CHAPTER XXXVIII
SHE had lived in Washington for a year. She was tired of the office.
It was tolerable, far more tolerable than housework, but it was not
adventurous.
She was having tea and cinnamon toast, alone at a small round table on
the balcony of Rauscher's Confiserie. Four debutantes clattered in. She
had felt young and dissipated, had thought rather well of her black and
leaf-green suit, but as she watched them, thin of ankle, soft under the
chin, seventeen or eighteen at most, smoking cigarettes with the correct
ennui and talking of "bedroom farces" and their desire to "run up to New
York and see something racy," she became old and rustic and plain, and
desirous of retreating from these hard brilliant children to a life
easier and more sympathetic. When they flickered out and one child gave
orders to a chauffeur, Carol was not a defiant philosopher but a faded
government clerk from Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.
She started dejectedly up Connecticut Avenue. She stopped, her heart
stopped. Coming toward her were Harry and Juanita Haydock.
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