And then, as with an inspiration, he couldn’t see what she was about, she seized upon an excuse, an object, and thrust it at him, confusedly, almost with apology. She let go and he held it, she gazed into his face.
Then the waiting cab drew her attention, the cab summoned it with its yellow lights and comfortable cushions and its traveling darkness and promise of leave-taking. Then, leaning, helped, she was taken away by her husband.
They abandoned the critic and she was finally in the cab, closeted, with its motor purring. The husband turned and looked across the distance at the critic, questioningly. There were tiny lines around the husband’s eyes and mouth.
The critic nodded and waved. The husband nodded and entered the cab, shutting the door very quietly. The cab drove, with exaggerated slowness, away. It seemed to take five minutes, like a procession, to move down the dark alley.
The critic stood by the stage door and looked at her gift, her explanation.
A face towel. No more and no less. A towel.
He stood a long moment in the alley. He shook the towel a few times without looking at it. It was wet. It was absolutely soaking. He lifted it and drew a faint breath. It was rank with perspiration.
“Some other night,” he said. Yes, he might come back ten dozen nights to receive the same gift, the same excuse. “Sly one, that husband, didn’t warn me. Let it all happen. Well.”
He folded the towel as neatly as possible and carried it in one hand, went out to hail a taxi, and let it drive him home. “Driver,” he said, on the way, “what if you had a garden and weren’t allowed to pick the flowers?”
The driver thought it over as he turned a corner. “Well,” he said, “that’d be one hell of a thing!”
“Yes,” said Levering. “You are right, driver. One hell of a thing.”
But then it was late and the cab stopped, and it was time to get out and pay the driver and go into his apartment house, carrying the towel quietly, in one hand.
All of these things Mr. Levering did.
The end
