| OCR Text |
Show thought I_ was the joke, but still I --" ***** *»h "Chess.' A I don't care if you were ]fi& weak. Nobody can be strong all the time." "But we should. We can at least try. I didn't even try. And the trouble is -" "Chess . . . " "The trouble is, I'm a phony. Oh yes, that's just what you were thinking • and you had every right to think it. Me lying to people, deceiving them." "You didn't lie." "Giving a false impression, letting the lies stand, knowing I was false, a phony, a --" "Oh, Chess." She said my name so softly, so sympathetically there in the half darkness that suddenly there were tears in my eyes. "I want to be strong.'" I said, and there were tears in my voice too. Real ones. Quickly she was out of her chair and came to the bed, sat down orvthe side of it on that narrow space and took my hand, murmuring for me not to talk that way, that I shouldn't berate myself. I had known her all my life, she had been my nurse, and I wanted to let go and weep in a flood until I could not cry another drop. I tried to check it too though, and as a result I cried brokenly, painfully, accusing myself, sobbing that first thing tomorrow I was going to tell Ben the horrible truth. I had been wrong, wrong to let him believe and spread the lie about me; I had been wrong, wrong to be so gratified by it, to love this false self I had allowed to grow. But no more, no more.' Despite the fact that my act was getting into high gear then, going great, all of it was true. Even my feeling was true: it was just that instead of speaking directly out of my feeling I was using it, orchestrating it. And I did not overplay it, for Kite got more and more sympathetic: her cool hand soothed my brow, her other hand gripping mine Kith closely. Still I wept and |
