"Say, Max, guess why I think you're like a rubber band."
Classic Delphi was never more ready with ambiguous retort.
Behind a stack of Joy-of-the-Loom bed-sheets, Max Meltzer groped for
oracular divination, and his heart-beats fluttered in his voice.
"Like a rubber band?"
"Yeh."
"Give up."
"Aw, give a guess."
"Well, I don't know, Miss Sadie, unless--unless it's because I'm stuck
on you."
Do not, ascetic reader, gag at the unsocratic plane. True, Max Meltzer
had neither the grain nor the leisure of a sophist, a capacity for
tenses or an appreciation of Kant. He had never built a bridge, led a
Bible class, or attempted the first inch of the five-foot bookshelf. But
on a two-figure salary he subscribed an annual donation to a
skin-and-cancer hospital, wore non-reversible collars, and maintained a
smile that turned upward like the corners of a cycle moon. Remember,
then, ascetic reader, that a rich man once kicked a leper; Kant's own
heart, that it might turn the world's heart outward, burst of pain; and
in the granite canon of Wall Street, one smile in every three-score and
ten turns upward.
Sadie Barnet met Max Meltzer's cycle-moon smile with the blazing eyes of
scorn, and her lips, quivering to a smile, met in a straight line that
almost ironed out the curves.
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