Page:Burgess--Aint Angie awful.djvu/49

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THE FASCINATING FACE
43

way, she would make him suffer even as she had suffered, even if she had to marry him to do it.

But where was the Face? That was the interrogation point!

For weeks she searched—but it was like trying to find a needle in a smokestack. There seemed to be so many, many whiskers in New York, but they never had that Certain Something that made her feel so all-overish. She was, therefore, in no very gilded frame of mind when, one evening, she sat down on a Fifth Avenue curbstone to rest. She simply had to get rested or arrested—she didn’t care which.

For a while she was so amused watching the children and old gentlemen getting run over by automobiles that she didn’t see the person seated beside her. Except for his eyebrows his face was quite nude. His hands also were naked, and he was thoughtfully eating unsalted five-dollar bills.

Such rich food might disagree with him, thought Angie; but she didn’t really care. One gets so used to gluttony in a large city that one takes it quite easily. And strangely, too, she felt no vertigo such as usually