"That was it, too, Getaway! The thing that fellow looked--that I couldn't say. He said it--with his eyes."
"I'll break his face if he goo-goos you," said Getaway, who by this time had a headache and whose feet had fitted reluctantly back into patent leather.
But inexplicably, even to herself, that night, in the shadow of the stoop of her witch of a rooming house, she let him kiss her lips. His first of her--her first to any man. It may have been that suddenly she was so extremely tired--tired of the lay of the week ahead, suggested by the smells and the noises and the consciousness of that front box pleat.
The little surrender, even though she drew back immediately, was wine to him and as truly an intoxicant.
"Marylin," he cried, wild for her lips again, "I can't be held off much longer. I'm straight with you, but I'm human, too."
"Don't, Getaway, not here! To-morrow--maybe."
"Promise me you'll go straight home from here--to bed."
"I promise. Marylin, one more. One little more. Your lips--"
Suddenly, by a quirk in the dark, there was a flash of something down Marylin's bare third finger, so hurriedly and so rashly that it scraped the flesh.
"That's for you! I've been afraid all day. Touchy! Didn't I tell you? Diamonds! Now will you kiss me? Now will you?"
In the shadow of where she stood, looking down, it was as if she gazed into a pool of fire that was reaching in flame clear up about her head, and everywhere in the conflagration Getaway's triumphant "Now will you! Now will you!"
"Getaway," she cried, flecking her hand as if it burned, "where did you get this?"
"It's for you, Fairylin, and more like it coming. It weighs a carat and a half. That stone's worth more than a sealskin jacket. You're going to have one of those, too. Real seal! Now are you sore at me any more? Now you've a swell kick coming, haven't you? Now! Now!"
"Getaway," she cried behind her lit hand, because her palm was to her mouth and above it her eyes showing the terror in their whites, "where did you get this?"
"There!" he said, and kissed her hotly and squarely on the lips.
Somehow, with the ring off her finger and in a little pool of its light as it lay at his feet, where he stood dazed on the sidewalk, Marylin was up the stoop, through the door, up two flights, and through her own door, slamming it, locking it, and into her room, rubbing and half crying over her left third finger where the flash had been.