At last it seemed that she was intruding on a _tête-à-tête_, eavesdropping on a monologue; so that when Clarke would emerge from his reveries, Diane resented the inevitable thought that he was robbing himself to keep her company. But patience reaches its limit, finally.... She saw it, one night, twinkle and smile through a lustrous haze that played over its surface, smile the slow, curved smile of a carmine-lipped woman through the veils of her mystery; saw Clarke sitting there, eyes shearing the veil and half smiling in return, a devotee in the ecstatic contemplation of a goddess shrouded in altar fumes.... "Ham!" "Yes," answered Clarke's lips. He had now perfected the trick of having his body act as his proxy. "Are you taking me to that show tonight?" "What show?" Clarke the simulacrum stirred lazily in the depths of the cushion-heaped lounge. "The truth of it is, my dear," he resumed after a pause during which some memory of the proposed entertainment must have returned, "truth of it is I'm awfully busy tonight----" "Busy sitting there staring at nothing and sipping Pernod!" flared Diane, the wrath of months flashing forth. Then, as she saw Clarke settle back into the depths: "Listen, once for all: this nonsense has lasted too long. I might as well have married a mummy! Either get that thing out of the house, or I'll leave you to your pious meditations indefinitely----" "What? Good Lord, Diane, what's this?" "You heard me. You used to be half human, but now you're utterly impossible. And if you can't show me a little attention, I'm leaving here and now. For the past many weeks you've acted like a model for a petrified forest. Ever since that yellow beast----" "Yellow beast?" "Exactly! That damned rug is driving me crazy----" "Is, or has driven?" suggested Clarke. "Lies there like a beast of prey just ready to wake. And you sit there, night after night, staring at it until you fall asleep in your chair. Does it go, or do I?" "What do you want me to do? Throw it away?" "I don't care what you do with it. Only I won't stay in the house with it. It gives me the creeps. You've said entirely too much in your sleep lately--first yellow rugs, and now it's a yellow girl. I'm through!" Clarke's brows rose in Saracenic arches. And then he smiled with surprizing friendliness and a touch of wonder. "Di, why didn't you tell me sooner? I could understand your craving alligator pears at 3 in the morning--I might have understood that, but hating a rug is really a new one on me----" "No, stupid, it's nothing like that! I just hate the damned thing, and no more to be said." "Well, lacking the infallible alibi"--Clarke glared and assumed his fighting face--"if you mean I choose between you and the rug, I'll call a taxi right now." "Don't bother. I'll walk." The door slammed. Clarke twisted his mustache, and achieved a laugh; not merry, but still a laugh. And then he sank back among the cushions.