And I could sit here-by the window--in the sun--and dry it----"
With a jerk she brought her straying fingers away from her
hair, and her wandering eyes away from the sunshine, and her
runaway thoughts back to the typewritten page. For three minutes
the snap of the little disks crackled through the stillness of the
tiny apartment. Then, suddenly, as though succumbing to an
irresistible force, Mary Louise rose, walked across the room (a
matter of six steps), removing hairpins as she went, and shoved
aside the screen which hid the stationary wash-bowl by day.
Mary Louise turned on a faucet and held her finger under it,
while an agonized expression of doubt and suspense overspread her
features. Slowly the look of suspense gave way to a smile of
beatific content. A sigh--deep, soul-filling, satisfied--welled up
from Mary Louise's breast. The water was hot.
Half an hour later, head swathed turban fashion in a towel,
Mary Louise strolled over to the window. Then she stopped, aghast.
In that half hour the sun had slipped just around the corner, and
was now beating brightly and uselessly against the brick wall a few
inches away. Slowly Mary Louise unwound the towel, bent double in
the contortionistic attitude that women assume on such occasions,
and watched with melancholy eyes while the drops trickled down to
the ends of her hair, and fell, unsunned, to the floor.
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